I hate this argument. It's either saying that nothing can be held up to criticism and that everything is equally worthwhile and valid, or it's the counterpart to the idea that the best pieces of art make the most money.

"crafting a very convincing fake letter from the University of South Carolina"

False rape accusations are a real thing. So are badly-calibrated speedometers that lead to speeding tickets. And dogs sometimes chew up homework.

When you characterize "not thinking that knee-jerk fear and suspicion and stereotyping of young black men is an acceptable premise to a discussion" as "[a] far end[] of the aisle," do you mean that?

Any discussion of spring beers should include Bell's Oberon as the greatest warm-weather beer of all time.

He's slowly turning into Johnny Depp.

"Myriad" was originally a noun. It meant "a unit of ten thousand" in ancient Greek.

I didn't say they had to change their allegiance, but it IS possible to like a team and hate their QB/not wear his jersey/quit buying gear till he's gone.

Do they cheer for him and wear his jersey?

I was just thinking that. He must have meant Fujikawa.

I worked at a very small East Coast store. It was awesome, but that was 10 years ago. However, a lot of my coworkers are still there.

I'm willing to concede that my experience (and several of my friends' continuing experiences, ten years later) may not be representative. I worked at a very small, very quirky Whole Foods that has kept its character through hyper-regular customers and very, very long-tenured staff. I'd imagine that life in, say, the…

Not denying that at all, sailor. I just wanted to draw a distinction between the two companies. As you say, it's only currently that way due to Mackie's whims.

Whole Foods is super-anti-union. However, they do pay their employees, they have good benefits (including a pretty good insurance plan), have store-level profitsharing, and other things that distinguish them from the Walmarts (and Depots and Bed Bath and Beyonds etc.) of the world.

I live in the tony suburbs of a major East Coast city, and the Wegmans here are located in the most insufferably self-important and whitebread portions of those suburbs. It's not the store or the employees; it's the customers. The Whole Foods in the area also have their share of asshole customers, but it's tempered…

Whole Foods has awesome benefits (insurance, a yearly-replenished health-care debit card in the amount of your deductible that can also be used for alternative therapies if you choose, and store-level profitsharing with its employees, which encourages employees to limit shrink and build relationships with customers),…

Whole Foods' organic produce and dairy is generally cheaper than other stores with less buying power in that market.

The Wegmans close to me is an utterly horrific hellscape, but I've heard nice things about the chain, overall. The hellscape part is more about where I live, and less about the store itself.

"I use the ongoing bipartisan commitment to surveillance and questionable - in light of the post-Katz reading of the Fourth Amendment, at least - drone and Gitmo policy to conclude that there's no difference between Barack Obama and George W. Bush, despite the nearly limitless universe of policy differences that…

Richard Sherman was second in his high-school graduating class. He wasn't a fifth-year senior at Stanford; during his last year of eligibility, he had already graduated, been accepted into the Masters program, and was doing graduate-level work.