It wasn’t the longest in history (not, in fact, by almost an hour), and it wasn’t the most boring, despite some jokes that fell flat and some presenters who were. “The Oscars” (the new title for the annual Hollywood extravaganza that this year’s producers used to make the event sound less stodgy) was a little […]
Archives for February 2013
Evaluating the Best Picture Nominees
Once again this year, the members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences have nominated not five, not ten, but nine films (because, you know, it just has such a nice ring to it) for the honor of best motion picture of the year just past. And I will acknowledge freely that I […]
Drones: A New Kind of Weapon for a New Kind of War
Were the 9/11 attacks that left almost 3,000 civilians dead an act of war or a criminal act? If you said an act of war, you probably would compare 9/11 to the Pearl Harbor attack as an unprovoked, surprise attack on the United States that was appropriately met with a declaration of war by the […]
Want to See What Austerity Does? Check the Evidence
The government surprised many economists last week when it announced that the nation’s economy (as measured by the country’s Gross Domestic Product) had shrunk in the last three months of 2012 by one-tenth of one percent. The news was met with a collective shrug, instead of any sense of real panic. No one thought it […]