About 18 months ago I moved onto Main Street in Catskill, a small, blue-collar town in Upstate NY, where discarded Newport Lights cigarette packets are the garbage of choice. When we arrived, there was a sense of a town in the throws of re-imagining itself. There were art galleries, an...

So, which ideological house do you live in? According to the McCain/Palin campaign one is fake and anti-American, the other real and patriotic. Geography is destiny. A friend of mine has a great line. "You're only as good as the worst thing you'll do." In McCain's case there seem to...

What happens next? A landmark study of cognitive dissonance is chronicled in When Prophecy Fails. The book studies a group predicting the imminent end of the world, and then lays out what happened when reality crashed the party. The bottom line is, in the face of unwanted truth, rationalization...

Rep. James Clyburn recently called Bill Clinton's campaign antics "bizarre." Being English, it reminds me of some unseemly behavior from another prominent husband. As he lurches from one gaffe to the next, Bill Clinton is starting to look a lot like Prince Philip.

During a state...

So Eliot Sptizer, the man who would be king, falls on his own sword...or rather, his need for high class prostitutes to fall on said sword, brings the titan down. What is it about elected office that drives politicians to "die by kinky"? I had high hopes for Spitzer, he...

A new report says that anti depressants have little or no use, so how do we escape?

When the white noise of the daily grind becomes like the tinnitus ringing in Pete Townsend's ears, what do we do? Do we shop (there's a recession on silly), go back...

A good friend of mine Alan Clifford, a DJ on BBC local radio in the UK, recently interviewed the owner of a traveling circus that features live animals--tigers, camels etc. Despite being a Vegan of 30 years, Alan set about the task with a calm head, discussing with Mr. Lacey...

As Barack Obama appears to be pulling away from Hillary Clinton, I am reminded of another classic battle between an insurgency and the establishment, where the establishment was swept away by the new. Yes, I am of course referring to how Hair Metal was swept away by Indie Rock in...

A while back, I was having a conversation with my wife about the machinations of Lee Attwater, and how on his death bed he was apparently apologizing for his divisive ways. Around about the same time I was watching a documentary series by Adam Curtis called The Century of the...