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Posts published in June 2010

Nitrous Vaudeville

In the early 70s we all knew that cocaine was the “greediest” drug. Marin County was giving birth to the yuppie phenomenon, and young, hyper-ambitious squares with stock portfolios, who “wanted it all now,” were…

Three Cheers for Renée Fleming

The musical terrain stretching between the entrenched aesthetic positions of parents and those of their teenage children is dotted with mines and ordnance laced with mustard gas. After enduring countless bom­bardments of Lady Gaga singing…

Martin Gardner Trivia

When I worked at Scientific American in the 1960s, mail addressed to Martin Gardner (no relation) some­times wound up on my desk. The author of the widely read “Mathematical Games” column lived in Hastings-on-Hudson and…

High Times Puts on a White Coat

High Times magazine sponsored the original “Canna­bis Cup” in Amsterdam in 1987. The event inspired plant breeders and publicized their strains and their seed com­panies. It has been held annually ever since — a fine…

No Naked Lunches: TSA’s War on the Bill of Rights

If you are planning to fly over the 4th of July holiday, be aware of your rights at airport security checkpoints. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has mandated that passengers can opt out of going…

Writing Good

I daresay creativity cannot be taught. Creativity can be engendered, encouraged, cultivated, and supported, but being creative is as natural as breathing, and so to purport to teach creativity is to lie. And the multi-billion…

Scrapers

They murdered the jockey within 48 hours. It took two weeks before a hiker found the trainer downstream from a hunting cabin in Idaho with two bullets in the back of the head. Golden Gate…

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