At some point soon, Bob Gates will be ending his long career of public service. Though once a subject of deep suspicion on the Left because of his service in the equally suspect CIA of the Reagan-Bush 41 years, he will end his career as a rare figure of public integrity, who was devoted to […]
Jazz Is: 13 – Charles Mingus
“Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” (Theme for Lester Young) From the album Mingus Ah Um, an elegy for Lester Young, who died two months before the recording session. This performance is from the 1975 Montreux Jazz Festival, with Charles Mingus, band leader and bass; Don Pullen, piano; George Adams, tenor saxophone; Gerry Mulligan, baritone saxophone; Benny […]
Seeing the World (We Want to See)
One can analyze at length how one, seeing the world, transforms into the other, seeing the world we want to see. There are varied predictors and indicators of the phenomenon. One is the the commitment to a closed, systematic ideology, especially reinforced either by supernatural belief or a fixed animus. We see this in the […]
Sunday Matinee – What We Were Thinking Of (4)
What We Were Thinking Of A Play in Two Acts by A. Jay Adler ————— —————— Part Four The Story So Far David Rich, professor of literature, minor cultural celebrity, receives a mysterious letter from his childhood friend Bud Powell, who was alienated from his father, Charles, a CIA officer, over the politics of the […]
Stephen Hawking’s New Clothes?
It’s a superficial bore when people take strikingly deviant positions on a subject for the obvious purpose of being controversial, suggesting some intellectual flare, and drawing attention. That is not my impression of Philip Ball in Prospect, in his The Hawking Delusion. And it is, on the other hand, always a refreshment to read someone […]