Author Archives: floegel

The New Cigarette

4/12/2012 – 7:29 pm

I fly on a fairly regular basis and these trips always begin with a 6 a.m. flight, which means the plane boards around 5:30.  Because I’m a frequent flyer, I always board in Zone 2.  I’m not frequent enough to qualify for Zone 1, but I’m still among the first on the plane, which gives […]

Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Al Gore’s Igloo

4/5/2012 – 3:18 pm

This is the fourth installment of my New Year’s pay more attention to the weather resolution.  It was hard to wait until the first of the month, given the summer-like heat Vermont experienced a few weeks ago.  When a late-winter storm hit Washington, DC in 2010 (I was on one of the last planes out […]

Posted in Commentary, Global Warming | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Missing the Connection

3/29/2012 – 1:26 pm

What if I wasn’t me?  How would the world look?  I guess it would depend on whichever skin other than my own I stand in. I’ll give you an example.  The other day, remembering my youth, I realized synagogues – Temple Beth David and Temple Emanu-El – stood on two of the four corners of […]

Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Still the Story of America

3/22/2012 – 12:49 pm

The story of America is the story of race.  It has been since a couple Germans grafted the name of an Italian navigator onto the continents in the middle of the last millenium.  That it is still the story of America (especially the United States of) is evidenced by two stories in the news this […]

Posted in Civil Liberty, Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

How to Lose Five Dollars

3/15/2012 – 2:02 pm

Beware the Ides of March.  I just thought I’d say that.  How often do a) the Ides of March fall on a Thursday, the day I usually post here and b) I actually remember it’s the Ides of March? Less than a week until the end of winter and it’s warm and sunny, supposed to […]

Posted in Commentary, Economy | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

A Quorum of Crows

3/8/2012 – 3:13 pm

The collective noun “school of fish” comes from a corruption of the term “shoal of fish,” which seems like a fairly accurate means of quantifying fish in the days before GPS. This led to an unfortunate anthropomorphic trend of naming aggregations of animals based on some perceived quality – a “pride of lions, a gaggle […]

Posted in Commentary | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

In Like a Lion?

3/1/2012 – 3:47 pm

February and March are (traditionally) the heaviest snow months in Vermont, although not the February that ended yesterday, extra day notwithstanding.  It did snow last Friday.  We were all duly warned about a winter storm and got maybe an inch and a half.  The snow did, however – more or less – stay on the […]

Posted in Commentary, Global Warming | Tagged , | Comments (0)