Articles from 2021
442 articles · browse by month or scroll through the year.
-
Postscript
When Police Can't Respond, Citizens Step In
Sometimes… when the police are too busy doing other things... you have to take the law into your own hands.
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
Looking Out the Window
I sit in my writing studio, which has a view to Vista del Mar, which means “View of the Sea.” And indeed, I have a view of the sea and of this road that leads to and from it. Every so often, I lift my head…
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
How The Bikini Got Its Explosive Name
The Secret History of the Bikini According to one of the history blogs I subscribe to, the bikini was introduced on July 5, 1946, at a swimming pool in Paris, France: Created by French designer Louis Réard…
Read full post -
Worth Watching
What It’s Like to Be a Transgender Dad
Here’s a TED Talk about the difficulties of being a transgender dad. It’s given by a very likable person with a problem that can’t be solved. He wants the world to accept his “authentic self” – as a…
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
Please… Tell Us How Evil We Are!
The Biden/Harris administration is inviting the United Nations to come to the US and study our culture to let us know just how racist we are. Apparently, they are not happy with the fact that most Americans –…
Read full post -
Worth Reading
The Beginning of the Best Thing That Ever Happened
By Alexander Green Journalists labor around the clock to deliver a distorted picture of the United States. Their relentless drumbeat of negativity has convinced millions that we are a shameful and fatally…
Read full post -
Postscript
La Guardia Cross Quizzes His Daughters On Mom Knowledge
La Guardia Cross has developed a large YouTube following. Views of his show, New Father Chronicles, range from 100,000 to over a million. That’s not surprising when you see his videos. He’s got two young…
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
She’s Living My Dream… Damn It!
It was my second effort at retirement. Or was it the third? No, the second. I was going to spend my retirement as an art dealer and collector, traveling around the world and having a wonderful life. And I…
Read full post -
Postscript
Staying Updated With Suzanne Ford's Art
Interested in what Suzanne is doing? Send her your email address – to suzanne@fordfineart.com – and she will put you on her mailing list.
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
The Good, the Bad, the Whatever
GOOD: Arizona’s Ballot-Harvesting Ban Is Ruled Non-Discriminatory and Legal Arizona’s ban on out-of-district voting and ballot-harvesting doesn’t violate the federal Voting Rights Act, the Supreme Court ruled…
Read full post -
Postscript
Southwest Airlines Accused Of Racial Bias In Boarding Dispute
Is this guy being kicked off the plane because the Southwest ground operators are racist? Southwest Airlines has a history of treating its passengers like suspects. In this latest example, a Black man is…
Read full post -
From My Work-in-Progress Basket
The Ragged, Ratty, 25-Year-Old Carry-on Bag and the Human ATM
The Ragged, Ratty, 25-Year-Old Carry-on Bag and the Human ATM Bill has a billion-dollar information publishing business. His responsibilities require him to travel all over the world. For the past 25 years…
Read full post -
Postscript
The Dilution Effect: Why More Choices Confuse Consumers
I love TED Talks like this. Here’s an academician explaining a cognitive bias that is very basic knowledge for any good marketer as if it’s an amazing psychological revelation. I’m curious… Is this “dilution…
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
Steinbeck's Novel Illuminates Shakespeare's Troubled Duke
John Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent was June’s selection for The Mules, my all-male book club. I’ve always had the impression that Steinbeck is solidly ensconced in the pantheon of American novelists…
Read full post -
Worth Reading
The Winter of Our Discontent
The Winter of Our Discontent By John Steinbeck 292 pages Published in 1961 by The Viking Press Reissued in 2008 by Penguin Classics The Plot: Ethan Allen Hawley, a former member of Long Island’s Great Gatsby…
Read full post -
Postscript
Richard III
ACT I SCENE I. London. A street. Enter GLOUCESTER, solus GLOUCESTER Now is the winter of our discontent Made glorious summer by this sun of York; And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house In the deep bosom…
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
Reconnecting With Old Friends After Retirement
Business, Sports… and Defending the Apostrophe I ask GP what he’s been doing since he retired late last year. “Living the dream,” he tells me. “I walk along the beach almost every morning. Once or twice a week…
Read full post -
Postscript
Google's AI Dubbing Technology Threatens Voice Acting Jobs
This is pretty cool: Google recently announced AI-based technology that will replace the dubbing of movies into foreign languages. I don’t know how many people make a living dubbing, but I do know that many…
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
Walking With Steve
Once a week, Steve Leveen, a friend and neighbor, and I would take an early morning walk. He’s a better walker than I am. And his dog is a better walker than Steve is. So, the pace we kept was halfway between…
