Greene’s The Tenth Man
Graham Greene could have been talking about today’s political pundits with this line from The Tenth Man: “She was like an old weatherworn emblem of wisdom – something you find…
The Iowa Legislature – Big Government Job Killers
The activist Iowa state legislature – aka job killers – has created a new level of bureaucracy by inventing “agricultural production facility fraud,” which essentially deprives us of our God-given…
The Challenge of the Cheese Sandwich
It takes a good writer to make a good paragraph about a cheese sandwich. And George V. Higgins does just that in The Friends of Eddie Coyle (page 167; Picador…
Thank you, Mr. Abercrombie
It is a late notice, I know, but I wanted to mention my sadness at the passing of Ian Abercrombie, who died on January 26, 2012. He was sublime as…
Mr. Spaceship
In the short story “Mr. Spaceship,” published in 1953 in a publication called Imagination (according to my Citadel Twilight collection, Volume 1), Philip K. Dick put a human brain into…
Douse your Pizza with Pepper Spray
Fox’s Megyn Kelly classifies pepper spray as a food product. So how long before we start putting it in school lunches?
Deep within a Madding Marriage
“A good wife is good, but the best wife is not so good as no wife at all.” That statement, from Pennyways in Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd…
A few passages from The Quiet American
I finally delved into Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, and as expected, it is an awesome book. Beyond the insightful and prescient portrait of Pyle, the personal honesty of Fowler,…
The Living Structure Meme
If you want to prepare for a new and illustrious career for future, I would recommend bioengineering, since future ships and buildings will be living things. Paolo Bacigalupi’s “A Pocketful for…
In the Financial Apocalypse…
It is good to know we can shift to an Egret Economy and trade in feathers should Congress (i.e., the Republicans) decide they are tired of success and drive the…