TORONTO, CANADA.  TUESDAY, JANUARY 22, 2013.  According to mastermind Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), the official theme for President Barack Obama’s second inauguration yesterday was “faith in America’s future.” As elaborated on National Public Radio’s live blog: “Schumer says that ‘America always rises to the occasion. America prevails and America prospers,’ no matter the challenges.” No […]

One of the many intriguing things about the year which has just ended is that it marked the 50th anniversary of the death of Marilyn Monroe, in the Brentwood neighbourhood of Los Angeles (more or less due north of Santa Monica), on August 5, 1962. Adding somewhat to this intrigue, in the no-man’s-land days between […]

This morning’s announcement of the US Supreme Court decision, more or less upholding the constitutionality of so-called “Obamacare,” was a historic moment in the global village that begs some kind of comment. Even or perhaps especially up in the wild northern attic, where we already have a health care system that actually makes sense. There […]

[UPDATED APRIL 2] : David Ogilvy, the original Mad Man (founder and creative head of Hewitt, Ogilvy, Benson, & Mather, which later morphed into just Ogilvy & Mather, 1948—1975), apparently had three simple rules of success: “First, make a reputation for being a creative genius. Second, surround yourself with partners who are better than you […]

[UPDATED MARCH 17, 2012] : At first I wasn’t sure just what to make of our autumn 2011 holiday trip to Silicon Valley, in the (despite everything else) still aptly named Golden State of the USA today. Then I bumped into two recent articles in the online edition of Foreign Policy magazine: “The Myth of […]

Like others, no doubt, I kept a few notes on my own remote experience of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. I won’t even try to say just why. And my especially marginal experience of the main events in New York and Washington took place in the current biggest city of […]

The death of the actor Peter Falk this past Thursday, June 23, 2011, at his home in Beverly Hills, California, at the age of 83, is worth commemorating for a host of good reasons. But I have a particular reason myself. Peter Falk – and more exactly, or especially, in his “defining role” as Columbo, […]

One of world history’s future cunning passages might marvel at how the “fourth wave of democratization” in North Africa and the Middle East was ironically accompanied by a North American wave in the opposite direction. So you might think, at any rate, when you set the news that “Canadians fleeing strife-torn Libya …” (or more […]

Apparently George W. Bush’s presidential memoir, Decision Points, only released this past November 9, 2010, has already “sold almost a million and a half copies.” According to one wise observer, it is nonetheless “unlikely that many will ever read Decision Points, and even fewer will finish it … Conservative groups buy these things in bulk […]

A site like this ought to say something about Barack Obama’s surprise upbeat finale to the troubled year of 2010. And I have been asked to say it. I can’t say much. My main sources are MSNBC and the Washington Post – and the vaguely snowy moonlit view from my lakeside office window, in the […]