Admiral Raphael Semmes spent his best years fighting a losing battle. He “inflicted considerable harm to the enemy, had fought a gallant duel,”* and generally spent the entire Civil War punching the Union navy in the kidneys (see: Confederate Blockade runners), before coming home from England to find that he had been just about the [...]

And so, it comes again. Back in my homeland, I’d be watching a river dyed nuclear-reactive-slime-green, and preparing some convoluted story of ancestry for the scores of Plastic Paddies at the Beverly parade who drunkenly demanded to know “What county d’yer people come from?”. (Note: Ignorance or apathy regarding this subject made you, in their [...]

The twenty-seventh hour of uninterrupted wakefulness is when the tables begin to turn against the sleep-deprived. Whereas twenty-four is a milestone at which anything seems possible (“I could just do without sleep entirely!”), the next few are a reminder of the body’s limitations, and, furthermore, of the stupidity of ignoring them. I sat on the [...]

    As I rolled out of bed on Friday, a thin, greyish band of light shone through the 7th story window of my Baltimore hotel room. Its very color promised a bracing, biting chill to come. I staggered into the bathroom, my right ear still ailing from the flight, and with the taste of [...]