Filthy Lucre

Today was a big day for Michael.  He graduated from the 8th grade, which makes me feel very old.  I can still actively recall my own middle school graduation.  It’s scary how fast life starts to fly by.  I’m not really ready to accept the whole circle of life idea.
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Dr. Words defines Karma in part as “the theory of inevitable consequence”.  But last week in a red carpet interview, Sharon Stone wondered out loud if the earth quake that devastated China is karma.  She also thought it to be an interesting revelation that followers of the Dalai Lama wanted to help the Chinese people who are suffering.  [Read more →]

Katrina Gill, a thirty-six year old nursing aid from Portland Oregon works the graveyard shift; taking care of twenty-eight elderly patients for nine dollars thirty-two cents an hour.  Katrina does not receive health insurance from her employer.  As a result, Katrina and her working husband pay a six-hundred-forty dollar a month insurance premium and have still managed to accumulate one-hundred-sixty-thousand dollars in medical debt for their son’s cancer treatment (BusinessWeek, 2004).  [Read more →]

Hillary Clinton is not an honest woman.  But no one can accuse her of being a flip-flopper.  Okay, maybe she flip-fops on issues like Iraq by voting for the war, voting to not fund the war, disagreeing with the war she voted for, but never admitting she made a bad vote.  And maybe she flip-flopped on the whole Florida and Michigan thing when she said they didn’t count, then we should count every vote.  Of course counting every vote doesn’t include caucus states, at least in Clinton math.  But she will not flip-flop on conceding….maybe. [Read more →]

For months my girlfriend has been bugging me about Torchwood.  At least twice a week I had to hear pleas for me to watch the BBC show so that we could talk about.  This coming from someone who doesn’t even watch The Office.  But I finally gave in when I saw that Apple had finally brought Torchwood to iTunes.  [Read more →]

On August 1, 1966, Charles Whitman a student from the University of Texas and a United States Marine, already having killed his own mother and wife, opened a random assassination attack from the top of the 307-foot, Texas Tower, killing fourteen people and injuring dozens of others (The Crime Library, 2007). For almost 41 years, Charles Whitman held the record for campus killings (Thomas, 2007), until April 16, 2007, when a crazed gunman relinquished one of the most deadly attacks on a college campus. With a 9mm semiautomatic and a .22-caliber handgun, Cho Seung-Hui, a student at Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg Virginia, opened fired, killing two students in the West Ambler Johnson Hall and about two hours later in the Norris Hall building killed 30 more students and faculty members before turning the gun on himself (Shapira & Jackman, 2007). [Read more →]

The Huffington Post is reporting on  the results of a recent Gallup Poll survey showing that 67% of all Americans agree with the idea of the president meeting with heads of foreign countries, even if they are considered to be our enemy.  The survey shows that Democrats and Independents are more likely to agree, but even 48% of Republicans believe in the idea of diplomacy. [Read more →]

Following up to the post about Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, here is another post about Roman history.  This time from Elizabeth Rathgeber, who also wrote the post What to do about Sudan?.

I believe that Augustus and Niccoló Machiavelli would certainly agree much more so than disagree on how to be an effective ruler. The young Augustus seems to be an excellent example of a ruler whose actions agree with Machiavelli’s guidelines enunciated in The Prince. Machiavelli’s education included studying the “classics”, so it is not hard to make the connection that he was probably influenced by reading Suetonius’ account of the life of Imperator Caesar Augustus. [Read more →]

I have grown tired of the traditional About page with mini-bios of people. They always have the same format, especially in business. They mention where they went to school, whatever accomplishments (often exaggerated) they can lay claim to, and of course a list of companies they worked for. Maybe they’ll try to work in if they’re married and have kids, just to seem more personable. Then they usually try to wrap it up with some sort of self-grandising quote. I’m 100% guilty of all these things myself. [Read more →]

Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus was a Roman politician who became plebeian tribune during the 2nd century BC.  Gracchus caused quite a bit of turmoil during his time.  Born in 168 BC, Gracchus died in 133 BC at the hands of the more conservative Roman Senate.  Below is a first person narrative written by Naaman Abreu.  Naaman has given me permission to publish this on my blog for all you Roman history lovers to enjoy.  [Read more →]