My Blog

Like many I felt a wave of sadness at the death of Michael Jackson. It's amazing how certain iconic entertainers have come to fix themselves in our hearts, their music creating great big looping paths of emotional memory through the different stages of our lives, their passing leaving great big holes.

With Michael Jackson, I think it was more than just his music and dancing (which was pretty

Congress is in danger of being seriously out of step with a changing national consciousness over the national health care issue. According to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll, three quarters of Americans now support some kind of government run health care program to compete with private sector health insurance. It's a good sign for America, a kind of maturing of the national sensibility

There is a lot of talk of torture in the air as America comes to terms with with the legacy of the past eight years. There is also a plethora of tortured euphemisms at work as people attempt to deflect responsibility for what was done to other human beings for the sake of our own peace and security. "Enhanced interrogation methods", for example, sounds like a harmless upgrade to the normal

If you are one of the five people in the world who haven't yet seen British singing sensation Susan Boyle on Youtube then go take a look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxPZh4AnWyk. The beetle-browed, most unlikely chanteuse from Blackburn, Scotland (not Lancashire), first wowed audiences on the Britain's Got Talent TV show, including irascible professional sceptic Simon Cowell, last week when

It is often suggested that economic crises lead people to more spiritual reflection (take the coins from the eyes of the corpse and suddenly it sees again), so it was interesting to read the cover story in this week's Newsweek magazine (April 13, 2009: http://www.newsweek.com/id/192583) about the declining state of religion in America. Under the banner "The End of Christian America", the article