Monthly Archives: October 2015

Book Review: John Adams

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The founding father of founding fathers
by David McCullough
Review by Brian Wright

2001, Simon and Schuster, 656 pages

Adams“But all the provisions that He [God] has made for the gratification of our senses… are much inferior to the provision, the wonderful provision that he has made for the gratification of our nobler powers of intelligence and reason. He has given us reason to find out the truth, and the real design and true end of our existence.”
—  diary of John Adams ca. 1756

John Adams (1735-1826) is probably the most underrated thinker and actor participating in the birth of our nation, the birth of practical liberty (for society at large for the first time in history).  The simple truth: were it not for Adam’s fierce determination and hard intellectual work of persuasion at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, 1776, independence from England would not have been declared, much less achieved. Continue reading →

Movie Review: John Adams (Book ref. HBO Series)

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The founding father of founding fathers
by David McCullough
Review by Brian Wright

2001, Simon and Schuster, 656 pages

Adams“But all the provisions that He [God] has made for the gratification of our senses… are much inferior to the provision, the wonderful provision that he has made for the gratification of our nobler powers of intelligence and reason. He has given us reason to find out the truth, and the real design and true end of our existence.”
—  diary of John Adams ca. 1756

John Adams (1735-1826) is probably the most underrated thinker and actor participating in the birth of our nation, the birth of practical liberty (for society at large for the first time in history).  The simple truth: were it not for Adam’s fierce determination and hard intellectual work of persuasion at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, 1776, independence from England would not have been declared, much less achieved. Continue reading →

Guest Column: Independents’ Day

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2016-11-08, Novi, Michigan. [Excerpt from the upcoming The Truman Prophecy.]

Fanfare!

PuppetDespite the massive parade-style, police-state presence, traffic lanes were fully cleared by local authorities and the Snyder Complex gates opened for parking at 0800 sharp. Long lines of cars queued for entry from east and west along Grand River Avenue. [Picture the ‘If you build it, they will come’ scene in the Kevin Costner movie, Field of Dreams, only in the morning and in a suburb of Detroit.]

Billed as the Kickoff of the Next Stage [of human evolution]—and because so many wanted to show up in person on a BIG stage for this cosmos-rending Independents’ Day ‘portal’—attendance for ‘official’ Snowden-Manning (S-M) stadium-rally-style events had to be modulated by price. Continue reading →

Brian’s Column: Dead Horse, New Horse?

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4Q 2015, Michigan. [Excerpt draft from upcoming The Truman Prophecy.]

HeinleinAnd it came to pass in the SLOW (Spartan Land of the Wolverine) and in most other  subrealms of the LOWDOWN—to be uttered in a deep Darth Vader-like voice—(Land of Worship for Deathstar Operations Worldwide No-Exceptions) that a onetime major—albeit never conventionally successful—movement for freedom sputtered to a halt. That ultimately petering-out political enterprise would be the Libertarian Party of Michigan (LPM) and Libertarian Party (LP) in general.

Moving parts in rubbing contact require lubrication to avoid excessive wear. [Good manners, consideration] … and formal politeness provide the lubrication where people rub together. Often the very young, the untraveled, the naive, the unsophisticated deplore these formalities as ’empty,’ ‘meaningless,’ or ‘dishonest,’ and scorn to use them. No matter how ‘pure’ their motives, they thereby throw sand into machinery that does not work too well at best.
— Sayings of Lazarus Long, Time Enough for Love, Robert Heinlein Continue reading →

Book Review: Always Postpone Meetings with Time-Wasting Morons (1992)

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by Scott Adams

DilbertThe cartoons of Scott Adams became popular in the downsizing decade of the 1990s. This particular book was originally published in 1992, and focuses much more on the cosmic sarcasm and interaction between Dilbert and his dog, Dogbert. Most people associate Dilbert with a coterie of office workers and the foibles of office life that many who have worked a white collar job back then identify with. [Some mistakenly think Dilbert was the inspiration for Office Space, but that movie was based on a character Milton created by Mike Judge.]

So how do you review a book of cartoons?

First, let’s ask about the general condition of political humor and satire these days. When I was a young adult, primetime in the 1970s newspaper cartoons were still in vogue. We had Peanuts, in Detroit Guindon was popular, I remember Cathy, Arlo and Janis, many others, then into the 1980s, Calvin and Hobbes, Bloom County, The Far Side by Gary Larson. And those are only off the top of my head, ones I tried to read regularly, real time. It was great. Then there was television talk-show humor, Johnny Carson, and cerebral ones like Dick Cavett, who often did political stuff. Continue reading →

Movie Review: Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

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Great story, but hard to not think about the importance of family planning (7.5/10)

SlumdogJamal Malik: If it wasn’t for Ram or Allah, we’d still have a mother.

Actually, during my time at the theater, I don’t remember hearing that quote from the lead character.  A fantastic statement.  It points to a relatively graphic scene earlier in the movie where a bunch of slum men apparently of one superstitious conviction (Ram?) attack with sticks and fire bombs another bunch of poor people of a (presumed) different superstitious conviction (Allah?).  Jamal’s mother is one of the victims.
It’s quite sad and senseless.

Jamal sits on the stage of a popular Indian “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” show; and remarkably he’s answering a series of multiple choice questions correctly. [Jamal comes from nowhere and the more he wins, the more the host of the show Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor) and his henchmen try to “convince” Jamal that he’s cheating.]  Through flashbacks ingeniously called up by the questions, we get the entire story of his 18-something life… how he grew up in the slums and worked his way into a job running tea for customer service telephone centers, and somehow was on the line when the show called. Continue reading →

Guest Column: What We KNOW about 9/11

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From the article “911 Truth and Obama’s Birth”
by Mr. Miles Mathis (http://mileswmathis.com/strike.pdf)

Now let’s look at what we know (about 9/11): After_911_Truth_Cover_Front_Reduced

  1. We know a plane didn’t crash at the Pentagon.
  2. We know someone ordered a military stand down, so that nothing was done on 911 to stop whatever it is that happened.
  3. We know a plane didn’t crash at Shanksville.
  4. We know the buildings in New York didn’t come down due to planes or fires. We saw with our own eyes that they exploded.
  5. We know that WTC7 was pulled in a demolition.
  6. We know that the residue of exotic explosives was found in the dust.
  7. We know that WTC7 contained SEC documents, CIA offices, the mayor’s (Guiliani) emergency offices, IRS offices, Secret Service offices, Salomon Smith Barney’s main offices and documents, NAIC offices and documents (insurance regulators), and bank vaults that included the largest cache of Kennedy photos in existence.
  8. We know that Larry Silverstein, who owned the leases on the buildings, OK’d the demolition {“pulling”) of WTC7, since he told us this himself, on TV.
  9. We know that cellphone calls from the planes were faked.
  10. We know that video of the planes going into the towers was faked.

Continue reading →