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From Think Progress : “Opening his radio show with funeral music yesterday, Fox News host John Gibson callously mocked the death of actor Heath Ledger, calling him a ‘weirdo’ with a ‘serious drug problem.’ “Playing an audio clip of the iconic quote, “I wish I knew how to quit you’ from Ledger’s gay romance movie…

I have been looking for this citation, on and off, for months. Thought it was either from the New York Times or Wall Street Journal, but can’t find it, so maybe I’m wrong. If one of you have it, please share! It was an article about luck. It said that people who believe themselves to…

Hi Everyone: this posting is from a few months back, but we’re getting a spate of new visitors from the WSJ Forums and I want to make sure they don’t miss some of the good old stuff. As for the rest of you, well, it never hurts to reread a little Goethe. – Hillary From…

From an Alternet essay by literary and cultural critical Harold Bloom: “The horror of what is taking place in Iraq exceeds my worst fears five or six years ago (after Bush came to power). I am horrified at the disastrous mistake involved. Imagine the complete madness in trying to occupy a large Arab country in…

Having just a few days ago posted an encomium to Garry Kasparov, the former world chess champion and current courageous political activist, I was struck by an interesting contrast between his story and the late Bobby Fischer’s. One of the main points Kasparov kept mentioning in the talk I heard him give is that, You…

“People aged 1 through 100 banging on a drum.”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUHLa1qSy24Fun and oddly compelling. The Daily CoyoteYoung woman lives in a cabin in the Wyoming countryside, finds a 10-day-old orphaned coyote, names it Charlie, raises it, and takes amazing photos and writes compelling commentary as it grows up. I’m not a huge fan of photography as an…

I had the good fortune to encounter four amazing activists last year. The first was Doris Haddock, a.k.a. GrannyD , an incredible woman who walked across the United States at the age of 89 to advocate for the elimination of unregulated “soft” money in campaigns. She then returned home to New Hampshire, and in 2004,…

The New York Times has a pretty good article on life coaches and what they do. I particularly like the fact that the coach they feature most prominently comes, as I do, from a business background: many coaches come from a social work or psychotherapy background, and while those skills are essential, I don’t think…

Great long – but extremely lucid – article on morality by psychologist Steven Pinker in Sunday’s New York Times. I love the beginning: “Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it’s…

From Boing-Boing “Oscar, there are so many things I would like to tell you which have happened over these past twenty years. Ever since you were abducted, on that February 23rd 1984, my heart has remained completely void. You know I considered you not just my son, but also my brother, my colleague. You were…