"I can win an argument on any topic, against any opponent. People know this, and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as a sign of their great respect, they don't even invite me." — Dave Barry
People
Can “The World’s Richest Useful Idiot” End Poverty Worldwide?
"Do not be fooled into believing that because a man is rich he is necessarily smart. There is ample proof to the contrary." — Julius Rosenwald
Van Damme Cinema: Meaningless, Silly, Senseless . . . in a Word, Priceless!
The young crime-fiction aficionado Patrick Ohl writes: I have a confession to make. I love action movies, especially all those movies from the 80s and 90s starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, or any one of their rivals with the general exception of Steven Seagal. Dumb and derivative they may be, but I have plenty of fun watching the creative action, well-choreographed fights, and terrible acting. But above all, my guiltiest pleasures are watching Jean-Claude Van Damme movies.
I cannot explain this love of mine in any rational terms. Van Damme was at one point in his career considered Arnold Schwarzenegger without the price tag— like Arnold, he was consistently passed off as an American despite the heavily accented English, and his acting was almost always laughably bad. That being said, there are many minor gems in Van Damme’s career.
Simon Cowell for President!
OK, that's a tongue-in-cheek suggestion. For one thing, he’s not a U.S. citizen. But attorney and legal and constitutional analyst Maureen Martin is convinced we need a presidential candidate with the “X Factor” Simon Cowell promotes and embodies.
A Master of Mystery Passes—Au Revoir, Reginald Hill
Reginald Hill, author of the Peter Pascoe and Andy Dalziel mystery series, passed away recently at the age of 75. He was truly one of the greatest mystery writers of the past several decades.
Although Hill preferred to be called a “crime writer,” his roots in traditional mysteries are evident. Even so, his books are unique to the genre. While the protagonists are members of the Yorkshire police, their novels are not police procedurals. Like Christie, Hill could deftly place a clue where it would be seen, allowing the reader to continue without realizing its importance. . . .
Hemingway in Perspective
That Hemingway could be a cruel and callous man is well-documented, while several biographical works unconvincingly veer toward hagiographic. Seldom, however, do these works pierce the veil of celebrity and downright iconography of the public persona to reveal the foibles and positive attributes of the man who possessed a plenitude of both.
Penn State Scandal Exposes Unseemly Media Motives
The Penn State University football scandal has been ugly in a variety of ways, but not all of them are immediately obvious. In particular, the mainstream press, so proud of its progressive views on most moral matters, showed the puritanical streak they always reveal when a person widely believed to be of good moral character can be knocked down and branded a hypocrite. The media coverage in this case displayed the classic American journalism tactic of conveying salacious stories under cover of moral indignation. This was obvious in the rush to make Penn State football coach Joe Paterno the center of the story.
The Value of a ‘Buck’
Buck Brannaman, the subject of Buck, is one of the most famous proponents of what might be called the “new school” of horse training, an approach that concentrates on understanding the horse's fears, calming those fears, earning the animal's trust, and then becoming its thoughtful master. Buck seems to be able to take all but the most damaged animals, and fairly quickly to gentle them and get them doing what he wants them to do. I was half prepared for a lot of new-agey, PETA-style sentimentality and romanticism in the the film's treatment of horses. I'm happy to report that there's none of that here.
Apple’s Jobs Soured on Obama
The late Apple CEO Steve Jobs evidently supported Barack Obama's rise to the presidency but soured on him when he saw what Obama did during his first couple of years when the new president had a majority in both houses of Congress and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate—meaning when Obama was as Obama-y as an Obama can be:
Steve Jobs, American Dreamer
By Ben Domenech The career of Steve Jobs exemplifies the American dream. It is jarring that death strikes Jobs at a point so young – at 56, he barely had half the professional years of Edison, Ford, and Carnegie, who all died in their eighties. It means the world will miss out on the latter days of career, whether he would’ve stretched out for more incredible goals, or turned to more philanthropic pursuits. In his time, he touched so many areas of cultural life, not just through consumer products, his effect on communication and education, but also the creation of some of the best films of the past decade. So much work in such a compressed period of time. In the beginning, he seemed so young. And at the end, he seemed old beyond his years. Jobs was and will remain a cult-like figure, the confrontational counterculturalist, the turtlenecked Buddhist who lived in empty mansions. His products bore his imprint in incredible ways—the original iPods had volume and gain problems almost entirely due to Jobs’ personal hearing loss – and his ruthless expectation for perfection in design is evident – that things should not just look beautiful, but work beautifully.
Parents Make Millions for Not Having an Abortion (But It’s Not What You Might Think)
A jury in Florida didn’t think Bryan Santana was worth $9 million, as his parents figured, but half that much: On September 9, a West Palm Beach jury awarded parents Rodolfo Santana and Ana Mejia $4.5 million because they did not get accurate information from Dr. Marie Morel and OB/GYN Specialists of the Palm Beaches. Their son Bryan Santana, now age 3, was born disabled. He has no arms and only one leg. The argument made by his parents was that if the clinic had told them their son was so disabled, they would have aborted him. And since they didn’t get a chance to terminate Bryan in the womb, and obviously they can’t legally do it now, they wanted millions of dollars. — Paul Cooper Apparently, being imperfect justifies abortion in many people’s eyes: In the UK there are limits on when you can abort a baby unless that baby has severe disabilities. The UK law does not define those disabilities but allows abortion up until the moment of birth if the child is disabled. Why? Obviously the message is that a child with disabilities has less value or reason to live. . . . . In America, 90%
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