Those Other Explorers

Our Almanac reminds us that Columbus, Cabot, Vespucci, and Verrazzano weren’t the only Italians this nation ought to be thankful for. On April 9th, 1682 Enrico Tonti and Frenchman Robert La Salle arrived at the Gulf of Mexico after traversing waterways from the Great...

Hi-Octane Minorities

A London-based research outfit called YouGov matches perceptions to actual stats.  For example, panels of volunteers surveyed in the United States think that Blacks are 41% of the U.S population when the Census says they are only 12%.  The reason for the...

OSCAR, OSCAR, OSCAR

So was the inevitable reply of Felix Unger from Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple when responding to yet another mess created by his roommate, Oscar Madison. And so is this my reply to the annual Academy Awards ceremony, which managed to be doubly insulting to...

Putin’s Mussolini Moment

In his criminal invasion of Ukraine, it appears that Vladimir Putin has underestimated Ukrainian resistance and overestimated his own Russian military.  History is full of such folly. Take a war, any war, and you will find this same hubris at work.  The...

DAVID VS. DON VITO GOLIATH

As I go to press, I read that yet another COVID variant, currently spiking in Europe and Asia, may be headed our way: DA.2, aka “Deltacron.” We can only hope that, if it does come to pass, it doesn’t lead to a major surge. In the interim, however,...