Poet Sharon Olds has declined to attend the National Book Festival in Washington D.C. who won a National Book Critics Circle Award and who is professor of creative writing at New York University, was invited along with a number of other writers by First Lady Laura Bush. Here's her letter…
I find it ironic that so many conservatives who deplore extended dependence on government welfare (because it destroys the soul) embrace non-ending handouts "from heaven." In his 2005 article in The National Review, "Welfare Reform Part II," Stephen Moore wrote that it was time to start chopping welfare programs again. …
Unless you learn to let go of your materialist cravings things, that is. On Sunday, The New York Times published an article called "The Millionaires Who Don't Feel Rich." in this article, you will meet lots of millionaires from Silicon Valley. They have net worth measuring in the millions…
Check out this Opus cartoon on Salon.com, then come on back. I've long thought it self-important to think that a God would pay attention to anyone in particular, given that there are so many other people on Earth. But this Earthbound sense of self-importance is just the tip of the iceberg. There are…
In recent news, another highway bridge collapsed. Every 20 years or so, a major bridge fails unexpectedly. The nature of civil engineering is to understand how things fail, and design the next generation to avoid that failure. Each failure leads to better designs. Each of the major bridges that collapsed…