SONY Pictures produces a movie that sucks—according to the critics whose reviews I have read. “The Interview” is a one punch line film of questionable taste. Because the flick is centered on a pair of journalists who plan to assassinate Kim Jong Un, and the film’s makers do a lot of promo (they appear on “The Daily Show,” as I recall, and other places), the flick garners more attention than perhaps would have been the case.

   Here is where matters become more interesting. Kim Jong Un…

   The quarries north of Bloomington during the summer in the 1970s were sort of like a Hoosier variation of Woodstock. My recollection of how we got there, and the route we took and the destination—did we crawl over a fence near 17th Street?—is vague. Ultimately we walked down a dirt lane, along which a guy sold Coors beer—the real stuff that one could not purchase in Indiana legally and it was maintained cold all the way from Colorado, or at least that was what anyone who asked was…

   There only is one real party in the United States, and it is a Party of Green.

   I did not write the Green Party—the left-wing, environmental-focused party—is the only real party in the United States. That would be a silly statement to write.

   The “green” of which I write is the color that has figured so dominantly in United States currency. Money controls the United States. Voters, except in the immediate run-up to elections, can be damned. In the time immediately before an…

   No: this is a day to celebrate because the date lines up in a numerical “straight.” December 13, 2014 is 12/13/14.

   Sometimes life stretches out, a gray expanse of days. One after the other, each day is comprised of routine mixed with nuances of detail overlaid with the same levels of stress. Joy must be taken in the odd moment available.

   In 2006 I wanted to throw a party on June 6, maybe something outside on the deck, but the kid with the Rottweiler guard dogs showed up on…

   When the Big Banks received the largesse of billions of dollars from taxpayers after the melt-down of banks in 2007-08, much of the blame was placed on derivatives markets in which the Big Banks speculated.

   A derivative is a contract that derives its value from the performance of an underlying entity, often called the “underlying.” The underlying can be an asset, an index, or an interest rate.  (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, United States Department of Treasury,…

The grand jury failed to indict Ferguson, Missouri, police Officer Darren Wilson for the shooting of Michael Brown. There appear to have been irregularities in the procedure by which evidence was presented to the grand jury. For example, while some eyewitnesses who claimed Brown had raised his hands—a near-universal show of surrender—were cross-examined by the prosecutor, Wilson was allowed to give a narrative that, one may reasonably infer, was intended to be exculpatory.

   Whether…