Second in a series.

I just watched the space shuttle Atlantis take flight for the last time, and I’m trying to figure out why I feel so much like I did after my grandfather died.

Is it because so much of my life has been defined by my attitude towards space exploration, and because the space shuttle symbolized that?

Is it because the first shuttle went up when I was eight, I saw Challenger blow up at 13, saw Columbia break up on reentry when I was 30, and have now lived to see the end of American space flight for the foreseeable future at the age of 38? Full story »

First in a series.

A few moments ago, at 11:30am EDT, Atlantis lifted off, marking the 135th and final mission in NASA’s historic Space Shuttle program, which began in 1981. The Shuttle era was defined by glory and tragedy and perhaps even a bit of banality. After all, the first time you do something it’s exciting, but at some point it becomes routine, even if the something in question involves lobbing over 2,000 tons of metal into space.

Over the coming days, as the crew of Atlantis orbits the earth, conducting experiments and, one hopes, taking a few moments to enjoy the ride, the staff at Scholars & Rogues will be offering a series of personal reflections on the program. We have also invited some guests to drop by, including our rocket scientist buddy Dr. Michael Pecaut, who has had quite a few experiments up on the Shuttle (and is at Kennedy Space Center right now working on yet another one). Full story »

Author: Robert Lane Greene
Publisher: Delacourte Press: New York, 2010

by Samantha Berkhead

It’s plausible to argue that lingual differences have caused more discrimination, conflict and cultural controversy throughout history than race or religion ever did. From the Hindi-Urdu bloodshed in India to the Balkan Wars, history shows that tolerance for different languages both within and without national borders is hard to find.

Robert Lane Greene, an international journalist, speaker of nine languages and M.Phil from Oxford University, takes on several interlocking topics and forges them together to show why certain people speak the way they do.

For the average nonfiction author, synthesizing millennia of politics, history and economics (among many other unlikely factors) into a simple explanation of contemporary language would be a daunting task. Yet Greene’s linguistic elucidations never become muddled or obtuse. Full story »

A couple of months ago we noted that things were not going all that well in Murdochland, what with investigations heating up over allegations that phone hacking–that delightful pastime of hacking into someone’s voicemail so you can read and/or hear their messages—was far more pervasive than anyone had guessed. Or, certainly, than Murdoch and his News Corporation team were prepared to admit. Since then, it’s gotten worse, with lots of lawsuits, and allegations, and to-ing and fro-ing all over the place. But it wasn’t until this past week that the whole situation finally exploded, and explode big time it did.

Because it’s one thing to hack the voicemail of movie stars and politicians—the public turns out to be supremely indifferent to that. It’s quite something else to hack into the voicemails of a murdered schoolgirl and delete messages, leading her parents to think she was still alive. Or the families of other murdered schoolgirls. Or the relatives of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the victims of the July 7 bombings. Not only is this beyond the bounds of decency by several orders of magnitude, the public actually recognizes this. And they’re steamed. Full story »

Over the past few weeks I have been watching my waist, which is easy to do because every time I look, there’s a little more of it. Anyway, I came home hungry from the golf course today. I peered into the cupboard and reached for a small bag of Cheetos, but when I looked at the bag’s nutrition label and did the math, the calorie tally was just this side of 600—with 350 of them from fat. Bears should eat Cheetos before hibernating.

So I ate a banana instead. I was so pleased with this sensible diet choice—I make one about every fortnight—that I decided to have a salad for supper. This was that magic diet moment I had been waiting for: I was going to start transforming myself into a nutrition superstar. Full story »

Twitter.com/LeeCamp

As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I now live in a development on the site of Denver’s old Elitch Gardens amusement part, which operated from 1890-1993. In addition to the really cool new urban community, there’s also some historic preservation going on, as they renovate the old theater. I’m being told that at this stage they’re doing basic infrastructural work (although I’m not even clear on the details of that part) but haven’t yet decided what to do with it. The apartment manager thinks it would be a nice yoga studio. I’d personally love to see it turned into, you know, a theater. And maybe a more general entertainment complex of some sort. I have an open mind, though. Full story »

Foggy brick streets
-red brick that is-
dredged from the bottom of a murky river
which has seen things sink
other didn’t want to be seen,
And who is she to tell until her sediment is exposed?

That red brick stands for time
and age, Full story »

The clock on the fireplace mantel along the far wall still ticks away the seconds. On May 10, 1863, that same clock, in that same place, ticked away the last few hours of Stonewall Jackson’s life. When he died, at 3:15 p.m., many said that the last hopes of Confederate independence died with him. No less an authority than David Lloyd George, former British Prime Minister, said, “That old house witnessed the downfall of the Southern Confederacy. No doubt the history of America would have to be rewritten had ‘Stonewall’ Jackson lived.”

It’s a couple days before Independence Day, and I’m working at the Stonewall Jackson Shrine, a historic site run by the National Park Service within the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. The Shrine provides a contemplative environment, but several disparate elements converge today that give me something unexpected to mull over. Full story »

“Independence forever!”

— John Adams, on the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Adams was 91 years old when civic leaders from Boston asked the Sage of Quincy for words of wisdom to commemorate America’s fiftieth birthday. During the Second Continental Congress, Adams had chaired the committee that drafted the Declaration, and he’d been the one to cajole Jefferson into doing the actual writing. On the floor on the Congress, Adams served as the lead sponsor and most vocal supporter of the document, eventually shepherding it through to passage. He was one of the seminal Founders, and in 1826, one of only three signers of the Declaration still alive (Jefferson was one of the others). Full story »

Here’s the brilliant duo Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel with the beautiful and poignant “America” – a song for the wanderer in every American:

Happy 4th, all….

As I predicted four years ago on the Fourth of July, little has changed. This year’s fireworks and barbecues offer only a brief respite from the problems of the nation, how they are worsening, and how those who are supposed to address them remain mere chanters of their respective ideologies.

Four years ago, I predicted that the cost of federal elections would continue to rise, that the role of money would increase dramatically. I did not predict — or even dream it could happen — the outcome of the Supremes’ consideration of Citizens United vs. Federal Election Commission that deepened the hole in which corporate money could hide while paying for “electioneering communications.”

Sadly, I did not predict that more than 30,000 journalists would lose their jobs in the past four years, lessening the ability of the press to hold government accountable. To me, corporations are now essentially the American government; more journalists, not fewer, trained in the same accounting chicanery that allowed Enron to flourish, are necessary to hold corporate government accountable, too.
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Today we offer a nod to the music of America by paying tribute to our past and to our future. First, Woody Guthrie reminds us: this land is your land, too.

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I am on the way back from Costa Rica, in Miami Airport, dodging posses of young Christians on their way to or from “missions” in the Caribbean or Latin America. They wear bright matching tee shirts printed with slogans that range from the patronizing to the scary. They give each other inaccurate travel tips in loud voices, and periodically cluster in tight groups and sing songs that involve lots of clapping. In Dallas on the way down, we saw more of these neo-missionaries. Doing some quick math, there must be hundreds, perhaps thousands, of these Jihadi for Jesus, pudgy young girls (who will someday become pudgy young women) gazing adoringly at decidedly effeminate teen age men. Full story »