Reading Time: 2 minutes There’s no mention of the political implications in this account (the link is below) from the hit-or-miss variety of curiosities on Atlas Obscura, this necessarily superficial account of an important facet of determining the cultural nuances of what otherwise seem to be aspects of differentiation and group behavior (including hard to quantify qualities of it, including belief, ideology, and the […]
Howard Dinin
Testing the Depths of Our Incredulity
Reading Time: 3 minutes There’s that meme again, a jocular George W. Bush. It does take me back, almost 20 years, with the strange effect of persuading me that my 50s just possibly might have been still occurring in the flush of my youth. I remember especially trying to explain what’s what with American politics and how we choose our leaders to French neighbors […]
Au Pied de Cochon
Reading Time: 6 minutes There was talk in a blog I sometimes follow of crubeens and pig’s feet – a perfect aide-memoire, almost of the Proustean sort – that reminded me of my experiences with this delicacy. I’d always thought of it as quintessentially French, but this only reveals a lingering personal bias. I think everything that is supposed to be not only really […]
With a Sharpie® what can go wrong?
Reading Time: 4 minutes You just can’t go wrong with a product like Sharpie Well, you might, if you happen to be a recent chief executive of the United States who happens to have problems with way more than one or two words in the lyrics to “God Bless America”… It’s OK with that to hum along and bob your head to the rhythm. […]
Free thoughts
Reading Time: 4 minutes It’s another day, just another one out of what really is an uncountable succession of days, seems like years, well it is years, but I’m talking days and then I have to do the quick math of figuring for the sake of easy arithmetic that a year is 350 days and it’s like, what? nearly three years, more like two […]
Walk Signal
Reading Time: < 1 minute The little avatar of a trudging man blazes white above the curb opposite, the one I stand on, the street you’ve just crossed eyes down your golden hair suddenly blown out full by a gust of wind; sure to be dry no tell-tale damp in it when you reach your destination. Stay, you said, or rather didn’t say, but […]
Whose Job Is It To Undo the Damage?
Reading Time: 5 minutes It was James Madison who was the great champion of separation of powers, that is, an active and robust separation, so that each branch of government with its several well-defined assigned powers is itself always potent, equally so compared to the others, so the overall result is a state of active equipoise. Madison saw a danger in any form of […]
Shorts & Briefs | 24 July 2019 | Just What Is Expected from Grilling Mueller?
Reading Time: 3 minutes Not to suggest that the House and Senate have a statutory sworn, not to mention ethical and moral, duty to perform in the areas of inquiry and oversight of all branches of government as the people’s representatives within that government, but it seemed clear enough how these sessions with Special Counsel Robert Mueller would go. It was sort of clear […]
Is Donald Trump Now the Most Trusted Man In America?
Reading Time: 5 minutes Before I get into it, I know the meaning of trust has eroded over the past several decades. The particular admixture of credence, confidence, and faith we invest in certain individuals who earn it – at least among the public – has seen a decline, noted in the first world from the United States to New Zealand. Then there’s the […]
Shorts and Briefs | 2 July 2019 | When You’re Smiling
Reading Time: 4 minutes Trump Thoughts Today This happens sometimes when I am surfing and I do my daily check as a lurker on Facebook. I saw two links in particular that caught my eye, to news stories in standard mainstream media sources. It really doesn’t matter which or what. Trump gesturing in a photo at one of his rallies He has much of […]