Where do you begin when the injustice and hypocrisy of America is so blatant that you want to puke? What’s new or original to be said about a country that…
In an earlier essay I (half) joked that American tourists to Paris often return home—usually to some very un–Paris-like town in the American “heartland” of Iowa or Missouri—grousing and grumbling…
[Slightly revised No. 23.3] The day after Halloween, in the Roman Catholic Church, is “All Saints Day.” This is a good day to pray to the patron saint for bellyaches…
[No. 44. 7: Revised and Expanded] Recently, my cousin sent to me a link to a website that had been sent to her by a friend who, in recommending it’s…
There were seven screenwriters on Casablanca. Chances are that at least one of them had a romantic experience in Paris that resulted in Bogart’s doleful line to Bergman that “we…
Making a case for a politically independent Hong Kong might seem, at first blush, to contradict geography, ethnicity, and culture—although it is the last of these, that is not determined…
For an urbanist such as myself the prospect of observing, in 1997, the “handover” of sovereignty of a major world city from one country to another was an unusual opportunity. …
In just a little over two years we will be choosing a new president and, since this is America, we have already begun the campaign process. I am not announcing…
Watching Hamas and the IDF go at it in the land that is called “holy” by both sides, but would more aptly be called The Bloody Land, has a tedious…
“Atheism will always be a harder sell than religion, Pascal Boyer explains, because a slew of cognitive traits predispose us to faith.” Boyer is the author of “Being human: Religion:…