An Andisheh Almanac

  • Decatur road salt

    Dear Decatur: Are you ready for tomorrow’s winter storm?

  • Lapdog

    Dog on my laptop, photographed in black and white, looking very gentle and sweet.

    My sweet Timmy spent the yesterday on my lap. Saturdays are for the boys, they say.

  • Hello

    I can recall music videos I watched 40 years ago more easily than I can tell you what I did last week. I’m not happy about that.

  • Costco of many colors

  • End of trail

    sign in the woods that reads "End of trail"

    Reynolds Nature Preserve in Lake City, Ga. is less ominous than this photo suggests.

  • Melt The Guns

    Austin L. Ray came up to me the other day and said, “Hello, Andisheh Nouraee, how you would you fix Atlanta?”

    “Hello, Austin L. Ray, publisher of the How I’d Fix Atlanta essay series, thank you for asking me that question,” I said. “How I’d Fix Atlanta, Austin, is I’d melt the guns.”

    Says me:

    “[W]hile Georgia Republicans have spent the last 20 years or so making it perfectly legal for nearly any idiot to take a gun nearly everywhere, there’s still one office that Republicans won’t let people bring their guns into—their very own. Guns are banned at the state Capitol. And honestly, that seems sensible to me. After all, someone might get shot.”

    Read Melt The Guns, my newest contribution to the How I’d Fix Atlanta essay series.

    And subscribe (free!) to How I’d Fix Atlanta to have each new essay delivered to your inbox.

  • Huge news! I found the meaning of life.

  • Hickory Controversy

    I have recently become aware of a controversy within the hickory measurement community.

    Granite plaque near the base of a tree that reads "Pignul Hickory - Carry glabra. Reported to be the fastest growing hickory

  • Was the U.S. invasion of Iraq ever popular?

    I remember the country turning against the war, but did the country ever really support the war?

    Democrats won control of Congress in 2006, in part because the catastrophic War On Terror™ turned voters against Bush and Republicans. At least that’s how I remember it.

    This morning I read a newspaper column I wrote in November 2002 (13 months after the Afghanistan invasion, 5 months before the Iraq invasion). It was about public opinion polling and whether the then-pending invasion of Iraq actually had the support of the public.

    Was the Iraq war ever popular with the American public? It depended on how pollsters asked the question. Me in 2002:

    To witness first-hand how small wording changes can alter answers, try asking these two questions next you’re at a bar. Question : Do you enjoy having sex? Question : Do you enjoy having sex with me?”

    I then share bits of a Pew Research Center poll from October 2002 showing that a majority of Americans favored the invasion in general, but a majority disapproved of an invasion if there were significant U.S. casualties or we proceeded without support from allies.

    Put another way, the public approved of the hypothetical best-case scenario (an internationally supported invasion with few casualties) that was sold to them by Bush and credulous journalists, but the public disapproved of a go-it-alone invasion that killed and injured huge numbers of people, which is what countless people who were actually paying attention (ex. me!) warned was about to happen.

    Americans didn’t really support what the war was going to be. They only supported the fantasy version. 

    Speaking of fantasies, check out how much a 3-bedroom house with a yard cost in East Atlanta in 2002. From the classifieds of the same November 2002 issue of Creative Loafing:

    My column from that week, if you’re curious.

  • Atlanta’s Best Season

    Autumn gets the glory and the cinnamon and nutmeg-flavored coffee drinks, but Atlanta’s best season is late winter. The mornings are cold, the afternoons are warm, the trees are naked.