Celebration
July 4, 2011Another view of this particular day: You profess to believe “that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth,” and hath commanded all men, everywhere…
Category Archives: History
Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ — One Big-Assed Tale Concluded
April 17, 2011(Illustration: ‘Burning of Colours‘ by Wojciech Kossak found here via Google Images). After more than three months, Leo Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace‘Â is finally finished — and to reveal how good a read it’s been,…
A World Above — Fifty Years Rocket Past
April 12, 2011Just after 1 a.m., April 12, 1961, a Soviet Vostok rocket blasted off from Baikonour cosmodrome, which alerted US radars in the Aleutian Islands. Twenty-three minutes later, Jerome Wiesner, JFK’s scientific adviser, was notified by…
Monday 4 AM — Sad State of Affairs
March 14, 2011From Aljazeera English: A second explosion rocked Japan’s stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex, sending a plume of smoke into the air and touching off fresh concerns of radioactive leak in the quake and tsunami-hit…
Whole Lotta People Goin’ On
February 15, 2011“‘Smart growth’ destroys the environment. ‘Dumb growth’ destroys the environment. The only difference is that ‘smart growth’ does it with good taste. It’s like booking passage on the Titanic. Whether you go first-class or steerage,…
‘Farewell Friday’ — Why Don’t The Sonofabitch Leave?
February 11, 2011As simple as one, two — bye, bye. (Illustration found here). As events in Egypt reach once again a kind of flash point Friday after Hosni Mubarak showed himself as mentally-unhinged in not only not…
Despotic Foodstuffs
February 3, 2011As the world watches revolutionary unrest spread across a big chunk of the Middle East, one of the most vital and festering problems leading the surge is eating — or not eating. In 1996, The…
Egypt’s Difficulty
January 31, 2011Egypt is a way-ancient land now exploding via extreme-modern media, but a good reason for all the unrest is as old as time — food. And a near-twist-a-flex attitude in the US, where prices are…
Lonesome George
January 29, 2011In September 2000, a peek into the future. During a Labor Day campaign stop in Illinois, George Jr., oblivious of a mic just inches from his mouth, blubbered an aside to The Dick, which eventually…
Af-Pak Woes-Begotten
January 28, 2011In the last couple of years, the US foreign take on the disaster in Afghanistan is to junk on another acronym, ‘Af-Pak,’ in an apparent effort to link Pakistan with the war being lost in…