Post Racial Banality

The following note was composed and sent last night in response to an email that I received yesterday from a friend that commended the wisdom of Dr. Benjamin Carson, the eminent pediatric surgeon who expressed opinions that were implicitly critical of some of the liberal/progressive policies espoused by President Obama. Here's a link to a Youtube video of Dr. Carson's remarks:

Tales of Two Cities

I just finished bingeing my my way through the first season of "House of Cards" -- the American remake of the British "House of Cards" three season shocker TV series that first aired in 1990. The British version was produced by the BBC, the American by Netflix. Netflix broke new ground for binge addicts like me by releasing all 13 episodes of the show's first season on Friday evening (2/1/1). Last month when I first heard about the upcoming American remake starring Kevin Spacey, an actor who has portrayed subtle menace in other productions that I've enjoyed, I watched the BBC original (also on Netflix) in a two day binge in preparation for the American debut.

Choosing the Good We Do

In a world in which so many things go wrong every day, the set of wrongs that any person chooses to try to put right are a tiny fraction of all of the possible good deeds that he or she could do. This applies to presidents and paupers alike. Indeed, the good deeds that we choose to do define who we are to ourselves and to anyone who pays attention to what we do.

The End of Pyrrhic Compromise???

In a number of blogs written before the 2012 went into full swing, I lamented President Obama's arrogant compulsion to "bargain from the middle" by preemptively staking out the "wise" position that he expected the GOP to eventually accept, a position that usually involved substantial betrayals on issues that have long been held sacred by the members of his own party.

It's Was All Over Weeks Ago ... with P.S. 1, 2, 3

Recent years have seen the rise of Big Data, wherein quants process massive databases to identify persistent patterns that support predictions of weather changes, consumer preferences, and now election results.