Filthy Lucre

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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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I can clearly remember being 12 years old and waiting in line for hours to see Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.  Now 24 years later I got to bring my son.  Fortunately no real line this time.  Much like the feeling I got when I took him to see The Phantom Menace, it […]

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Having spent my college summers working at Disneyland, as well as being a parent, I have first hand knowledge of the Disney merchandising machine. We were told in Disney U, the week long training program every Disneyland employee goes through, that the very appearance of Mickey Mouse on a t-shirt increases the value by […]

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The 80’s will never be known as television’s finest hour.  Sure there were some legendary shows like The Cosby Show, Night Court, and my favorite 80’s show Sledge Hammer.  But those were sitcoms.  I think the real evil of 80’s TV lay in the crappy hour long shows.

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Just a couple of years ago it seemed like all I ever watched on television was HBO and 24.  With shows like Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, Rome and The Wire, HBO seemed to elevate television into something much higher quality. 

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After spending over a decade as a foreign corespondent for National Public Radio, Eric Weiner took on the task of finding out where people are happiest, and more importantly, why.  So Eric spent months studying the people in 10 different countries of varying degrees of happiness.  The end results is an incredibly interesting book not […]

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Mickey Rourke has always admired Marlon Brando.  And they seem to have a few things in common; Brando and Rourke were/are notoriously difficult to work with, both had an interest in sexually controversial films, and they are both known for being more famous for being who they were than they were for their acting.  Brando […]

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I watch two political shows daily.  The first of course is The Daily Show with John Stewart, where I find the coverage to be more fair and balanced than Fox News.  And I watch Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC.  Olbermann, for those who do not know, is a liberal nightmare for the Bush administration, […]

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