The Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks produced The Pacific is an estimable effort, but has failed, unlike its predecessor, Band of Brothers – about the war in Europe – to produce a cohesive, overarching narrative and vision of the Pacific war. BOB, based on Steven Ambrose’s book about the real life Easy Company, began with […]
The Prejudice against Bias
The other day ShrinkWrapped mused a bit about the nature and effect of our human biases in the political sphere, and offered, among other thoughts, that his desire to check them in himself is a reason that he engages with me in our Open Mind series. He also thinks that the challenges of strong argument […]
The New GOP: All “Whacked”
If you are an individual of cosmopolitan inclination, yet native affections, you are bound to have moments that rupture your sensibilities. On the eve of the new millennium, Julia and I were in Venice with our dear friends Ashley and Mark, all of us marveling at how an event long anticipated in the far horizon […]
While I Was Away…
…I did not wonder, as I did before leaving, whether the world might spin askew in consequence of my bloglessness. (I was, I confess, guiltlessly schlepping, nesting and playing.) Consider, then, my total shock and no little dismay at discovering that our fragile planet has, indeed – according to measurements from the International Society of […]
The Open Mind III: a Liberal’s Principles Defended and Further Propounded
The idea of Principia Liberalis was to explore the roots of those partly different perceptions of reality ShrinkWrapped and I have of the world. I say partly because, of course, like most humans, we share a lot in our perceptions. I think he and I may even share more than that. But there are profound […]