Some random thoughts on a remarkable occurance There a milestone moments in our lives, events which tell us that something has changed. Barack Obama ran his campaign on change, but most of…
Thoughts on Joe the Plumber and Who We Are There is something downright anachronistic about “Joe, the Plumber.” The Republicans jumped on Joe and made him an icon for the…
I have always had an odd fascination with the Japanese. The story goes in my family that when I was a baby I looked very “Asian.” My mother said that…
No introduction of Sen. John McCain, it seems, comes un-preambled without the obligatory benediction of his “heroic service” in Vietnam. Should there be an exception we may be assured that…
I got out my DVD of Meet John Doe after watching the “debate” between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin. In the 1941 Frank Capra film a cynical newspaper reporter (Barbara Stanwyck) creates…
“Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.” [from John Frankenheimer’s The Manchurian Candidate, 1962 There are a lot of reasons not to…
I have poked some fun at Da Vinci’s Last Supper over the years, depicting it like a scene from Barry Levinson’s 1983 film, Diner, in which a bunch of guys…
DCJ’s Asian Bureau Chief, Ba Feng Gu, who is fluent in Vietnamese, spoke with former North Vietnamese Prison Guard (and now proprietor of Cao’s Oodles of Noodles Diner in Hanoi)…
The “dismal science” is producing some real doomsayers these days. Doomsayer-ness is, of course, directly proportional to the amount of personal income (including stock options, executive jets and golden parachutes…
The staff a DCJ recently conducted a survey. While all agreed that there is a good chance John McCain will dump Sarah Palin as his VP (for his “October Surprise”),…