The Fragile Heart In the darkness, the light from the clock-radio was baleful. It was shortly after four; the kids in the party house across the street were probably just getting to their beds. We only exist briefly in the same space-time continuum, and I am only aware of them in the few weeks that […]

Thank God we got through the 13th without significant damage. Now that I have to keep track of all the Muslim holidays and mark the lunar cycle of the Month of Ramadan, there is a lot to juggle in terms of portents and mysteries. They say at the end of the Empire of Rome there […]

The Nobel Committee threw a grenade and took a swipe at the world leadership. It was a strange year for the Wizards of Stockholm, you have to say. The prize for peace went to a micro-economist, and the prize for literature went to a Turk who threw his own grenade over the Armenian genocide. Maybe […]

Poking Snakes I have not been having a good week. I was in Baltimore, for one, and although the Charm City has its attractions, the hotel chain where I stay at the Inner Harbor has sealed the windows and banned smoking inside the building. A smoker’s area near the front door, only a quarter mile […]

Autographed Basketballs That’s it. I have had it. The last straw cam in the press brief on Monday. The Administration ran out press Secretary Tony Snow and blasted the Clinton Administration and my iconic favorite government official, Bill Richardson, for the renegade Korean nuclear program. Snow stood behind that podium and patronized Mr. Clinton’s policy […]

We are all wringing our hands about the pesky North Koreans this morning, which is a favorable change from wringing our hands over pesky Congressmen pedophiles. The truth about the Korean blast will not be known to the public for a while. The test appears to be smaller than one would expect from these things, […]

Revolt of the Elephants There is a continuing saga from Africa, one that the folks who run the eco-tourism business are uncomfortable with. The elephants appear to be rallying for the last stand of their species. The social fabric is shredding. Years of assault by poachers and encroachment by humans appears to be driving them […]

Greatest Living Tiger Al Kaline is the greatest living Tiger. I make that bald assertion calmly and without bombast. It is simply true. Al’s position in the Hall of Fame at Cooperstown is secure, along with his non-steroid enhanced statistics: I twenty-two seasons, he was both the youngest and older player in the American league. […]

I was talking to the Queen of the Dead yesterday over at her Headquarters, just downhill from the Capitol. To get to her, I did not have to take a barge up the Styx, or the Potomac. I just walked past the television monitors in the heroic lobby where the images of the horse-drawn buggies […]

Multi-path We had an extended meeting in the Pentagon yesterday about multi-path communications. We were in the little cafeteria off the Third Corridor on the second floor. We were there because a zealous contract security officer was on the prowl in the office we were supposed to visit, and word was that my associate’s laptop […]