Five weeks ago, in this commentary, I speculated George Bush must have nothing to do now that voters have deprived him of the opportunity to send troops off to be poisoned in Iraq. Well, I was wrong and I admit it. It turns out George Bush has plenty to do. It seems our former president […]

I went to the opera a few weeks ago. The local opera company had gotten up a production of Turandot, so I squeezed myself into my cheap suit and spend three hours being thrilled by Puccini. Getting tickets for Turandot was not easy. Many of the performances were sold out and for those that still […]

Last week, Greenpeace announced some of its activists had done something no one has ever done before. They visited a nuclear test site without permission from the country that conducted the tests. That meant no government officials peering over their shoulders, steering them toward this or away from that. The Greenpeace activists visited the Cannikin […]

Remember “Casablanca”? Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman on that wet runway, he’s telling her to get on the plane, he’s telling her that the problems of two people don’t amount to a hill of beans… What does a hill of beans amount to? It was not a useful standard of measurement in the 1940s, and […]