The Shape of Things Money is starting to flow in response to an increased perception of vulnerability in the nation’s mass transit system. The additional resources will create an intelligent network that will permit unprecedented monitoring of activity in the New York subway system. There are already 5,700 cameras in place, but they are old […]

Bumper Stickers The bumper-stickers around town are entertaining to read, since there is little else to do when stuck in the gridlock. The Kerry people have defiantly kept theirs, and some ask about a village that is missing its idiot. There are admonitions for both World Peace and Whirled Peas, smug ones from the Victors, […]

Business Travel It has been a long time since I had to arrange a group trip. More than a decade, I think. The last big intercontinental goat-rope in which I got to ride was one that included Tokyo , Shanghai , Seoul , Honolulu and Anchorage . I knew that one was my last, unless […]

Wherever You Go The people who are working this week, at least the ones who are writing about it, seem a little querulous. Maureen Dowd is back from book-leave in the pages of the Times, and she is right back in her waspish prime, stinging the President and his father for their predilection for taking […]

It is supposed to rain today, so there will be no time by the pool. That makes this a propitious time to analyze the appointment of some new officials to the FBI’s new National Security Branch, which appears to be Domestic Security Light. The Bureau has been fighting the establishment of an institution like Britain’s […]

Crank Marty II was crying as she talked on the phone when I wandered out into the heat and across the concrete of the pool deck. Loren was listening impassively to the news, which had just arrived via a distinctive ring-tone from a residence in New Jersey about a death in Texas . The sun […]

Gang of Four I’m not superstitious and I do not talk to the dead, even if they do seem a bit restive. This is the season of the ending of a great horror a long time ago, and there are those who do talk to those that died, and their voices still rise, strident for […]

LBFMs The Perseid Meteor Shower made the top of the list in my little black notebook, clouds permitting. I wanted to get up early and watch them streak across the Arlington sky. The dry-cleaning made the list, and the arrangements for the trips I need to make for new Jersey and the place out west. […]

Cotton is High A third of the way through the last, best month of summer. If we grew cotton here, it would be high. It isn’t some places. The draught is on some of the land and down south the wet is stripping the soil away. These are crazy times, and sometimes I feel I […]

Night Trippers Dr. John was laid to rest under a star in Juba this morning. The city is the capital of South Sudan , and the good Doctor’s troops never quite managed to capture it in his 21 year struggle. But now it seems as though he has, in a way, lying under the star […]