The lights are out at Effect Measure. It is closed and locked. No one is there any more. So consider this a note tacked on the door. I had always intended to leave it as a way to connect you with The Pump Handle and that’s still its purpose. But now I feel compelled to add a thank you note as well. Shortly after publishing the final post I went off...

It’s been a long time coming but the time has come. Effect Measure is closing up shop, after 5 and a half years, 3 million visits and 5.1 million page views of some 3500. You commented on them some 37,000 times. It’s been a grand ride but to all things there is a season. It’s time to simplify my life and while my family has had me all along, at times...

I shall die, but that is all that I shall do for Death. I hear him leading his horse out of the stall; I hear the clatter on the barn-floor. He is in haste; he has business in Cuba, business in the Balkans, many calls to make this morning. But I will not hold the bridle while he clinches the girth. And he may mount by himself: I will not give...

The person who taps the keys here over the signature “revere” (or sometimes “Revere”; it’s at most one at a time) is not Paul Revere. The real Paul Revere died in 1818. If you want to know the name or names of any of the key tappers here I’m going to disappoint you right away. This post doesn’t reveal how many people do the tapping or who they are....

When I was young (high school, college) I had a variety of jobs, including golf caddy (cured me of golf for the rest of my life; there were no carts, just an 11 year old lugging two bags with 16 clubs over 18 holes) and paper boy (4 am on Sundays hauling 80 huge Sunday papers in a wagon; took about 2 hours. Weekdays were smaller papers but the same...

BP has this great reputation for being an environmentally friendly and responsible company. I know it because their incessant television ads tell me it’s true. The ones that flank the national news stories about their horrendous safety record of explosions and worker deaths or their catastrophic oil spills. Those ads. When something happens they start...