Male Pattern Blindness

 I don’t always notice things, I admit. Or, rather, I may not always notice things that others notice, such as, perhaps, my wife.
(more…

Read Full Post »

Hillary Clinton (and Ron Paul)

First of all, I like Hillary Clinton. I do not like her as much now as I did half a year ago, but underneath the me-first attitude is a politician whose principles I generally agree with and respect.
(more…

Read Full Post »

Watchdog, or rabidly anti-Chinese?

In response to my post on the Olympic torch and the Tibetan flag, someone emailed me about the “incredible bias in the western media against China (would you agree?) There has been for some time. … The average [Chinese] person on the street doesn’t know anything about politics and cares even less. Making a fortune [...]

Read Full Post »

Canditatorial Candor

Hillary Clinton is beginning to seem like Hubert “The Happy Warrior” Humphrey to me. The prospect of Hillary running against John McCain feels to me a bit like choosing between Humphrey and Nixon.
(more…

Read Full Post »

The Hammer & Sickle, Olympic Torch, and Tibetan flag

After disembarking from the ferry this morning the first thing I noticed, as I approached the plaza, was all the crowd-control barriers up. Oh, bother, I thought. The barriers lined much of The Embarcadero. As we left the ferry gate at pier 2 they blocked our usual jay-walking routes across the Embarcadero to Justin Hermann [...]

Read Full Post »

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton

 A friend emailed me this question recently: 

What do you think of Barack and Hillary?

I never thought I’d feel sorry for Hillary. But I do. I like Barack. But I’m kind of amused by the prevailing optimism about him.
  
(more…

Read Full Post »

Bottling beer, Moody Blues, and patiently waiting to celebrate

My friend Dave came over to help me bottle this winter’s lager. It was good to catch up, and he had the amusing news that he had been to a rock concert for the first time in, well, years. The Moody Blues were in town. Yup, dinosaur rock. Someone had canceled in the 11th hour, [...]

Read Full Post »

Ikea Tugs Rug out from Under the Danes

A friend, who knows that a passel of my great-grandparents emigrated from Sweden, sent me this news story claiming a novel form of prejudice.
(more…

Read Full Post »

Fletcher’s — All the colors in black and white

“I don’t care if people think differently about me because I’m black,” Lou said, half-turned on his barstool to face Murphy. “Hell, I don’t even care if they like me. They don’t have to like me.”
Murphy chuckled uneasily as the bar went quiet. Karen and Cindy had been talking but now looked over, and Emil [...]

Read Full Post »

An unplanned sabbatical

John Lennon once sang, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” So some of life has happened lately, a mixture of events that has preoccupied me.
(more…

Read Full Post »