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Posts published in “Essays”

One Murder, Four Deaths (Part 1)

Two days after the September 11th everyone will always remember, a lithe 39-year-old ex-Marine named Donald Perez took $200 out of his savings and headed north for Mendocino County. Perez was on the road in…

Sri Lanka: Situation Worsening

Your cub reporter arrived in Sri Lanka November 9th. After 34 years in Boonville, to me this is about as far away as it gets. For you world travelers out there, my experiences might not…

Bolivian Democracy and the US

The prospect of socialist peasant leader Evo Morales as Bolivia's next president disturbed Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Charles Shapiro. “It would not be welcome news in Washington to see the…

Apocalypse Now

This headline appeared in the London Independent in early February of 2005 following a conference at the Hadley Centre in Exeter, England, where 200 of the world’s leading scientists issued the most urgent warning to…

Paradigm Lost

Here is my all-time favorite cartoon: a man is hanging from his pickax, which is hooked, barely, over the top edge of an impossible precipice. A second man hangs on to his ankle. There is…

True Believers

The best season of the year is finally here. Baseball season. It's only a game that's being played, of course — but a game that can be very serious business to the young people who…

Tom Cahill’s Long Road

Although he wasn’t at all street-smart or jail-savvy when he was arrested for civil disobedience in the 1960s, Tom Cahill got a quick lesson in incarceration as he was led to his Texas jail cell…

Antiwar Activism: Closing The Credibility Gap

While attending an antiwar rally in Seattle on Saturday, March 19, I had profoundly mixed feelings. From an organizer's standpoint, the rally was a success: 5,000 people came out in the rain to hear speeches…

Beyond the Gender Issue, What’s The Deal At Harvard?

Some of what Harvard President Larry Summers said about scientific and mathematical aptitudes was sensible enough. And some of it was the kind of bosh you can expect from an economist, as Mr. Summers is.…

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