Writer/Author/Fotografer
“A White House official said on Thursday that the administration was considering a ‘proportional response’ against those who hacked into Sony Pictures computers, a retaliation that could thrust the United States into a direct confrontation with North Korea.” –Peter Baker,…
The moment I saw the robots in Interstellar, I thought Stanley Kubrick must be rolling in his grave. By the end, it seems he channeled them from the future. That’s as much of a spoiler as I’ll make in this…
In my last post, I commented on the profusion of tourists in Paris taking selfies with arms outstretched and their backs to the very sites they had traveled so far to see. Making your travel photo in front of landmarks…
Paris abounds with photogenic subjects—inspired architecture, majestic monuments, sweeping vistas, lovely gardens, and beautiful women—but in the background of every shot, it seems, lurks the world’s most photographed collection of iron girders. Gustave Eiffel (1832 – 1923), whose eponymous Tower…
Mapmakers everywhere must have breathed sighs of relief when they learned they would not have to redraw the United Kingdom to reflect an independent Scotland. History suggests they should remain at the ready. Coming just a week after an effort…
In preparation for an autumn visit to Paris, I’ve been trying to learn some French. Au Secours! (Help!) When my wife and I traveled to Italy in 2012, I thought my high school and college Spanish classes might help with…
“There is one question alone that you must ask yourself in order to establish whether the serious novel will still retain cultural primacy and centrality in another 20 years. This is the question: if you accept that by then the…
European courts ruled recently that people have the “right to be forgotten.” What about the right not to be forgotten? Does that not apply to Tiananmen Square, where thousands of unarmed protesters were killed 25 years ago by their nation’s…
Can anyone recall a car manufacturer having a tougher time than GM is having right now? Oh yes, there was that dust up Ford faced in 1978 over the tinderbox it named after a bean—the Pinto. But as notorious as…
Although the paranoid among us fear a long-running government conspiracy to track our every move à la Orwell’s 1984—and to be sure, technology now makes that possible—the path to having GPS in every pocket was more uncertain, less coordinated and…
