policywonk

My blogs

About me

Gender Female
Industry Communications or Media
Occupation Journalist/policy analyst
Location Midwest, United States
Introduction PoliticalEye is an op-ed venue for passionate discussion and dispassionate analysis of current events, conventional wisdom, government policies, and corporate folly, with occasional divergence into the arts, sciences, and cultural trends. Politics, policy, and the personal are all open targets (yes, the personal still IS the political). PoliticalEye's Snark Attack is an offshoot of PoliticalEye. Snark Attack is edited by policywonk, the creator and editor of PoliticalEye, and is a snappier, less formal blog. Policywonk is the the nom de guerre of M.R. Traska, a Midwest-based independent journalist, policy analyst, essayist, novelist, poet, critic, web consultant, style diva, lounge lizard, swing dancer, cookbook author, wino, and foodie. All opinions, comments, musings, and retorts are strictly her own and do not necessarily reflect those of Blogger or its Web hosting service. Let idiots beware: we do not suffer fools here.
Interests Politics, policy analysis, the personal, news, and the arts and sciences (You expected something else??)
Favorite Movies His Girl Friday, Dangerous Beauty, Notorious, Indiscreet, All The President's Men, Three Days of the Condor, "Z", Wag The Dog, The President's Analyst, Havana, Blade Runner, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Fifth Element, Impostor, Minority Report, The Contender, Frequency, Primary Colors, Recount, Out of Africa, No Way Out, Contact, Solaris, and of course Casablanca
Favorite Music Jazz (including swing and bossa nova), classical, and Astor Piazzola's tangos -- nothing else matters
Favorite Books Freakonomics, Team of Rivals, The Art of War, Coming of Age in the Milky Way, Einstein's Dreams, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Prince, The Foundation Trilogy, all of Asimov's robot books, Contact, Guns Germs and Steel, The Aeneid (Fitzgerald trans.), all the Harry Potter books, anything by Philip K. Dick, David McCullough's historical biographies, Blinded By the Right, Tales of the South Pacific, The Republican Noise Machine, Love in the Time of Cholera, The Divine Comedy (Ciardi trans.), Tales of Pirx The Pilot, Memoirs of a Space Traveler, The God Particle, The Art of Happiness, Idoru, Pattern Recognition, The Martian Chronicles, Fahrenheit 451, and all the Agatha Christie novels

You've successfully slain the dragon! How will you toast your marshmallows?

a) Very carefully, over low heat. b) What do you mean, slay the dragon -- I *AM* the dragon! (the happy Chinese kind, thank you)