POINTLESS ACTIVITIES: My apologies to one and all for the lack of posting this past week, but I’ve been spending the majority of my computer time over at The Reform Club, where I have been arguing with an ideologue. This is an entertaining but ultimately futile activity, somewhat akin to collecting 17th century Norwegian toothbrushes and then writing long scholarly monographs about the importance of these toothbrushes on Swedish military adventurism during the Thirty Year’s War that no one in their right mind would want to read in a hundred years of Sundays. It’s sort of like arguing with that kid who’d always say, “I know you are but what am I,” to everything you said to him. Still, it’s been sort of fun, all in all, watching someone use logic so convoluted and reasoning so circular that they could scratch their own backsides with their foreheads without working up a sweat.