When people think of "traditional" Palm Beach restaurants, they usually refer to places such as Testa's (my grandparents' favourite hangout) or the Petite Marmite. But for those of us who lived there in the late 1960's, a place not to be left off of the list was Wert's, on South Ocean Boulevard not far from …
Where Does George Bush get his Inspiration From?
There seems to be a divergence of opinion outside the U.S. on where George Bush gets his inspiration from. On the one hand, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder found it disturbing that George Bush made so much of his relationship with God and apparently claimed so much inspiration therefrom. Now we have Mahmud Ahmadinejad claiming …
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The Best Way to Get the Vote Out
Note: this is the third in our series on Election 2006. The first two, The Democrats and National Security: Dzerzhinskii’s Dilemma and Electing the Unelected, were presented earlier. One of the long-running whines about American politics is the low level of voter participation in elections. About this time every election cycle we are regaled with …
Tony Blair, Jack Straw, and the Extremes of Apparel
The likes of Tony Blair and Jack Straw cannot rationally criticise women who wear too much when they do not take offence at those who wear too little.
Electing the Unelected
One of the enduring fixtures of American politics is that elections are largely decided by a relatively small group of "independent" voters in the centre. Or at least that's where we think they are. One of the great principles that such voters will enunciate is that they "vote for the man (and when called upon …
The Democrats and National Security: Dzerzhinskii’s Dilemma
At long last, we are entering the season where most Americans who do take interest in the November election actually take that interest. I find this botheresome but inevitable. Back in the spring I sat on a school Superintendent Selection Advisory Committee, and even with all of the rancour we had experiened over the years …
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9/11: Learning Little, Forgetting Nothing
Last year, I documented some of my encounters with a Sudanese friend of mine who was a Sunni Muslim imam. We went back and forth on a wide variety of subjects in our conversation. One day, we reserved a graduate study room in the university library and covered the waterfront on a wide variety of …
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The Sad End of Mao Dun
During my first trip to China in March 1981, I had no idea that one of the great figures of twentieth century Chinese literature was passing away: Mao Dun, the pen name for Shen Yanbing, novelist and author of Midnight, the social realist novel of Shanghai in the 1930's. Long a place of interest, going …
Positive Infinity 