by Patricia H. Kushlis | May 13, 2014 | Monitor
Sound the alarm. Call the troops to the battlefield of the annual budget wars currently underway in Washington. Here’s just one example: a poignant but less than fully historically accurate plea by a journalist on the program’s behalf. This year the venerable...
by Patricia H. Kushlis | Feb 9, 2014 | Monitor
By Patricia H Kushlis I must admit I quite enjoyed the Russian propaganda show that opened the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics Friday night. Russians have been extraordinarily adept at story-telling for seemingly forever and staging extravaganzas –first religious then...
by Patricia H. Kushlis | Oct 16, 2013 | Monitor
By Patricia H Kushlis In the New York Times best seller The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable (Random House 2010) its author Nassim Taleb argues that what we don’t know is likely to be far more relevant that what we do particularly with respect to...
by Patricia Lee Sharpe | Oct 9, 2012 | Monitor
Picture him: shoulders hunched, body lurching forward, maniacal grin, eyes bugging out as if, Mormon elder or not, he was hyped on some powerful upper. Add the voice, soft, sweet, calculated, the voice of a hit man sadistically caressing his opponent, who seemed to...
by Patricia Lee Sharpe | Jul 25, 2012 | Monitor
By Patricia Lee SharpeTimbuktu, for most Westerners, is simply another word for the end of the world. Today, in fact, it’s a somewhat decayed real city on the southern edge of the Sahara desert. Once upon a time, however, Timbuktu was a vital commercial and cultural...