AP Photo/L.G. Patterson

Anyone who spends time online has at least a vague sense of the “service agreements” to which he routinely consents — dense documents filled with legal fine print that make up the “terms of service” for Web services or…

“Every Halloween, the trees are full of underwear. Every spring, the toilets explode.”

So lamented Dean Vernon Wormer of Faber College in the 1978 movie “Animal House.” But the same complaints — and worse — could be made by any number…

You join the fire department, and you know there’s going to be some danger involved.
You’ll broil in the summer and freeze in the winter. You’re going to eat some smoke. Maybe help coax a cat out of a tree when…

Not that many years have passed since I was most involved in community organizing.

I first was asked to become an officer in the Shaw Neighborhood Improvement Association in 1994. My busiest stretch was from 1997-2000 when we were working on a lot…