As everyone by now knows, a group calling itself the Guardians of Peace hacked Sony Pictures and tried to prevent the Christmas Day release of the movie “The Interview” because–ironic spoiler alert–at the film’s conclusion, apparently, North Korea’s Outstanding Leader Kim Jong-un meets with a fiery demise. We should be so lucky, right? Still, I […]
Apart from the simmering exasperation–nay, rage–nothing that has emerged from Ferguson, Missouri in the four months since Michael Brown’s shooting death has made any sense to me. Everything–from the events themselves and the characters of the primary actors to the reactions both of protesters and police–has been nuanced by dualism: Michael Brown was a thug, […]
San Francisco Giants Manager Bruce Bochy, like some ancient, uncatchable catfish–the wisest old fish in the water–has, to use another aquatic analogy, skippered his ball club ingeniously through this post-season–at least until Game 7 of the Fall Classic, when he started 39-year-old pitcher Tim Hudson instead of a two-day-rested Madison Bumgarner, who, at 25, is […]
As you read this, my wife and our youngest will have been in Oregon for nearly a week, visiting our oldest and our older daughter. It’s our sophomore daughter’s fall break, and she has been impatient to return. They flew up there last year, but my brief October bachelorhood was immediately scotched by one of […]
That’d be me, if I were a superhero. No ridiculous tights and cape, no backstory or idiosyncrasy, no gadgets–certainly no mask–just a manual typewriter, and the task of writing a letter. Appalling though my penmanship is, still, I am a good letter writer because I take it seriously–I would, after all, be mailing my whole […]
In the 4 September issue of this paper, while honoring the late Judge Paul Vortmann, it was stated that, “If not for a favorable ruling in Judge Vortmann’s courtroom on July 29, the Valley Voice would have been turfed out onto the street.” Only after publication did I realize the implications of this statement, and […]
In a news release in July of this year, The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia declared that rising temperatures attributed to global climate change might be a contributing factor in the increase of people who develop kidney stones. In a study of more than 60,000 adults and children who were diagnosed with kidney stones between 2005 […]
I graduated from Berkeley with a degree in Peace and Conflict Studies. But this does not make me a pacifist. Some wars need fighting, I’m afraid, and some people need killing–even though it strains my humanity to utter it aloud. The second Iraq War–for instance–was a four-star clusterf**k, while we should have gone hammer and […]
If the 20th was the American Century, it follows that the United States spent much of that time–especially during the Cold War–propping up and otherwise aiding democracies across the globe. Just in the last decade we have joined battle in both Iraq and Afghanistan with the stated aim of promoting stability (democracy) in those countries. […]
As it does every four years, the World Cup has created quite a soccer uproar. In a camaraderie of beer and jerseys and face paint, strangers band together in bars everywhere to cheer. I have been left scratching my head–with hands that could not be used in a match–about the game itself. Not about its […]