I am not a golfer, and I would never have known, if the Washington Post had not enlightened me, that there was such a thing as an anchored putter, or that it is on the verge of being banned. That... Continue reading

Studies show that fish have gradually, over the past several decades, shifted their ranges toward the earth's poles. We are, or should be, fairly accustomed by now to stories like this. It's known that birds, and even plant life zones, are gradually moving north too. Polar bears are threatened. Ice is disappearing from polar zones and from the tops of mountains. And on, and on. Still, deniers of this clear trend still exist, and by and large, governments are doing little to avert what could be a global disaster. When I was young, my parents and many others, I believe,... Continue reading

This week's New Yorker carried an interesting portrait/interview of Colorado Governor Hickenlooper, a Democrat who started in office with a typical red-state stance that he has since moderated, saying that over time he has changed his mind and come to... Continue reading

A smallish community in Virginia agreed to bury the dead Boston Marathon terrorist Tamerlan Tsarnaev. As far as I'm concerned, that's a good outcome. Whatever the motives, the officials of this cemetery stepped up to do the necessary and the... Continue reading

As Nero is said to have fiddled while Rome burned, the Republican Party, too divided within itself to formulate any realistic or constructive policy alternatives to Obama administration initiatives, continues to rely on political games to ensure nothing gets done... Continue reading

My wife and I walk for exercise most mornings. If we are running a little late, we run into the dogwalkers, who tend to emerge about 7 AM. In our area we have a fairly strict leash law which, fortunately for those of us who don't have pooches, is almost universally observed. So it's not at all unusual to happen by when the owner is bending over with his/her little plastic bag while the dog stands nearby, waiting patiently to continue the walk. I've always thought the dogs must be wondering, "Jeez, what do they WANT with that stuff?" or... Continue reading

Yesterday we learned that the owners of a Washington, DC media empire crowned by WJLA TV, the national capital's ABC affiliate, have put almost all of it up for sale. The stated reason is that viewers of television news (and... Continue reading

I've mentioned the planned Eisenhower Memorial before ... its original design, by Frank Gehry, seemed a little flukey, but on the other hand, too many of our public monuments seem to become paeans to the artistic values of the last century -- to wit, the ruin of the original clean design of the Vietnam War memorial, the WW II memorial, the clunky Martin Luther King memorial -- while this one did have some promise of standing out from the crowd. It also drew complaints from the Eisenhower family, but I tend to believe the family should be invited to butt... Continue reading

Ex-Marine Thomas Gibbons-Neff's memoir in the weekend Washington Post editions, entitled "I could justify fighting in Afghanistan - until Boston" voices the concern of one of our fighting men that the Boston bombing means that the war he was waging... Continue reading

An interesting study by the Economic Policy Institute suggests that the much-ballyhooed shortage in the U.S. of workers with degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math (=STEM) just doesn't exist. Where a shortage should imply rising salaries, the study found... Continue reading

Looking back on the Boston Marathon bombings less than a week ago, there are many candidates for praise: The people of Boston themselves reacted with aplomb; local and national police and counterterrorism officials should get an A+ for their efforts,... Continue reading

I'd become used to seeing pro golfer Phil Mickelson on television promoting his favorite prescription drug (it's Enbrel, I think - but I'm not sure what it does). In my mind, he had become notable mostly for being able to pronounce the phrase "I've been in your shoes" so woodenly that you would suppose he actually HAD been in them. But this week something new caught my eye. What's that on his cap? Hmm, a logo - KPMG! A consulting company, as I understand it. But wait, there's something different on his shirt ... "Barclay's," it says - presumably the... Continue reading

At least two commentators chose today, just two days after the Boston Marathon explosions, to spotlight that official Washington has "moved on" from being transfixed by that disaster. In "Washington Moves On," Dana Milbank seems to bemoan this observation by... Continue reading

I was facing writer's block today when the following information turned up in an e-mail I saw: The number of auto accident deaths in the US for the most recent year available (2003) was 42,844. Gun deaths in 2004 were... Continue reading

Some people continue to argue that oral arguments and deliberations of the Supreme Court ought to be televised. In a word, no. It's a terrible idea. Despite the fervent arguments of telecasters that "the people have a right to know,"... Continue reading

How much can/should military veterans affect a state's legislation on gun control? Should they have any special influence? Do they have any special expertise? Maryland is currently in the process of considering some strong gun control measures, and I found... Continue reading

We've all heard the tales of slogans and brand names that have been trotted out only to fall flat, or even to have negative connotations. The classic, probably, is the Chevy Nova - as I heard it, the car had actually been marketed in Spanish-speaking countries before somebody discovered "No Va" in Spanish means "it doesn't go." Maybe this tale is apocryphal, because presumably, "nova" in Spanish also has the same astronomical meaning as it does in English. (Hmm... but doesn't a nova kind of flare across the sky briefly and then peter out? Even in English, an ill-fated name... Continue reading

To summarize my last post: the compact disc is obsolete technology, I'm moving all my music online, but it's discouraging to think about all the times I've had to do this. The other reason I hesitate with the task is the sheer labor of it. I recall just a couple of years ago when I got energized to preserve a lifetime of photographs in digital form. Energized for a month or two, until I realized that each of several thousand photos would require about three minutes or longer to scan, tweak, and store -- and working with old negatives or... Continue reading

The latest news from the NRA really speaks for itself, but I couldn't resist highlighting it here. The organization's big gun Wayne LaPierre complains that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is trying to "impose his will on the American public,"... Continue reading

Much as I approve of the possibility that immigration reform might move us away from "the family plan" where visas are concerned, there are a number of other provisions under discussion that reflect an old-think mentality that might leave us... Continue reading

I recently began the process of digitizing my CD collection. Music stored as electrons is the future. The compact disc is already outmoded, a fact that was brought home to me lately by touring the Washington DC car show last month -- many cars, especially those with a younger demographic, don't offer a CD slot any longer. I approach the task with reluctance, because I've already made this "tech-tonic" shift several times in my lifetime. LP records were the only medium for buying music in my high school and college days, but even then their problems were legion: too easy... Continue reading

President Obama has withdrawn the nomination of Caitlin Halligan to the U.S. Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia circuit -- at her request, after a long wait of two years, and two Republican filibusters. It seems simple enough.... Continue reading

Despite the apparent laser-like focus on extreme conservative dogma at the recent CPAC session, it's interesting that some signs of bipartisan compromise are in the air. For example, there may be some attempt this week to keep the government running,... Continue reading

ABC-TV recently did a little "expose" on use and misuse of the Carfax service, which provides automated information about a used car's history. I was shocked, shocked I tell you (NOT) to learn that (a) Carfax doesn't necessarily include everything about a car's history and (b) that dealers presenting potential buyers with a Carfax report are likely to exaggerate its comprehensiveness. As with all such efforts to corral information on the internet, the consumer just has to be aware of the limitations of the medium. Carfax officials point out that they can only record the information that comes to their... Continue reading

Senator Rob Portman of Ohio has announced that he favors same-sex marriage. He didn't always have that view, in fact until recently he was firmly on the opposite side of the fence. So this is one of those moments ...... Continue reading