The Middle East is in utter chaos, gasoline is over $4/gallon, unemployment rate still at 9% (true rate closer to 20%), US is $14 trillion in debt, Japan faces an overwhelming humanitarian crisis following the record earthquake and resulting tsunami, and now with 4 of the 6 nuclear reactors at Japan’s Fukushima site in various…

Hombre – a solid western starring Paul Newman. He plays John Russell, a white man raised by the Apache since childhood on a reservation. The plot is fairly simple, Russell escorts a group of people on a coach wagon to another town and in the process they are held up by bandits. This film does…

US Debt as of Feb. 28, 2011 at 7:49 AM EST.

The Federal Reserve is a wholly illegal and unconstitutional enterprise. It is used by the global cabal of financiers to extract trillions from the US economy for these robber barons! Right now the Fed is pumping trillions of dollars into the economy, driving up inflation, raising interest rates and further devaluing the US dollar which…

    Just listened to the radio segment “Sunset of the West” on the NPR radio program   The Brian Lehrer Show.   Author Dambisa Moyo argues that through short-sightedness and folly the West has  contributed to its decline.   Some thoughts: For Western style democracy to work it needs a majority of the people…

This is a great Western. It portrays the showdown between US Marshal Wyatt Earp, his brothers and friend Dr. John ‘Doc’ Holliday against cattle rustler Ike Clanton and his men in Tombstone, Arizona. Stand out performances by Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster in the leads. Also features appearances by a very young Dennis Hopper and…

This remake of the classic version from 1972 with Charles Bronson had some things right, but overall it really falls short of even competing with the original, let alone besting it. The 1982 film had a sort of detached coolness and a more visceral grittiness. These were professionals who did not get emotionally involved with…

This is another thing that irks me. Why did they eliminate Lincoln and Washington’s days? These were extraordinary men who deserve special recognition. To lump them in with all the presidents in one day is a disgrace!

This study is fascinating. The research doesn’t surprise me. “…people primed to think of themselves as well-off were worse at reading other people’s emotions than people primed to think of themselves as poor.” This is so true, in my limited empirical experience, and there is something going on in the pysche were people with power…