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Beware the Ides of February: Your Identity Has Been Stolen!

It’s tax season! Beware the Ides of February! Yesterday, Janna and I were disappointed to learn someone filed a tax return in our name. We discovered this identity theft when we diligently filed our 2015 taxes online via TurboTax and quickly learned our returns had not only been rejected by the IRS, but also by the New York and New Jersey tax offices! I later learned if the Feds reject your return, the States, in turn, will automatically reject your return, too. That’s good there’s some sort of communal, emergency, trigger that is in place for this homegrown brand of unsophisticated, commonplace, thievery.

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Don’t Drone Me, Dude!

“Don’t Tase Me, Bro!” will soon be out-hollered by us all in a new plea against the machine: “Don’t Drone Me, Dude!” — completely performed in the outcry of public theatricality that now passes for national security. Where once our shoes had more dangerous derring-do than the hovering skies above us — today, we are forced to realize our ordinary, everyday, overlord drones are blackening our city skies and that they are inherently more dangerous than all the guns in heaven.

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When Homicide Hunter Lt. Joe Kenda Follows You, You Stay Followed!

Lt. Joe Kenda is one of the most interesting, and important, people on television and — just as love and fate would have it — he’s also one of the kindest guys you’d ever want to meet… when he isn’t chasing down killers and murderers and putting them in jail.

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From Wrist to Hand and Back Again: Apple Hands You a Future as Your iWatch Watches You

I love it when Apple unwittingly, but always purposefully, hands us our future — for a steep admission price. Watching our new watch-centric Futureworld unwind yesterday — in the din from a bright new set of iPhone 6 twins — was a surreal and foreboding experience. Apple takes us by the hand and we lovingly follow, and play along, all while paying up — and we believe we’re all better for it in the effervescent end; but are we?

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Jersey City Salutes Police Officer Melvin Santiago

Rookie Jersey City Police Office Melvin Santiago was assassinated on Sunday responding to a call at a local Walgreens.  Yesterday, over a 1,000 people lined up outside a funeral home to salute an officer who gave his life in service to a city in the hard, urban core.  Officer Santiago was 23 and — during his wake — was promoted to the rank of Detective and given the Medal of Honor in death by the Mayor of Jersey City.

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A Century of Generational Chains: Saved the World -> Kill Your Parents -> Kicked Out of the House/New Militia -> Millennials

“Kill Your Parents” was a rallying cry of 1960’s America. We were embroiled in an unpopular war in Vietnam, the world was fighting to change with hope-through-force, and the liberal campus of Columbia University in the City of New York was embroiled in one of it’s worse moments in its history during the Spring of 1968.


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The Wounding of Surprise and the Danger of Imagination

Surprise and imagination can be both wonderful experiences and dangerous concepts.  We’re trained early in life to find surprise in the world around us, usually juxtaposed against the wilds of nature. We are often encouraged to “think outside the box” and to reimagine reality in ways that can fundamentally change the way we view the world and our role within it. Nothing is out of reason. Everything is possible.

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The Copenhagen Zoo Kills Marius, the Reticulated Giraffe, and Feeds Him to Lions: Meanwhile, Queens Cracks Down on Undercover Cockfighting

Two alarming animal things happened over the weekend, and the conflation of the dual mendacities against human nature leads us to recognize we are not really a wholly civilized world where the weaker among us in the animal world are cared for and protected as we expect them to care for us.

First, Marius, a two-year-old Reticulated Giraffe, was killed by the Copenhagen Zoo — the very entity vested and sworn to protect him — and he was fed to lions because Marius’ genetic stream wasn’t special enough to earn continued living:

The cause of death was a shotgun blast, and after a public autopsy, the animal, who was 11 feet 6 inches, was fed to the zoo’s lions and other big cats.

Administrators said they had decided to kill Marius, who was in good health, because his genes were well represented among the captive giraffe population in European zoos. But that explanation did not satisfy animal rights activists who had mounted a furious last-minute campaign to save him.

Continue reading → The Copenhagen Zoo Kills Marius, the Reticulated Giraffe, and Feeds Him to Lions: Meanwhile, Queens Cracks Down on Undercover Cockfighting

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Repressing the American Dream: Rural Villages as Retirement Communities for Young’uns

There’s a new living meme I’ve been closely watching as it achingly creeps into an everyday reality because of economic compression and the new relativism of the repression of the American Dream for a growing generation of born scavengers.

I’ve been cautiously observing the new momentum of young people moving out of big cities and into small, rural, villages — or their parent’s basement — where the rent is cheap, the food is affordable, and the quality of life is quiet and unsubstantial.

At a time when these young people should be at their maximum earning potential, they are instead in “retirement mode” and collecting welfare subsidies and banking the goodwill of the generation ahead of them.  When it comes time for them to pay back the deed, they will be able to do so because they were never in the earnings game in the first place.

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An Obama Tribute to Mandela that Fell Flat in the Rain

I watched President Obama speaking live on television this morning from the Mandela tribute in the Soweto, South African rain, and I felt for him as he struggled against the weather, a bad public address system, and what seemed like a restless audience hoping for him to move faster through his 30-minute monologue so they could get on with their day:

“To the people of South Africa — people of every race and every walk of life — the world thanks you for sharing Nelson Mandela with us,” the president said. “His struggle was your struggle. His triumph was your triumph. Your dignity and hope found expression in his life, and your freedom, your democracy is his cherished legacy.”

“It is hard to eulogize any man — to capture in words not just the facts and the dates that make a life, but the essential truth of a person — their private joys and sorrows; the quiet moments and unique qualities that illuminate someone’s soul,” Mr. Obama said. “How much harder to do so for a giant of history, who moved a nation toward justice, and in the process moved billions around the world.”

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