Category: DailySocotra

Pitchforks and Torches

(Crowd leaving the Hoffman 22 Cineplex in Alexandria yesterday after watching the documentary “Inside Job.”) I was going to share a couple really good pre-Superbowl recipes with you this morning. I have a nice comfortable story in the can so I can go to the Car Show down at the Convention Center this morning and […]

What the Postman Brings

What the Postman Brings (Gladys Horton as a teen. Photo Getty Images.)   I would rather think about the musical legacy of Gladys Horton, the lead singer of the Marvelettes who charted the first of the MoTown hits when I was just beginning to think about things beyond my grade school, and who made Detroit […]

Vertigo

I have had something for a month or so, sudden nagging bouts of vertigo. If I move too rapidly, or hang my head at an awkward angle, the dizziness rises and I have to clutch something solid to get my bearings back. I suspect a minor inner ear infection or something, but it has not […]

State of the Onion

You have to peel back the onion carefully on this mess we are in. I was hoping to get some insight into it last night, and got only a glimmer. There are great currents running in the public life, on broadcast and simmering on the web. One of my professional groups in cyberland is melting […]

Last Dance at Culebra Cut

(Segment of Grand Dad’s Trans-Isthmian Duplex Cable, circa AD 1914. Photo Socotra.)   “We could Hold Panama City for fourty-eight hours” (Torrijos) told me. “As for the Canal, it is easy to sabotage. Blow a hole in the Gatun Dam and the Canal will drain into the Atlantic. It will only take a few days […]

The Air Campaign

(The star of DESERT STORM- the F-117 NIGHT HAWK.) The flag that flew in the chill winter breeze from the balcony at Big Pink had flown on the roof of the Capitol on Kuwait Day, 1991, the deadline President Bush set for Saddam to take his legions home. It is a little faded, since I […]

The Battle of Triangle Hill

(DVD cover for the epic film Battle on Shangganling Mountain. Photo YesAsia.) If anyone thought this whole rising China thing was going to be easy, or fair, let’s just disabuse ourselves of the notion. The arrogance of Imperial Britain, and later followed by the less-structured and well-intentioned international meddling of the Americans, is going to […]

What You See

(Wind Farm in the Pacific Ocean. Photo LA Times.) The conventional wisdom about what is going on in the wide world continues to chug along. I was going to talk about Adrian Lamo this morning, the third individual who played a major role in the WikiLeaks carnival. Young Adrian has been called a “snitch, a […]

Third Thursday

It was Third Thursday yesterday, and the weather was supposed to be bad. The reports were ominous all day. I looked at the schedule on the computer. The monthly soiree at the Capital City Brewery had died a natural death last summer. We picked the venue back when the Pentagon was still central to our […]

Two Thoughts

I have an eight o’clock in town and left my car at the office for reasons I will either get to, or not, later. I forgot about the meeting until an icy thought pierced me a couple minutes ago like a cold shock to my adrenal system. Accordingly, I have no time to think. I […]