I share our dog’s affection for Lakeview Park, its wide, smooth path rising and falling alongside three small lakes edged with reeds, a weeping willow, a dock, a steep hill. One Saturday morning in early October, as soon as the sun slanted through cold mist, we set off happily. By the time we reached the […]
When I was a kid, Sinclair Oil Company used to hand out Apatosaurus toys and soap-on-a-rope as incentives, since their logo was “Dino” the dinosaur. Word on the street with the banana-seat bunch was that oil came from dead dinosaurs. Oil began, of course, as algae and plankton mixed with the mud of ancient seas. […]
The 2018 podcast Caliphate caused me to miss my exit ramp one evening, run a red light the next morning. Rukmini Callimachi’s reporting held me spellbound, the material so inherently dramatic that her soft-voiced narrative needed no extra hype. When, toward the end, it began to look as though her major source, Abu Huzayfah, might […]
This morning, a friend sent me a meme: a black-and-white photo of Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Joseph Stalin, seated in dignified poses, their expressions reserved and thoughtful. Different as their characters were, they all look like men who know their own minds and are capable of keeping their own counsel. Below that image, […]
A cynical private eye and former mercenary named Joe Adams calls to tell me that while walking his Marine-trained pit bull past the old St. Mary of the Angels Convent grounds on Bellevue Avenue, he took note of the construction site. Joe Adams takes note of everything. He trained rebels in Myanmar, regularly turns down […]
The Borat sequel, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, was released last night on Amazon Prime, a few hours earlier than announced, to coincide with the Presidential debate. The moviefilm is not as edgy or tightly-constructed as other Sacha Baron Cohen […]
I could not relax, walking the bike path today, among people blaring country music, the guy shouting at heaven, large unleashed dogs thinking heroic thoughts, and clouds of biting gnats in the sun. But what spiked my irritation was the group of five middle-aged guys on expensive road bikes, wearing aerodynamic helmets and […]
Workwise, I find myself in an odd place. I have never been happier than I am now, working from home. Yet I am desperately sorry for young people who have to work from home. The fluffy sort of news—by which I mean anything that does not include death counts, death threats, or the imminent death […]
Paul Griffiths is trying to defend the biological either/or of male and female. The coauthor of Sex and Death: An Introduction to Philosophy of Biology, he wants it understood that even if not everyone lands neatly in one or the other, there are only two sexes. If we are talking sexual reproduction (which he is), […]
One of my old friend’s names is a synonym for king. I have known him since we were maybe eight, when his mother placed him in my mom’s Cub Scout den. We were all rascals, but he and I were fatherless and poor. Due to the authority of his size, and what would turn out […]
