About Brian Wright

Hello, I'm Brian Wright, the proprietor and chief content provider to this Web opinion and review site. The Coffee Coaster (thecoffeecoaster.com) has been around since late 2006, and in early 2012 I finally decided to give the site a major makeover with this Wordpress implementation. My views are 'wholistic libertarian,' meaning focused on the spiritual--I like to use the word: essentual--evolution we will need, individually, in order to reach the New Paradigm of peace, freedom, and abundance. Let's help one another in the process.

Movie Review: Geronimo: An American Legend (1993)

Posted on June 4, 2014 by Brian Wright

Best-in-breed Western, like Hombre __ 9/10

Geronimo: With all this land, why is there no room for the Apache? Why does the White-Eye want all land?

What a treat! Get out your fond memories of Dances with Wolves, then take in a quasi-documentary treatment of the handling of the great Apache leader, Geronimo, by the US Government White-Eye military hierarchy. With a coterie of some of the best actors working in Hollywood in 1993. Also, keep a box of Kleenex nearby for how it ends up… or be prepared to weather another seething storm of outrage against government cruelty. Continue reading →

Guest Column: The Brian Williams Interview… of Ed Snowden (5/27/14)

Posted on June 2, 2014 by Brian Wright

Forming a Reasonable Picture of the Snowden ‘Avatar’

Though, following the advice of my herbalist, I did not subject myself to a full mind-numbing hour of a network news anchor conducting an Event, I did catch highlights on the Web such as this summary video here from The Young Turks (TYT). What comes across loud and clear is that whoever and whatever may be the deep spook content underlying Ed Snowden, on a personal level—just as Daniel Ellsberg years before with the Pentagon Papers—Snowden is a freedom icon and a libertarian, individualist hero. He projects a Randian aura of self-confidence and deliberate, modest, articulate righteousness. He is a good guy, and children should look up to him and want to be like him. Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: Meandering Contra Monsanto

Posted on June 1, 2014 by Brian Wright

Memorial Day Weekend 2014 was upon us. Hearing that a spirited group of people from all political persuasions would be marching in support of the “Agent Orange” Monsanto for its beneficence in altering the genetic composition of such crops formerly known as corn and soybeans, thus to create assorted health challenges for babies and others, I knew I had to check it out. [Darwin and reputable scientists have maintained that selection of the fittest keeps a species on its toes, assuring that only the strong survive. In other words, GMOs are good for you.] So I did. I pointed my vintage Mercury Villager, with the Ron Paul sticker on the front bumper and ‘Snowden-Manning 2016’ on the back, down the road to the environs of Wolverine City. Continue reading →

Book Review: The Age of Turbulence (2007)

Posted on May 30, 2014 by Brian Wright

Adventures in a new world
by Alan Greenspan

2007, The Penguin Press , 507 pages

The defining moment for the world’s economies was the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, revealing a state of economic ruin behind the iron curtain far beyond the expectations of the most knowledgeable Western economists. Central planning was exposed as an unredeemable failure; coupled with and supported by the growing disillusionment over the interventionist economies of the Western democracies, market capitalism began to quietly displace those policies in much of the world. Central planning was no longer a subject of debate. There were no eulogies….—Page 12 Continue reading →

Movie Review: The Answer Man (2009)

Posted on May 28, 2014 by Brian Wright

Small movie w/many nice features __ 8/10

Kris Lucas: Why can’t I do the things I want to do? There’s so much I know I’m capable of that I never actually do. Why is that?

Arlen Faber: The trick is to realize that you’re always doing what you want to do… always. Nobody’s making you do anything. Once you get that, you see that you’re free and that life is really just a series of choices. Nothing happens to you. You choose. Continue reading →

Guest Column: Notes from Thomas Greco

Posted on May 26, 2014 by Brian Wright

Excerpts from the Spring 2014 Newsletter
by Thomas Greco

I do some of my best thinking when I’m on the move—in a bus, a train, a plane (though perhaps not in a Thai minivan). I can’t help but wonder if this might be due to a physical phenomenon of “induced creativity” akin to the electromagnet induction of electricity that occurs when a coil of wire is moved through a magnetic field. Could it be that “creative energy” is induced when an idle brain is moved through the Earth’s magnetic field or through a monotonous landscape? Far out, eh? Full Newsletter here. Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: Golf in the Provinces, Part 2

Posted on May 25, 2014 by Brian Wright

The “golf with my friends” phase

[Back to Part 1]

As I continued to move forward learning “provincial” golf, I would run into friends of mine from an aerospace technology firm where ten years before I’d done some engineering. I don’t really remember the sequence, how our Fab Four was initially formed. But I had started keeping a record of all my rounds of golf from the very first, so it’s in there.

I was asked to play one Saturday with Curly and Mo (not their real names)—it’s always about who can get out; Curly tho married could always get the Saturday kitchen pass, and Mo

Continue reading →