Fixing the World I often say to people that I teach because I get so much out of it. That sounds like a lot of Hoo Haw to most people, even to me, but it may also be true. One of the things that I clearly experience from teaching is the integration of that process with y expert witness activity. One truly does feed off the other. I am a more interesting and valuable expert…
Relief I think I speak for Kim as well when I say that I am very tired of politics. I have spent a lifetime ignoring politics even though I lived through some pretty turbulent times. My first election at the ripe old age of eighteen was the 1972 election that set the stage for the era of Watergate hijinx and Nixon. The big political issues were war and economy (Vietnam and Stagflation). Fifty years later…
A Precious Gift In 2014, someone decided to make yet another movie about the biblical apocalypse of the great flood. They gathered Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Anthony Hopkins and Emma Watson to play out the story of Noah. First interesting choice made by Director Darren Arofonsky, perhaps due to the presence on set of the fabled Sir Anthony Hopkins, the classical Shakespearean actor who trained under Sir Laurence Olivier and was guided by the craft…
From the Depths I came back to my hilltop last week with a cold. It wasn’t COVID, it was a cold. I tested for COVID on Tuesday morning and again (COVID can be a tricky bastard) yesterday…Monday…since we had guests coming and I felt I owed it to them to be sure of my infectiousness. I had also heard from friend Gary in West Hollywood that what he had thought was a cold upon returning…
Corruption There are certain themes that dredge up lots of memories and sentiments. The sad state of affairs in life in general is that the word corruption is one such theme. Corruption is most often used to describe fraudulent or dishonest conduct and is most often associated with that act being undertaken by someone in a powerful or otherwise trusted position. I have always considered myself a trusting person. I like to think that I…
The Failure of Power I had a real epiphany this morning and this story is the output from that. I awoke at 6am after a decent night’s sleep and as I went into our shared closet I flipped on the light as I always do, only to find that all but one of the track lights failed and did not go on. I did the usual of flicking the switch back and forth (as though…
The Ebb and the Flow The tides, as we all know, are a direct result to the gravitational pull of the moon, but there is actually a lot more to that. The tides cycle from high to low twice per day even though the moon only passes over any given spot on the earth once per day, so what’s up with that? My earth science training reminds me that the tides are actually influenced by…
A Prelude to War Frank Capra won an Academy Award in 1942 for his production of his Office of War Information documentary. It was used first to pump up the soldiers in the armed forces that were heading into the war effort after the attack at Pearl Harbor. And then it was shown widely to the American people so as to get everyone on the same page about exactly why we as Americans were doing…
Selling Out the Cheap Seats Tonight we are watching Seabiscuit, which is one of the great inspirational movies. It always leaves me with a lump in my throat, especially when the Depression-era narrative is explaining the backdrop of the socioeconomic lay of the land across America in the 1930’s. Seabiscuit raced from 1935 to 1940, when the weariness of the Great Depression had worn down the common folk of America. Seabiscuit was a horse of…
Prickly Neck Do you know that feeling when the angel of death passes over you and something happens to make you feel kinda weird as the specter of the infinity of time brushes by? I just finished a motorcycle ride of 1,600 miles across northern Spain and I had only one close call when some oncoming idiot came around a curve in the mountains too hot to handle and drifted a few feet into my…