Doubt the Experts

In a  review  of the late poet John Berryman, August Kleinzahler says: For what seemed a lengthy spell, from the late 1950s well into the 1...

Politics is a topic that I'd rather not think about, but we're entering the in-your-face phase of the 2016 U.S. elections and I woul...

The truth is that the evolution (or if you like the degeneration) from Cezanne to Warhol was inevitable from the moment that royal, aristocr...

But the effect of her being on those around her was incalculably diffusive, for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhisto...

For me, one of the most memorable passages in literature is The Grand Inquisitor section of The Brothers Karamazov . Fyodor Dostoevsky is no...

One of the few challenges to feeding hummingbirds is keeping ants out of the feeder. Downy woodpeckers also like the nectar, but they don...

If you follow American news, you will have noticed the popularity of the word "evil" among politicians. George W. Bush liked to us...

We watch many films in the course of evening entertainment. Most of them are so unmemorable that I don't bother to write about them. Yes...

The main purpose of this blog is to articulate various observations and ideas that I've developed over a period of time. Besides the fac...

Although I generally have no interest in legal proceedings and find lawyers, including most politicians, slightly repugnant, major criminal ...

Last year I discussed an unpleasant episode that I had with Wikipedia. Out of curiosity I have been checking from time to time on the Wikipe...

If you have read many of my posts you will have noticed that I don't have much to say about current events. However, I came across  this...

One of the things that I've noticed for a long time is how people deal with their instincts. This is a complex topic that I can hardly e...

Click  here  for The Untouched .

When I was growing up I was not particularly well adjusted academically. Unlike some of my friends, whose parents closely monitored their pr...

I am watching with interest public reactions to the one-hundredth anniversary of the Armenian genocide. Starting on April 24, 1915, hundreds...

I've returned from another trip to Missouri, which perhaps will be my last. This time was more madcap than usual, with an assortment of ...

I have always had a somewhat anti-authoritarian, divergent way of thinking about a variety of subjects. In graduate school I was chastised b...

It is not that the modern scientist takes a position from the start that there are no supernatural persons. This happens to be my view, but ...

One of the few worthwhile concepts to be popularized by Carl Jung was that of introversion. I had never thought about it much, but in 1985 w...

Upon request, I'm writing about racism in the U.S. This isn't a natural topic for me, since I'm a WASP living in one of the whit...