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
Steve's Journey From Zero To Fluent French Speaker
Walking and Talking and Speaking French After retiring from his role as co-founder (with his wife Lori) and CEO of Levenger, a company that sells wonderful products to readers, Steve got interested in learning…
Read full post -
Postscript
Jack Black's Surprisingly Practical Spanish Learning Tips
In this video, Jack Black gives you a few useful tips on learning Spanish…
Read full post -
From My Work-in-Progress Basket
Stablecoins: The Latest Buzzword in the Crypto World
Stablecoins are currencies that, like Bitcoin, exist on the blockchain and offer some of the advantages that the blockchain provides. But unlike Bitcoins, they are not issued in limited amounts. Here's how…
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
Andy Warhol's Impersonator And Performance Art Legacy
Sad and Happy Fake News in the Real Art World Allen Midgette, the man pictured below, died on June 16 at his home in Woodstock, NY. Yes, he looks a lot like Andy Warhol, who died in 1987, 34 years ago. That’s…
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
The Good, the Bad, and the Uncertain
I’m not sure why I’m sending you this. What follows are notes I took about recent news events that caught my attention. Maybe, after you read them, you’ll understand why I sent them. In case you want to know…
Read full post -
From My Work-in-Progress Basket
The Invasion of the Digital Dollar
There is indeed something that large governments like about Bitcoin. It exists on a blockchain, which means that each and every financial transaction that is made (including minor purchases) is recorded and…
Read full post -
Worth Considering
The Real “Border Problem
On Friday, more than six months after President Biden put her in charge of the “border problem,” Kamala Harris visited the US-Mexico border. (The White House announced her trip the day after Trump announced…
Read full post -
Postscript
Biden's Treasury Pick Struggles With Capital Gains Tax Basics
I don’t know what is scarier: the Biden tax proposals themselves… or the obvious fact that this woman doesn’t seem to have the faintest idea how capital gains taxation works! (It is embarrassing to watch her…
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
A Fresh Look at Aristotle’s Poetics
One of the best courses I took in college was Classical Literary Criticism, in which we read, among other things, Aristotle’s Poetics. You might think that a literary theory developed more than 2,000 years ago…
Read full post -
Worth Watching
The 12th Man (2018)
The 12th Man (2018) Available on Prime Video Directed by Harald Zwart Starring Thomas Gullestad, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, and Mads Sjogard Pettersen Set during the Nazi occupation of Norway during WWII, a team of…
Read full post -
Postscript
Prosecutor's Hidden Evidence Freed Two Wrongly Convicted Men
This guy sent two innocent people to jail for 15 years. In 2000, Richard “Rick” Jackson, then a Dallas County assistant district attorney, got convictions for two men on trial for murder: Dennis Allen and…
Read full post -
From My Work-in-Progress Basket
My Beef with “Creatives
In my business – the idea-publishing industry – some workers are valued more than others. These are the so-called “Creatives”: writers, marketers, advertising copywriters, and sometimes publishers. The reason…
Read full post -
Postscript
Chicago Mayor Declares Racism a Public Health Crisis
Crazy: Lori Lightfoot Says Racism Is a Public Health Crisis On Monday, I told you how Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, blames the city’s crumbling economy, high unemployment, and huge spike of violent crime on…
Read full post -
From My Work-in-Progress Basket
White Privilege and Black Power in the Windy City
What’s Happening to Chicago? Inflation is up. Employment is down. Storefronts are shuttered. Offices are empty. The streets are strewn with debris. And homeless people – drug addicts and the mentally…
Read full post -
Postscript
Chicago Violence Surges Over Memorial Day Weekend
This is what happened in Chicago over the Memorial Day weekend: And if you haven’t seen enough, here are two more clips that will give you a taste for Chicago 2021:
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
Dancing at Emma’s Wedding
At Emma’s wedding last month, I couldn’t dance because my knee was f-ed up. And I like to dance. I’m not a good dancer, but I have the ability to imagine myself to be one after two or three tequilas. I took…
Read full post -
Worth Considering
Never Too Old to Dance
At the age of 60, Martha Gellhorn, best known as the third wife of Ernest Hemingway (although she was already an accomplished writer with a brilliant career when she met him) decided she’d learn to dance…
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
Why Most Educated People Misunderstand Economics
Some of the best-educated people I’ve met know almost nothing about economics. Some of them think they do because they are literate and read Paul Krugman. In fact they don’t understand even the basics: Why…
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
Amazon Buys MGM: So What?
