Category Archives: Commentary

Two Australians

7/28/2011 – 3:44 pm

Two Australians in England in trouble.  One’s all over the recent news, one was all over the news six months ago, now keeping a low profile.  Neither man’s issues have been resolved. Guessing?  Rupert Murdoch, of course, and Julian Assange.  The Australians (Mr. Murdoch is now a US citizen) both left their homeland far behind […]

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HD5

7/21/2011 – 12:33 pm

Last Wednesday, 13 July 2011, was HD5 or Hansen Day Five.  It marked the fifth anniversary of James Hansen’s 2006 essay in the New York Review of Books, in which he wrote: “…we have at most ten years—not ten years to decide upon action, but ten years to alter fundamentally the trajectory of global greenhouse […]

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Who Lost Venezuela?

7/15/2011 – 12:02 pm

What kind of cancer do you think Hugo Chavez has?  He mysteriously disappeared into Cuba for three weeks last month, then suddenly appeared looking drawn and haggard but announcing the success of cancer surgery.  He did not say where the cancer was.  Now he’s talking about chemo and radiation. Using the medical license bestowed by […]

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Neighborhood Giant

7/7/2011 – 11:00 am

Last Friday was Canada Day, which commemorates the 1867 unification of three British colonies – Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and “Canada” (Quebec and Ontario) – into one kingdom, as part of the United Kingdom. Canada did not achieve full separation from the UK until 1982. I was in Washington Friday and although I vaguely knew […]

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There’s an App for That

6/30/2011 – 9:54 am

I’m a middle-aged man, with the characteristics of a middle-aged man. I accept this. In summer, I grill and I tend to make a fetish of it. I make my own barbecue sauce. I make out that it’s some big artisan deal, when it’s really not. Probably another ego thing. I was out in the […]

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500 Questions

6/23/2011 – 10:28 am

I have a friend, approaching middle age, who suddenly found himself single last year after 15 years of marriage. Recently he decided it’s time to re-enter the singles scene and after some fruitless flailing, surrendered to the 21st century inevitability of the computer dating service. I find the whole thing fascinating, from a purely academic […]

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A Few Crumbs

6/16/2011 – 2:23 pm

I was helping the teenager prepare for her English final last week, reviewing with her Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir “Night,” which she read this semester. (I’d never read the book, a gap in my own education.) I came across this passage: “Dozens of starving men fought each other to death for a few crumbs (thrown […]

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