As President Obama and congressional leaders work feverishly to negotiate an end to the debt ceiling impasse, I am sure most Americans are keeping our fingers crossed that the parties reach a meaningful agreement that allows the country to avoid a ruinous default and credit rating downgrade. If a deal is struck, news media pundits [...]
Archive for July, 2011
Winners And Losers And General George Patton
Posted in America, Movies, Politics, tagged America, Debt Ceiling, Movies, News media, Patton, Politics, President Obama on July 31, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Queen City Quaffing
Posted in Family, Ohio, Travel, tagged Cadillac Ranch, Cincinnati, Family, Ohio, Travel on July 31, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Last night, after a fine reception to celebrate Will and Megan’s wedding, some of us decided to head out to sample Cincinnati night life on a sultry Saturday evening. Boy, The Queen City was rocking! The Reds had just beaten the Giants, so the departing game crowd was mixed with the normal weekend partiers and [...]
Living On The Air In Cincinnati
Posted in Ohio, TV, tagged Cincinnati, Ohio, TV, WKRP in Cincinnati on July 30, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
What’s a trip to Cincinnati without a visit to Fountain Square, and what’s a visit to Fountain Square without thinking of the theme song to the classic sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati, and Andy, Les Nessman, Herb, Jennifer, Dr. Johnny Fever, the hapless Mr. Carlson — and the timeless flying turkey promotion episode. “As God is [...]
Cousins, Together Again
Posted in Family, tagged Cincinnati, Family, Weddings on July 30, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
We’re in Cincinnati for our first family wedding in years. Today our nephew Will Kishman is marrying his long-time sweetheart Megan. The great thing about a family wedding, of course, is the chance to see people you haven’t seen in a very long time. The Kishman clan is far-flung these days, with outposts stretching from [...]
Revisiting A Hot Topic
Posted in Entertainment, Science, weather, World, tagged Environment, global warming, NASA, Science, weather, World on July 29, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
We need some good news, and NASA has provided some on on the “global warming” front. The good news comes from data gathered by NASA satellites, which have evaluated the release of heat by the Earth’s atmosphere into space. The data, from 2000 through 2011, indicates that far more energy was released — and therefore [...]
401(k) Follies
Posted in America, Politics, tagged 401(k) Plans, America, Congress, Debt Ceiling, Politics, retirement, stock market on July 28, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Many of us have tried to save and plan for retirement. We’ve read the books about how investing in mutual funds is one of the best ways to maximize your return and grow your nest egg over the long term. We’ve followed that advice, and many of us have stayed the course, through up years [...]
Speaking Of Fair Food And Doughnuts . . . .
Posted in Food, Humor, tagged Big Kahuna Donut Burger, Donuts, Doughnuts, Fair food, Food, Humor, New York, New York State Fair on July 28, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
How serendipitous! Right after writing about fair food and America’s love of doughnuts, I see a news item that combines the two. This year’s New York State Fair will be serving up the Big Kahuna Donut Burger. This quarter-pound burger is served between slices of a grilled glazed doughnut. With cheese, bacon, and the fixin’s, [...]
Our Cowardly Senate
Posted in America, Politics, tagged America, Debt Ceiling, Politics, United States House of Representatives, United States Senate on July 28, 2011 | 6 Comments »
Tonight all of the debt ceiling drama is in the House of Representatives, where Speaker John Boehner is hoping to round up enough bills to pass his proposal to increase the debt ceiling and avoid a default. Meanwhile, what’s happening in the Senate? Nothing. The house that likes to call itself “The World’s Greatest Deliberative [...]
Doughnut Love
Posted in America, Food, Humor, tagged America, Donuts, Doughnuts, Dunkin' Brands Group, Dunkin' Donuts, Food, Humor on July 28, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Yesterday, America showed its love for doughnuts and put its money where its mouths want to be. On a bleak day when the Dow Jones average plunged nearly 200 points on fears that the debt ceiling quandary will not be solved, Dunkin’ Brands Group — the parent company of Dunkin’ Donuts — was a lonely [...]
The Party Nations
Posted in America, Humor, World, tagged Alcohol, America, Beer, Drinking, France, Humor, Ireland, Moldova, Russia, Spirits, Wine, World on July 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Who hasn’t idly wondered which countries hammer down the most alcohol? Thankfully, the World Health Organization has released a report that answers that crucial, nagging question. Where does the U.S. stack up? We’re middle-of-the-pack, actually. Americans consume, on average, 9.4 liters of alcohol per person, per year — about half the average of the booziest [...]
Banned From Buckeye Land
Posted in sports, tagged Buckeye football, Gene Smith, NFL Draft, Ohio State, sports, Terrelle Pryor on July 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The Terrelle Pryor saga continues to grind along, and it isn’t pretty. Pryor, who will not be using his last year of eligibility at Ohio State — he was suspended for the first five games, anyway — wants to enter the NFL supplemental draft. In order to establish his eligibility for that draft, he has [...]
A Time Travel Update
Posted in Humor, Science, tagged Albert Einstein, City On The Edge Of Forever, H.G. Wells, Humor, Photons, Science, Star Trek, The Time Machine, Theory of Relativity, Time Travel on July 27, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Scientists have conducted experiments that have confirmed that individual photons cannot travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum. For a time, it was thought that photons might be able to travel faster than the speed of light. That prospect left open some tantalizing possibilities, because under Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, if [...]
Fun At The Fair
Posted in Columbus, Food, Ohio, tagged Columbus, Deep-Fried Food, Fair food, Fried Food, Ohio, Ohio State Fair on July 26, 2011 | 4 Comments »
Tomorrow the 2011 Ohio State Fair begins. There will be some differences this year — for one, beer will be served for the first time in more than 100 years, although apparently only at adult events at one of the concert venues — but the core of the Fair will be the same as it [...]
An American Scene
Posted in America, Ohio, Travel, tagged America, Amusement Parks, An American Scene, Cedar Point, Millennium Force, Ohio, Travel on July 26, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Amusement parks are a big part of the American summer. Every year, millions of children of all ages travel to these asphalt-topped celebrations of speed and thrills to eat ice cream and cotton candy and cheeseburgers and then scream like banshees as we are flipped, twisted, turned, dropped, and soaked on the fastest roller coasters, [...]
Speechifying
Posted in America, Politics, tagged America, Debt Ceiling, Democrats, House Republicans, john boehner, National Debt, Politics, President Obama, Republicans on July 25, 2011 | 2 Comments »
The debt ceiling remains unraised. Talks between the sides have broken down. The Republicans in the House have submitted a proposal, and the Democrats in the Senate have done likewise. All the while, the days before the August 2 deadline slip silently past. So, what to do to try to end this apparent impasse? Why, [...]
