What Were They Thinking?

  Everyone should have a hobby. Mine is collecting names of businesses that don’t make sense. Below are some real examples: 1. Icarus air Travel. Icarus only had one flight and it ended badly. 2. The Abelard School, a private academy. Abelard was best known for sleeping with a student. 3. Gandhi’s Fine Indian Cuisine. [...]

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Curses From an Old Manse

Sophie Pollitt-Cohen writes: Teddy Roosevelt stated the problem well when he said, “A typical vice of American politics is the avoidance of saying anything real on real issues.”  Obama got in trouble for saying that the Cambridge Police acted “stupidly” when they arrested Henry Louis Gates, Jr.  You know what’s stupid?  People thinking that Obama [...]

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Global Citizenship Expert Reviews Japan’s Open Future

                  I’d like to share a recent review of my book Japan’s Open Future: An Agenda for Global Citizenship by Dr. Hans Schattle, an expert on global citizenship and author of the 2007 book The Practices of Global Citizenship.  I have not yet had the chance to read Schattle’ s book, [...]

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Slaughter Nick for President

The people of Serbia have passionately embraced an out-of-work Canadian actor who once starred in an obscure TV show called Tropical Heat. A knock-off of Magnum P.I., Tropical Heat revolved around hero Nick Slaughter, and was broadcast in Serbia during the tumultuous final days of the Milosevic regime. The actor who played Slaughter, Rob Stewart, recently [...]

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Eclipse first, the rest also important to know about

   Sophie Pollitt-Cohen writes: Today there was a total eclipse of the sun.  This should never be confused with a total eclipse of the heart.  The latter is categorized by getting a little bit lonely, a little bit tired, a little bit nervous, a little bit terrified, followed by falling apart.  In total eclipses of [...]

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A Garden at Last for Kolakowski

                I was sorry to hear from Jeet’s recent post that Leszek Kolakowski had died. As an undergrad I read and read again his penetrating collection of essays in Modernity on Endless Trial – an inspired title, I always thought. Fittingly enough for someone who was influenced by Kant, he shook me [...]

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World’s leading black-studies scholar arrested

Henry Louis Gates Jr., a Harvard University Professor who specializes in African-American studies, has been arrested at his home on dubious charges of disorderly conduct. A statement by Gates and link to the police report are here. Some judicious comments are found in this thread on Crooked Timber (where I found out about it).

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Noblesse Oblige from Japan Tobacco

                        The Wall Street Journal has just translated from Japanese a hilarious interview with Hiroshi Kimura, ostensibly Japan Tobacco Inc.’s president and chief executive. Either we are being had by another Sascha Baron Cohen character, or the translator is a  wicked prankster. This is high comedy:  … Mr. Kimura [...]

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Leszek Kolakowski, RIP

  The philosopher Leszek Kolakowski is dead. His dates are 1927-2009, meaning he lived through the most violent and tumultous period of Polish history: the Nazi conquest, the post-war liberation followed by Stalinism, the rise of the New Left and its crushing defeat in the 1960s (which sent him into exile), the triumph of Solidarity and [...]

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Affirmative Action, Buchanan-Style

  Pat Buchanan, among other conservatives, has been all arage over the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to be a Supreme Court justice. Sotomayer, Buchanan argues, is an affirmative action hire, selected not because she’s the best qualified candidate but because she’s a Hispanic woman. (For an example of Buchanan in action see this debate he had [...]

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