Smokey, a cartoon bear in a ranger hat, has told generations of Americans that "Only you can prevent forest fires." But that overlooks the biggest villain behind today's wildfires:...
In 1933, the English poet W.H. Auden told his friend Stephen Spender, “I entirely agree with you about my tendency to National Socialism, and its dangers.” It’s a surprising confession. He’d later travel to Spain to serve in the Republican medical corps, praising the soon-to-be vanquished loyalists in the Marxisant poem “Spain 1937.” He befriended […]
If ever there were an event about which Americans can be justifiably, sincerely, and perpetually proud, it was surely the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969. You remember: Neil Armstrong, Tranquility Base, “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” — the whole bit. Yet, in a sign of the perversity […]
Wealthy people tend to be healthier, so kindhearted souls tend to argue that we can improve the health of the poor by handing them cash. But it doesn’t work. Public assistance may be capable of many things, but making poor people healthier is not one of them, which is a lesson we should apply to Obamacare, Medicare, […]
In his new book, In Obscura: Adventures in the World of Intelligence, Peter Theroux offers a look into his unconventional life, from Los Angeles to Langley. Theroux comes from a famous literary family. His older brothers, Alexander and Paul, are noted novelists. His nephews and cousins include journalists, filmmakers, and the actor Justin Theroux. Peter […]
The road is as familiar as it is well traveled. An ingénue enchants us all with her puckish charm. Half a decade later, she strikes it rich with a Marvel/Star Wars project or three. Perhaps the occasional award bait falls into her lap, but, time being what it is, every offer soon begins to look […]
Every summer, the quiet rolling hills of the South Downs and the Duke of Richmond’s expansive royal backyard echo with the roars of engines from the Goodwood Festival of Speed, one of the highlights of the international automotive calendar and an opportunity for different ends of the auto industry to smash into one another. Vintage […]
As we watch the Olympic Games this year, some of us oldsters lament a sort of innocence and sense of wonder that has been lost in the past half-century. The first cross-oceanic Summer Olympic TV coverage with abundant portions aired live via satellite was in 1972 in Munich, and they proved almost unbelievably tragic (a […]
I have a shoebox filled with old photographs, relics of the time before we all had cameras on our phones and terabits of images cluttering up our storage devices. And that’s what we call them now, too, “storage devices,” which sounds neat and organized and no fun at all. I went to the shoebox this […]
