Island Passage

ABC News: Shoe Style Linked to Foot Pain

I have known several people in my life who never re-read a book. Once they have closed the cover on the last page, they are onto the next thing--book, task, whatever. I also know of people that have a favorite re-read. My friend Alex would re-read Dune every summer. It kind of defined summer to read it, I guess. My former boss Bill would re-read The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever every couple of years. I am a person that rereads. I do so for several reasons. First of all, I reread for pure pleasure, re-experiencing the best of what I have read. Secondly, I re-read because books don't change, but I have changed since the last time I read a book. Thirdly, I re-read becuase The book was so challenging the first time that I want to get more from it on subsequent readings. I am currently re-reading S.M. Stirling's alternate-history Island in the Sea of Time, which I first read back in the late 1990s. Why? I recently finished Sword of the Lady, the 6th book in his ...

There are a lot of people exercised over the fear of government intervention into the US economy and I am one of them. So why did I support (writing to my congresspeople) the TARP I bailout? Thankfully, Kevin Williamson answers that question for me : There are those conservatives who ask themselves, “What would Jesus do?” There are those who ask, “What would Ronald Reagan do?” There are even a few who ask, “What would Russell Kirk do, other than pour himself a scotch and shake his head sadly before writing another 1,000 pages?” I ask myself, “What would Milton Friedman do?” Milton Friedman would have supported a bank bailout. Or it seems he would have, given that a bank bailout is more or less what he prescribed for the last great financial crisis, the one leading up to the Great Depression, which he dwells upon at some length in his Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960. The vulgarized version of Friedman: The Federal Reserve helped turn a routine if severe recession into t...