In Praise of Folly

An interesting article in the Washington Post today argues that this congress has actually been the most successful since the Great Society ...

This has been a bad couple of weeks for Democrats. If we add the election in November, things have been going downhill for a few months now,...

Now that the Supreme Court has further expanded the rights of corporations as individuals, I think it’s time to contemplate the issue from t...

Is Truman Burbank the embodiment of us all? The character, played by Jim Carrey in The Truman Show (1998), won him a Golden Globe for Best A...

Why do we smile when lost in sadness we lay? Why do we laugh when tears right the way? Why do we hate when we’d rather create? Stay in a ...

The Supreme Court decision today is a smack in the face to democracy. Coupled with the result Tuesday, the hope the Obama presidency gave us...

I haven't heard anyone mention the irony that MA happens to be the first state in the country to dabble in socialized medicine, when Duk...

I occasionally read Esquire for pleasure, usually while taking care of some daily business. There was an interesting quote from Mohamed ElBa...

The Post continues its discussion of the Obama presidency today, with E. J. Dionne offering his analysis of the current Conservative backlas...

Obama won a sizable election a little over a year ago. He came into office with high popularity ratings and a desire by the country for chan...

What do you get for someone who has everything? A private jet, a limited edition Porsche, maybe a small island in the South Pacific? Well fo...

A number of articles today bring together an underlying theme of this blog. The first is from USA Today, detailing an unexpected rise in for...

So as Haitians are literally dying in the streets ( www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/world/americas/14haiti.html?th&emc=th) , you assume all w...

An interesting article in the National Journal yesterday ( http://undertheinfluence.nationaljournal.com/2010/01/health-insurers-funded-chamb...

Some facts from Harper's Index this month: # of registered drug-company lobbyists in DC for every member of Congress: 2 Average amoun...

Item 1: The mainstream media in America has grown increasingly absurd in their obsequious acquiescence to any subject Republicans claim as i...

Or at least one wonders if the bottle does, given their latest commercial. In it a young woman is asking her date/boyfriend about who he wou...

Mark Laita is a New York/Los Angeles artist who has just released a new book, "Created Equal." In the book he juxtaposes images of...

Just whenI thought the tea baggers and Sarah Palin were the far right of the party, I learned crackpot ideas are back in the mainstream of t...

There is a good article in the Washington Post today, detailing the quandary of California and how it may foreshadow a continuation and ampl...

Here is my list of the best films I have seen this year. I have missed some critically acclaimed films (including Hurt Locker, Capitalism: A...

Republicans have shown an adroit tendency to enact the material instantiation of postmodern ideas in the past decade. First was the recount ...

Up in the Air is receiving rave reviews. George Clooney is winning renewed accolades as the cynical corporate traveler Ryan Bingham, Vera F...

I had very little interest in seeing this film, based largely on commercials that made it appear as a B-movie blockbuster wannabe epic and t...

Sometimes Republican hypocrisy is cute, sometimes it is funny and sometimes it is downright despicable. The latest terrorist attempt has all...

So when one thinks of unhappy places to live, New Jersey and Connecticut come directly to mind. Maybe also Louisiana post-Katrina or the omi...

Drumroll please . . . the word of the year, according to The New Oxford Dictionary, is unfriend: http://tpmlivewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/20...

A few weeks ago, a series of penalties in a big college football game helped to decide the outcome (as I don't really care about college...

Remember when bands struggled through years of poverty and degradation to get a shot at success. Thankfully we have all but eliminated this ...

The healthcare debate has, in many ways, taken on a relatively surreal tone in the past few months (Obama as a socialist, fascist Hitler-lik...

I’m going to let the words of the Teabaggers largely speak for themselves this week: http://www.americablog.com/2009/11/teabaggers-attack-ho...

I have always been interested in the ways that culture influences our beliefs, values and attitudes. I am particularly interested in the inf...

A report out yesterday showed the unemployment rate above 10% and the unemployment and underemployment number at over 17% ( www.nytimes.com/...

For years I have been listening to people warn me against “reinventing the wheel.” It makes sense and though I cringe every time I hear it (...

The results of the same sex marriage ban in Maine are somewhat disheartening to those attempting to end one of the last forms of government ...

Terminator Salvation, the fourth installation in the Terminator series, is a major disappointing, putting the latest Star Trek triumph into ...

Interesting results in the election tonight. It is clearly a good night for Republicans, but some interesting results could bode well for De...

A friend dragged me to see Couples Retreat on Friday night. Even with a $70 million budget, $87 million in gross domestic sales, Vince Vahn ...

I haven't been posting as much because of a busy semester and now three in one day. I couldn't help myself. So John Corzine is runni...

The very group that helped get us into our current financial collapse wants to make sure the status quo is maintained: http://dyn.politico.c...

In recent years, any economic expansion is met by calls for tax cuts. Bush used that long lost surplus of 2000 to, what else, cut taxes. Sta...

A new book has just come out, Wannabe U: Inside the Corporate University (University of Chicago Press): www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/10/...