Saturday, June 20th, 2015
On June 16, 1992, London’s Daily Telegraph reported this astonishingly bold remark by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev: “Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind.” Perhaps we should cut Gorbachev some slack here. A man who climbed his way to the top of a stridently atheist empire with
Monday, December 22nd, 2014
Lao-tzu founded Taoism when he wrote the Tao Te Ching in the 6th century B.C. But a closer reading of his works also reveals that he founded another, more modern movement. For Lao-tzu the individual and his...
Monday, September 29th, 2014
I don’t know what it is with my generation in America these days but I find myself acting like a broken record. Reminding folks of the same things over and over again. I decided to make it...
Monday, May 5th, 2014
Imagine that you had won the following *PRIZE* in a contest: Each morning your bank would deposit $86,400 in your private account for your use. However, this prize has rules: The set of rules: 1. Everything that...
Saturday, December 28th, 2013
“What you’re seeing is how a civilization commits suicide,” says Camille Paglia. According to the self-described “Amazon feminist:” Americans undervalue manual labor, schools neuter male students, opinion makers deny the biological differences between men and women, the...
Tuesday, December 24th, 2013
Charles Dickens wrote “A Christmas Carol” in the hope of earning enough money to pay off a debt. Dickens was obsessed with debt. His father had been imprisoned for debt, and Dickens was taken out of school...
Monday, December 23rd, 2013
Like many children, my parents told me that Santa Claus would bring me presents if I were a good little boy. According to the cartoons on TV, Santa Claus lived at the North Pole where he and...
Friday, December 20th, 2013
Up until a few days ago, I had no idea there was a Duck Dynasty on TV, or anywhere else. Then some guy with a scraggly beard started showing up in the news in the fiasco of...
Sunday, November 24th, 2013
It is almost six o’clock when the two Japanese girls come into the Phuket Yacht Club’s Quarterdeck Restaurant. Thamanoon is standing by a potted palm, his hands elegantly folded around a menu, staring out at the boats...
Thursday, November 7th, 2013
Think about it. Our brains are fabulous tools, the thing that makes us human, but our brains also hold us back, from being all we can be. Sometimes we are fooled, and sometimes we fool ourselves. We...
Tuesday, October 22nd, 2013
Saul retired to Phuket, Thailand from New York City at the age of 40. He already had under his belt a master’s degree in Business Administration from New York University, three years of therapy with a strict...
Friday, October 18th, 2013
All around the world, food availability, income, and life span are up, while disease, child mortality, and violence are down. Though the world is still far from perfect, nearly everything is more affordable, not always in dollar...
Wednesday, September 18th, 2013
Khun Anuphan, a 76-year-old Muslim fisherman from Rawai, sold a piece of ancestral land to developers for ten million dollars. He and his son, who brokered the deal, took the papers to his wife, Noina, for her...
Tuesday, September 17th, 2013
I don’t know what it is with people, but I find myself reminding them of the same things over and over again. There is no one to gain permission from. There is no one to impress. There...
Friday, August 30th, 2013
She was in her late twenties, with flowing brown hair and clear pale skin. I met her on my morning commute. The 880 from Oakland to San Jose is one of the worst commutes in the Bay...
