Dear Friend and Reader: The long-anticipated winter solstice of 2012 is now just weeks away. I may be one of the few people who has been considering the 2012 issue for 25 years who did not make a religion out of this event, which marks the end of the 13th baktun of the Mayan long … Read more
Dear Friend and Reader: Everything in the world was proceeding normally and calmly as usual, and life was simple — that is, until Andrea Mitchell, NBC’s chief foreign affairs correspondent, interrupted MSNBC’s regular programming last Friday afternoon (Nov. 9) at 2:51 pm EST with the news that David Petraeus, the chief of the CIA, had … Read more
Dear Friend and Reader: The presidential election of 2012 has ended like waking up from a bad dream. For many it was more like a nightmare. For the past 18 months, we have endured a parade of fools served up by the Republican party, a pageant that rivaled the best efforts of The Onion or Saturday Night Live to … Read more
Dear Friend and Reader: We keep hearing that the election may hinge on the results of one state — Ohio. There are several close states, but for a number of reasons, Ohio stands out. FiveThirtyEight, a blog project of The New York Times, has been running computer simulations of the many permutations of what might happen … Read more
These Men Have Issues Dear Friend and Reader: Once I read an article in an astrology magazine about how to figure out who is going to win an American presidential election. “The person with the worst chart wins,” said the author, who had been paying attention for a while. Astrology, a vastly complex subject, often … Read more