I’ve suddenly had this weird realization. I started listening to several of the Dan Brown novels on symbology. I started with his latest, called Secret of Secrets and have moved backwards to The Lost Symbol. The book is Dan Brown’s third Robert Langdon novel, set in Washington D.C. over a single night. The central mystery revolves around Freemasonry and the legend of an “Ancient Mystery” – secret wisdom supposedly hidden in Washington D.C. by the…
I have spent a lot of time all across this hemisphere from top to bottom. I lived for sixty years in the United States in the Midwest, the Northeast and now the West. Granted, I have not lived in the Deep South (unless you count being born in Florida) nor have I lived in the Northwest. But I have travelled throughout the continental United States and visited each and every state of the union at…
I have noticed lately a proliferation of movies about the final days of the Third Reich. In these days of personalization, it’s hard to tell if that is a true trend or whether Amazon Prime and Netflix have just decided to feed my interest in that topic. One of the best of these is Downfall, made in 2005, an award-winning depiction of Adolf Hitler’s last days in his Berlin bunker as told by his final…
A few days ago we had a very galvanizing event occur in this country. As most of us have seen in various videos, there was an ICE raid of some sort under way in Minneapolis. The scene was on a snow-covered suburban street where a maroon SUV driven by a 37-year-old white suburban mother was sideways in the street, somewhat blocking oncoming traffic. It is relatively clear that the car was purposefully positioning itself as…
When I awoke to the news alert from the Financial Times that President Trump had announced a U.S. invasion of Venezuela resulting in the capture, seizure and removal of President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, presumably to some U.S.-controlled location, I was not totally surprised. I then watched this morning as Trump and Secretary of “War” Hegseth, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio standing behind nodding, spoke about the unprecedented aggressive military action. Something Hegseth…
Twelve Years a Slave refers to both a powerful historical memoir and its acclaimed film adaptation. The memoir itself was written in 1853 by Solomon Northup, a free Black man from New York, who was kidnapped in Washington D.C. in 1841 and sold into slavery in Louisiana. He spent 12 years enslaved on plantations before being rescued in 1853. His detailed firsthand account became one of the most important slave narratives, providing unprecedented insight into…
All major religious traditions have narratives about moral decline and its consequences. Start by thinking about Christianity. The Bible contains several narratives depicting periods of widespread moral corruption and their consequences. The earliest and most dramatic example occurs in Genesis and describes the pre-flood world as, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” This leads…
Lets get real for a moment. We’ve all seen the various economic and demographic projections for 2050. We know that there are three winners in terms of economic output. They are, unequivocally and with no particular order, the United States, China and India. If you look at current population level as a guide (all economists understand the relationship between population and economic growth), this makes sense. In rank order, based on 2025 data, the ten…
Stephen King is one of the best-selling authors in history with over 400 million books sold. Nearly every major work has been adapted for film or TV. He’s achieved sustained success across five decades, which is extraordinarily rare. For decades, critics dismissed him as a “genre writer” producing commercial horror rather than “serious literature.” But that is changing and he has won the National Book Foundation’s Medal (2003), won Bram Stoker Awards, World Fantasy Awards,…
Australia just launched what is being called the world’s first ban on social media for children under 16. It takes effect today (December 10, 2025). What the law does is that it prevents Australians under 16 from creating or keeping accounts on age-restricted social media platforms. That means the government is deactivating a huge number (over 1 million) of social media accounts that transgress that standard. There are no parental consent exceptions. Even with parental…