When I was third grade at St. Margaret Mary’s School in the late 1960s, we used to have “the SRA box” in the corner. The SRA box had dozens of color-coded sheets, each sheet had a little story and a few questions at the end. We’d read a story, answer the questions, Mrs. Ortolani would […]
This isn’t a Christmas story, per se. It’s about soap. It takes place in Louisiana in June, far removed from the climate and symbols traditionally associated with Christmas, but the more I contemplate the “Christmas spirit” the more this story pushes to the front of my mind. The June in question was 2001, before specific […]
Ohio journalists Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman have been charging that the way voting was conducted in their state in the 2004 presidential election was suspicious almost from the moment George W. Bush was declared winner. Winning Ohio gave Mr. Bush his second term in office. Now a report from the Ohio Secretary of State […]
This is the time of year when religion fills the air. The eight nights of Hanukkah concluded last night, Christmas is less than two weeks away and the presidential primaries are in full swing. In years past, presidential politics and religion were as separate as… well, as church and state, but those lines get blurrier […]
The Washington Post today reports various utilities are experimenting with peak-hour pricing for electricity. The utilities use “smart meters” to report energy use in 15-minute segments and e-mail and text messages to alert customers that local power use is peaking. That’s a great idea, it’s an example of how we can use relatively unsophisticated computer […]
The Gathering Storm?
In the autumn of 1979, I was a college freshman; majoring in history and watching it unfold. The Solidarity movement emerged from the shipyards of Gdansk as I arrived at school. Eight weeks later, Iranian students took staff at the US embassy in Tehran hostage. Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan on Christmas Eve. Each event sounded […]