The world has been becoming steadily more insane for the last few years, but the era of the Great Orange Blob marks a new high. It would be funny if it weren’t so scary. Are we seeing the dawn of a new fascism or is it just a passing phase of the overheated media? I […]
I just want to note the death of Prince. I found him quite possibly the most brilliant pop artist of the last thirty years–as a songwriter, performer, and guitarist. “Kiss” is one of the greatest pop songs of all time. I also liked his look and height. I have nothing original to say about him, […]
For those wondering where I’ve been recently the answer is that I’ve been working on a collection of new papers which I intend to publish soon. The thing is there are 125 of them, so it took a lot of work to finalize them.
It ended and we must go back to reality. What the show was really about, though I have never seen it mentioned, is virtue. It was about good and bad people doing good and bad things. It was about personal vice–greed, lies, envy, malice–and dealing with it. And it took a very literal and direct […]
I was watching (as is my wont) another nature program yesterday, about penguins. Among many marvelous things I was struck by one scene in particular: after showing the remarkable parental devotion of the parents, the camera caught them feeding their chick for the last time and then waddling off to leave it to fend for […]
I bought two chrysalises a few weeks back and put them in my butterfly container. One was quite fat and housed a moth; the other was thin and dead looking and housed a delicate butterfly. I was told the moth was hibernating and would take weeks or months to emerge while the butterfly would be […]
Tina Fey’s impersonation of Sarah Palin was certainly very funny, but it missed some of the less attractive parts of its target. The voice was high and almost melodious but Palin’s voice has grown guttural and aggressive. Fey’s intelligence and general niceness shone through but Palin is neither of those things. I found Palin’s endorsement […]
I was watching a nature program on PBS and it was observed that poisonous snakes and other poisonous animals tend to be brightly colored. This raises an interesting explanatory question: why make yourself so conspicuous, both to predators and prey? The suggestion made was that some kind of altruism is at work–kindly signaling to others […]
For even the nicest tabby that was ever born and weaned Is capable of acting, on occasion, like a fiend “In Respect of Felines”, T.S. Eliot