18 September 2010: How Unhappy Are You?

I was a relatively cheerful person until I read the results of the extensive survey of American men in the October issue of Esquire magazine.  Drawing the line between 20-year-olds and 50-year-olds among all ethnicities, in the happiness category, the group with the highest all-around unhappiness are Asian-American men who are 50 or older, 33%…

22 August 2010: Flushing with J.D. Salinger

News that the standard white porcelain toilet from J.D. Salinger’s North Carolina home is selling for $1 million on eBay gives one pause (the kind that refreshes).  It’s a commodity unlike no other, because it’s where the famously reclusive author might have written the earlier drafts, which he subsequently rejected, of such disemboweling works as…

16 August 2010: Obama and Antigone

Kreon’s downfall in the play Antigone by Sophocles is that he chose to pursue the Letter of the Law instead of the Spirit of the Law.  Although “freedom of worship” is one of our most sacred constitutional rights as American citizens, Republicans are now vehemently against the building of a mosque within two blocks of…

27 July 2010: To Russia, With Love

News leaking out of BP indicates that wayward CEO Tony Hayward is stepping down in October, and will be assigned to a key post at TNK-BP in Russia, where he will presumably oversee all offshore drilling for oil in that part of the world.  No one is saying it, but I have a deep suspicion…