Although I was initially opposed to the idea, my wife recently decided to buy a Nintendo Wii game system for our 9 year-old daughter and 6 year-old son.  Like many school-age children, our two kids already seem to have more sports classes, academic classes outside of school, and play dates than they have time to...
When I was young, before everything was made from synthetics, we heard stories; stories about undomesticated tires living in the woods near the highway. We had seen them ourselves resting in muddy sties and dangling like monkeys in trees. According to legend, rubber is alive. As old cars roll down the road they deposit...
When it comes to America and its often fraught relationship with what may be its greatest art form, Roger Ebert is heard everywhere; but, ironically and unfortunately, he has proved to have remarkably little to say.
American-born auteur filmmaker, playwright, and philosopher Woody Allen is at the Cannes Film Festival this week, promoting his new film and offering up a variety of opinions ranging from criminology to political theory. In an interview with the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia, for example, Allen showered U.S. President Barack Obama with effusive praise, calling him “brilliant” and “cool.”...
1936 classic sci-fi film, with screenplay by H.G. Wells. It’s Christmas 1940 and the people of Everytown, unprepared and ill-equipped, find themselves at war against an enemy who has been planning such a conflict for years. The land is devastated by the horrors of aerial bombardment as the war drags on for thirty years,...
One indicator of how far statism has progressed in American society and culture is the tendency to view everything through a political lens. Feminists used to argue that “the personal is the political,†and this attitude has become commonplace on both sides of the political spectrum. A recent essay by Slate columnist Dennis Lim...
I’m not kidding. I think that’s a very positive title. Senario, known to enthusiasts as the distributor of Pleo the baby dinosaur, is rolling out a new remote controlled robot with a price tag of about $10. This is interesting. Think about DARPA’s strategy for ubiquitous robotics. It needs a broad range of developments...
I find the song In Some Room Above the Street, especially as sung in the inimitable vibrato of the late country singer Gary Stewart, to have an extraordinary emotional power. Part of the reason for the song’s power is that it ends on an unexpectedly poignant note. The song begins by telling of a...
With the moral foundation of an Enron executive, he sells snake oil packaged as solutions. He appears to listen to peoples problems, but what he really hears is cha-ching. That’s the sound a man’s head makes when you sucker punch him on national television. All this is delivered with an endearing hint of Texas...
The death of Michael Jackson and the ensuing struggle between those that want to deify him and those that  pardon the pun  want to bury him for his alleged crimes, opens the door for a much needed discussion about child molestation. Full disclosure: not a fan. A visually compelling artist perhaps, with...
Over the last two decades, some amazing things have happened in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). Governments have been pouring money into AI and robotics, yielding meaningful progress. Some powerful AI systems have gone commercial; others are on the brink. But these accomplishments are sometimes being overshadowed by commentary on robot emotions, robot...
Review: “Astral Weeks: Live at the Hollywood Bowl,†Van Morrison March 2, 2009 Me and “Astral Weeks†go way back… 1968… high school. The title track and “Madame George†enjoyed daily rotation on heavy underground FM radio station WNEW. I went out and bought the LP and after going through two vinyl copies before...
Author’s note: Previously published in “The Hatchet: Lizzie Borden’s Journal of Murder, Mystery, and Victorian History.†Denise Noe’s Lizzie Whittlings: Elizabeth Montgomery Actress Elizabeth Montgomery won a permanent place in the hearts of Borden buffs when she took on the part of Lizzie Borden in the made-for-TV movie, The Legend of Lizzie Borden. For...
Those who demand tolerance from traditional America reveal themselves to be wholly intolerant of any opposing viewpoint. And as they hysterically decry as “hate†even the mildest form of disapproval on the grounds that it supposedly denies them their “right†to engage in every form of aberrant activity, it is they who employ hostile...
Fathers Are Mere Tenants The manhood brand is dead, kaput, and that is no accident. Men, who built the legal and physical infrastructure of this country from scratch, have, over the past 36 years, chosen to allow women to marginalize and overshadow them. It’s as though the entire history of men was written on...
Failing Institution Marriage is a failing institution. There are some basic factors driving this failure — judicial and societal — but the bottom line is indisputable: For the first time in US history, across all ethnic groups, the majority of women are unmarried and 40% of babies are born to unwed mothers. The judicial...
She’ll Hit Again Oprah Winfrey is increasing domestic violence in America. By being Harpo — remaining silent — on the truth about violent women, she unwittingly perpetuates the problem.? Repeatedly excusing women’s culpability and unfairly blaming men only serves to foment this pernicious societal scourge. On March 19, 2009, Oprah aired an anti-male show...
Obsession with Carats Nothing speaks subjugation like a man on bended knee, sliding a diamond engagement ring on the finger of his new fiancée. Yet, countless men engage in this emasculating, enslaving ritual every day. When asked why he felt compelled to prostrate himself while pledging to his “better half” a life of devotion,...
Nancy Cartwright, who is a long time member of the Church of Scientology, has created a recording using her voice of Bart Simpson. The message surfaced early Wednesday morning on YouTube. During the message, Nancy states that “This is a special message” and announces an upcoming event for Scientology at the Hollywood and Highland...
When the movie “First Wives Club” came out in the fall of 1996, the men’s movement had never done a multi-city protest. The internet was new and the possibilities endless. Within 10 days a 25-city protest was organized that recieved a historic quantity of national attention. Our point was not to urge a boycott...
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