So: the moment that changed my life was no physical one, nor religious one, nor even sentimental nor loving one. It was a moral moment. I decided to keep my promise to not take sides, but nowhere in that promise did it say …. Continue reading
by Walter Brasch About 1.8 million students will graduate from college this year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. At least one-third of them will graduate with honors. In some colleges, about half will be honor graduates. It’s not that the current crop is that bright, it’s that honors is determined by grade point average. Because of runaway grade inflation, the average grade in college is now an “A.” About 43 percent of all college grades are “A”s, according to a recent study by Stuart Rojstaczer and Christopher Healy, and published in the prestigious Teachers College Record. About three-fourths of all grades are “A”s or “B”s. Throw out the universal curve that applies to everything from height to … Continue reading
And why the need for all these suited, macho men and reporters to be in the sweaty locker room, surrounded by nude and semi-nude athletes praising their own and others’ prowess on the fields of glory? Continue reading
While I can decry the rape of privacy in our modern world (the REAL issue regarding drones), I cannot empathize with Bush’s exposure. For a man obsessed with his PERSONAL and his father’s official privacy, what justice could be MORE poetic? Continue reading
And in an appropriately blacked-out Super Bowl, featuring a Mercedes Benz commercial wherein a fellow is tempted to sell his soul for a new, cheap Mercedes (featuring the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” — forever stained by Altamont Race track), one could not escape the feeling that I am no longer a member of an American Middle Class, but, rather, a sad anachronism in a new age of corporate feudalism. Continue reading
Wednesday, I called the newsrooms of Pennsylvania’s two largest newspapers. All I got were disembodied voices telling me no one was available and to leave a message. It was 11 a.m., and I thought someone—anyone!—should have answered their phones. But, with publishers doing their best to “maximize profits” by cutting news coverage and reporters, I figured they either didn’t have anyone capable of answering a phone or figured no one would be calling with any news that day. So I left a message. It was a routine question, specific for each newspaper and related to verifying information from their papers for a book I was completing. I left another message the next day. I would have called individual assignment reporters, … Continue reading
We could sorely use a good year, after this streak we’ve been on since the XXth Century. Continue reading
As Christmas approached, I had this idea of a “film noir” radio play, a kind of Sam Spade meets Miracle on 34th Street deconstructing Milton Friedman. That was 1986. This was originally performed on live radio in 2005. Continue reading
