After the brutal, infamous white colonial regime of South Africa gave way in 1994 to a government run by African hero Nelson Mandela, the new president asked for Truth and Reconciliation, even having a commission established under that name. The idea: get the atrocities of the past out into the open, but not with the […]
Propaganda, that’s what we call it, that’s what we remember. But so many questions are left unanswered whenever propagandists offer us their alternative version of the facts. The NY Times offered an article a few months ago under the title “The Mystery of Hanoi Hannah.” She was the Tokyo Rose of her war, always telling […]
The relatively small quantity of water makes modest contact with the edge of the river, the phrase just a drop in the bucket comes to mind. Yet many yards in to the center of the water, you’d think that a torpedo had exploded and stirred up some violent sea monster. Experts think that manatees–a protected […]
A mature, learned man named William Patterson can be seen on a long, high-quality video tape (YouTube) speaking about his journey with Carlos, or more nearly with his books and his “truths.” His audience are mature people, captured on camera with intimate clarity, perhaps of a median age of 50, and they are…rapt. They could […]
“A career is wonderful, but you can’t curl up with it on a cold night.” Marilyn Who was the bundle of contradictions we call Marilyn Monroe, so innocent-seeming a blonde with such a sharp mind, so genuine a person yet a pure creation of tinseltown, so intensely famous and pursued yet so lonely, […]
Intro Famous aviator Charles Lindbergh was a man of rules and discipline. He told his wife Anne… Read More A HOUSEHOLD NAME, LIKE ROCKEFELLER Like Rockefeller, he rose from poverty to wealth, he came out… Read More Intro “The word “psychopath” was coined by a German psychiatrist in… Read More BORN TO RIDE ROCKETS “It’s […]
Jamie Leigh Jones Jamie Leigh Jones sounds like the name of an A-List actress. Instead she was a girl with no particular name or fame, until events in Iraq thrust her into the spotlight. She’s a tragic figure whether you believe every word she’s ever said, or almost no word she’s ever said. Whether you […]
Once before, in 1968 as the world focused eyes on Mexico as the site of the Olympics, were troublesome college-age youths wiped out by the dozens. Probably, on orders of the President of the Republic. No one was ever truly held accountable. That massacre has never been forgotten, nor should it be. Now, nearly a […]
For millennia, humans and dolphins have had a special connection. Stories go back to the time of the Romans, and beyond, the dolphins who assist the stranded sailor or the drowning child. We’re fascinated by them, and they seem to like us back. The affinity we have for these mammals cuts across eras and cultures, […]
It seems that nowadays, sexual harassment charges follow you almost to the grave. Rolf Harris, the retired Australian and British media personality and man who’ll be ninety years old in a couple of years, still fends them off in court. The most recent charges against him, dating from the 1970’s and 80’s, fizzled as a […]
The red “spot” is only a spot in relation to the surface of largest planet that circles the sun. In sheer size, it dwarfs such things as the great land masses of Russian, or China, for that matter than planet Earth, far larger than any spot your dermatologist has ever had to treat. And articles […]
It was stunning television in all senses of the word, the on-air suicide of WXLT-TV reporter Christine Chubbuck in Sarasota, Florida in 1974. Just as a stand-alone event, such a dramatic suicide by a lovely young woman, it’s always captured the public imagination. Now the film, starring the uber-talented Rebecca Hall, puts human contour, and […]
He wriggled out of that, somehow, but where is he now? A sort of international James Bond with a bit less allure for the ladies, and a whole lot more connection to money, and the double and triple-faced dealings that could keep him close to it. The list of the things this guy Didn’t Do […]
She had only been abroad in a small town in central Italy, for a few months, as a foreign student. The babble spoken all around her was just starting to sound like something intelligible, Italian. In fact she’d started a comfortable romance with an Italian guy, and life was looking up. Meredith Kercher Until disaster […]