The public narrative is this: On May 26, Amazon announced it had cut a deal to buy Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) for $8.45 billion. MGM has a catalog of 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows, which have collectively won…
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
The Beauty of a Good Conversation
The Beauty of a Good Conversation “Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” – Oscar Wilde Earnest and well-meaning interlocutors are the worst. They talk about everything that…
Read full post -
From My Work-in-Progress Basket
Wuhan Lab Theory No Longer a Conspiracy According to Biden and the NYT
When I was covering the upcoming national elections in September, I predicted that most of the scary stories about COVID that were ubiquitous back then would dissipate if Biden was elected. The reason: It was…
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
Art Thief Nabbed!
German police nabbed Abdul Majed Remmo, the fifth and final suspect in the 2019 burglary of Dresden, Germany’s Green Vault Museum. The 22-year-old is the twin brother of Mohammed Remmo, who was arrested last…
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
What to Do?
What to Do? Another Difficult Conversation After the Memorial Day barbecue, the conversation got around to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. There were eight of us in the conversation, two Jews and six…
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
The World Has Gone Bonkers!
I was in Albany recently for a family wedding. I’d never been to Albany before. It is a small city with a population of about 100,000. The city center is comprised mostly of stately 19th century buildings, a…
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
Corporate Labels
Remember the map of “The Biggest Government Employers in Each State” that I reproduced here on the blog a few weeks ago? After looking at it, CF wrote in with some thought-provoking observations… Very…
Read full post -
From My Work-in-Progress Basket
Anti-Asian Hate Crimes: What’s Going On?
On May 20, President Biden signed a bill meant to address hate crimes against Asian-Americans. It was supported overwhelmingly (364-62) by both sides of the aisle. It wasn’t clear from anything I read whether…
Read full post -
Worth Considering
Execution or Self-Defense?
The policemen involved in the fatal shooting of Andrew Brown Jr. will not face charges, the Elizabeth City (N. Carolina) DA announced recently. Brown, who was Black, was killed in April as he tried to flee…
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
How Imagining Disappointment Saved My Marriage
My introduction to Stoicism began many years ago and without knowledge of what I was doing. It happened after I got married… I noticed that I was getting upset when, after we’d agreed to do something together…
Read full post -
Notes From My Journal
So, What Were You Expecting?
Meditations on Reality, Personal Relationships, and Social Ills “The vast majority of our mental, emotional, and spiritual suffering,” says Maria Popova, the brain behind BrainPickings, “comes from the violent…
Read full post -
Worth Reading
State of Play (2009) on Netflix
State of Play (2009) on Netflix Directed by Kevin MacDonald Starring Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck, Helen Mirren, Rachel McAdams, Jeff Daniels, and Robin Wright Penn Netflix served it up to me. And with a cast…
Read full post -
Postscript
Michael Reif Reviews Central American Modernism
Michael Reif – founder of The Fine Art Society of Los Angeles and an expert in early 20th century avant-garde art – wrote a nice review of our book Central American Modernism.” This is some of what he said…
Read full post