25 February 2010: Sarah Palin’s Curiosity Case

According to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in a recent interview with Newsmax, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin lacks “the depth of understanding of the complexity of life that we’re living in today.”  He also thinks that she has no political legs in 2012 because “public leaders need to have intellectual curiosity.”  I beg to differ with the thoughtful Bush on the…

16 January 2010: Beware of Professors!

Having spent nearly forty years of my life teaching in classrooms at the University of Kansas and elsewhere, it puzzles me that, on the one hand, Americans in general seem to believe in the virtues of a good education but, on the other hand, they ultimately also seem to distrust their teachers. Barack Obama was…

13 January 2010: How Dark Is Light?

In her autobiography Thursday’s Child, Eartha Kitt talks about growing up in the cotton plantations of South Carolina in the late 1920s and early 1930s, and how she was ostracized by blacks and whites alike because her lighter skin color made her neither black nor white.  So how did she go on to become a great celebrity…

12 January 2010: Sarah Palin Vs. Ellen Degeneres

Today’s headlines reveal that Sarah Palin is joining Fox News as a regular commentator, and that Simon Cowell is leaving “American Idol” at the end of the season.  Now that Ellen Degeneres has replaced Paula Abdul on “Idol,” my guess is that Fox is grooming Moose Palin to join Buckaroo Degeneres on “Idol” after Cobra Cowell’s departure.  I’d…

6 January 2010: The Gospel According to AVATAR

Where TITANIC (1997) showed us the great divide between social classes in allegedly egalitarian societies, with its “message” successfully embedded in a breathless love story between the haves and the have-nots, Canadian film-director James Cameron now picks up where Al Gore left off in AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH (2006).  Although Cameron’s AVATAR can be viewed and…

4 January 2010: Harder! Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

At my age, encounters with frisky strangers occur rather rarely, so my New Year’s resolution is to fly as frequently as I can, in order to enjoy free full-body rubdowns and massages in the expert hands of airport security people.  Here’s some dialogue out of a new Quentin Tarantino remake of an old Russ Meyer movie:   “Lower, please. …

The Beastly Beatitudes of the Chinese Zodiac

After over half a century of reading and collecting paper place mats from Chinese restaurants all over the world, I’ve decided to collate my collection and share the Wisdom of the East with anyone who believes that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of by western horoscopes. As you probably…