Whilst walking the dog this rainy evening, I happened upon an illuminated, inflatable lawn ornament of the Halloween variety.
These decorations are an easy, relatively inexpensive way to acknowledge the holiday. They require little or no thought beyond which one to buy and where to buy it. The set-up is easy, so is the [...]

General Tony Zinna was on The Leonard Lopate Show Tuesday promoting his new book Leading the Charge.
Now, there’s a haircut you can set your watch to. The man is thoughtful and well-spoken. He says what he means and means what he says – Orwell would be proud. Listening to him was a [...]

In America, we tend to laud the optimist and shun the pessimist. Not surprisingly, we are inundated with bromides about positive thinking and self-affirmation. But, turns out, all that stuff might not work. A new study published in Psychological Science argues that forcing positive thoughts can have negative consequences.
I’ve always thought self affirmations were a [...]

During this weekend’s D-Day remembrance ceremony, President Obama urged us not to forget those who fought for our freedom and what they managed to achieve.
Many estimate we are losing as many as 1,200 WW II veterans every day in America alone. But there’s no reason we have to lose their stories. For those of us [...]

Wish fewer people smoked? Maybe it’s time for visual warnings on packages.
Cigarette packages should show graphic images of yellow teeth, blackened gums, protruding neck tumors and bleeding brains to alert smokers to their disease risks, the World Health Organization said on Friday.
WHO says 20 nations already use some form of visual warning and evidence suggests [...]

In one of my other lives, I write fiction.
My newest story has just appeared at Stone’s Throw, an online literary magazine. Yes, this is shameless self promotion. I’m hoping some of y’all will find the time to read the issue — and maybe even read some other great literary journals as well. You’d be [...]

Next time you finish off a box of cookies or a whole pie, despite having controlled yourself all day, don’t blame yourself. Blame human nature.
In the latest issue of the journal Psychological Science, the researchers taunted subjects with the story of a waiter who was surrounded by gourmet food but not allowed a taste. Some [...]

So, what caused the current financial crisis? No, not the specific events but rather the underlying cause, the cultural fault. David Brooks believes there are two competing schools of thought. It’s the greed theory vs. the stupidity theory.
Brooks begins with the greed theory:
[T]he U.S. financial crisis is a bigger version of the crises that [...]

So, today’s the day we celebrate the plight of alcoholism in the Irish the fun-loving spirit of the Irish with good beer and good friends.
Here’s some factoids from a guy with a bit of the Irish in him:
Over 35 million Americans have Irish blood. But the rest of you are welcome to wear green.
Barack Obama [...]

The flagging economy has accelerated the decline of the American newspaper industry. Already suffering from waning readership and declining ad sales, several major newspapers are now projected to fold or go exclusively on-line before the end of the year. Those papers include such stalwarts of the news business as the Miami Herald, the Boston Globe, [...]

Whichever one of the Ten Commandments tells us not to bow down to idols, that’s the one we’ve been breaking with all the Abraham Lincoln worship lately.
There’s no way he was even half as popular amongst Northerners back in the 1860s (I still bump into Civil War kooks down South who HATE Lincoln more than [...]

In this economy, would you pay $149.99 for a Bernie Madoff action figure?
Would your answer be influenced if you knew it was a limited edition action figure?
Herobuilders.com is no stranger to controversy, brazenly giving G.I. Joe collectors the meanest enemies possible to wage war on — Saddam, Osama, Hugo Chavez.  Without bad guys, who are [...]

The great writer John Updike has died at the age of 76. I say writer, because Updike was more than a novelist. He was a storyteller, an essayist, a man of letters in a way that is rare in our current age. With Updike’s passing we have one less literary great who was widely known [...]

When I’m not bloviating (blogviating?) on the web or making an increasingly meager living as a freelance marketing writing, I write fiction. That’s why this piece of news is a nice ray of light amidst the dark news stories filling the new year.
Fiction reading is on the rise for the first time since the early [...]