Robot Jazz

  Eddie Muller, the "Czar of Noir", once opined that peak American culture occurred in the 1950s.  For all the failings of America during those early post-war years, it is hard to argue with that take. Not only was it the latter portion of the "Golden Era" for Hollywood, but it was also considered a golden era for science fiction. It was during this time that such greats as Ray Bradbury, Robert A. Heinlein, Alfred Bester, and the visionary editors of Galaxy Magazine,  who pushed the genre toward psychological and sociological storytelling, came into their own.  Even radio, the then-dominant entertainment format, got in on the sci-fi act with such wonderful programs as X Minus One and Exploring Tomorrow .  You can still listen to many of them today . These radio series can be an excellent ‘deep core’ survey of the genre, covering tonally diverse classics from Tom Godwin’s heartbreaking hard‑sci‑fi tale The Cold Equations to Robert Sheckley’s lighter, satirical T...

  As a student of history and political philosophy, I've always known that America's role as the global good guy would, like all things, eventually come to an end.  When it did occur, I envisioned an America that had fallen into the clutches of a super-villain, a Julian Felsenburgh-type character: intelligent, accomplished, charismatic, and, of course, possessing a satanic evil secreted beneath those virtues. What I did not imagine was that America, in fact, would fall to the complete opposite: a man whose only noticeable accomplishment was squandering the wealth he had inherited from his father, whose evil was a bragging point and whose virtues were nonexistent.  Of course, I am referring to Donald Trump, a man who has infamously bragged about sexually assaulting women and getting away with it, who is a convicted felon for bribing a porn star to keep quiet about their extra-marital affair, and a man who led a televised violent insurrection against the US government so he...

One of the advantages of keeping a blog for over a year is that it becomes a journal of sorts - a record of what you got right, what you got wrong, and what you saw coming before the pundit class caught up. And so far, my prognostications have been, to borrow a phrase, “bigly” correct. Recently, I wrote that Unconditional Surrender Trump has surrendered. I said this when Trump abruptly declared that hostilities with Iran were over and that he had accepted Iranian demands as the basis for a long‑term settlement. At the time, I wrote: “Somehow, America went from demands for regime change, an end to Iran’s nuclear program, an end to its drone and ballistic missile production, and an end to support for groups like Hezbollah, to an agreement that discards all those demands and instead cements Iran’s status as a regional power. After over a dozen U.S. servicemembers dead, hundreds wounded, and a fortune in destroyed equipment and bases — not to mention the damage to GCC states and their oil ...

  Despite my aspirations to the contrary, I don't have a memory as brief as a goldfish's. What is more, I possess an IQ higher than that of a goldfish. Because of these two factors, I did not vote for Trump in 2024 after witnessing the stunning incompetence,  corruption, and criminality surrounding him over the last decade. However, much to my chagrin, 2024 demonstrated that almost half of voting America possessed a piscine mind when it came to politics, and Trump was re-elected. Knowing what would soon be unleashed on this formerly great nation, I began chronicling these regressive days out of schadenfreude, if for no other reason. I knew payback was going to be a bitch, and I was looking forward to adapting William Tecumseh Sherman's civil war-era maxim: voters have chosen Trump as a remedy; let us give them all they can stand. Well, here we are, not even two full years into Trump's second term, and his voters are now rejecting the very remedy they have chosen: The Ir...

Ouch. That is all I can say. "Ouch!" Why? Because I hurt my back! Now, if I had hurt my back doing something reckless, say,  like doing handstands after having a triple-martini lunch, it would be an easier injury to bear as there would be a clear reason for it. However, in reality, I hurt my back by...putting on a sock!  A sock! Don't ask me how! I wasn't doing anything I hadn't done a thousand times before. And before you ask, no, I don't have a history of back pain or back injuries. In fact, I felt just great the day it happened! Ironically, I was getting ready to hit the free weights again, a long-practiced routine in which I deadlift up to 100 pounds.  Yeah, I have a strong back. Dr. Copilot informs me that such an injury is common in "middle-aged men", so...yeah.  No reason, other than I am slowly decaying, I guess. Be that as it may, today is the first day when I feel I can sit up and do a little writing to catch up on our depressing days. This...

  Well, the peace talks in Pakistan have now come and gone, and, as expected, failed. I don't think anyone expected it to succeed. As I wrote in my last post, the American delegation was what I called the Three Idiot Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Vance, Kushner, and Witkoff. Yeah, that bag of mediocrity was never going to accomplish much of anything, and they didn't. The explanation for the failure seems to be that Vance and his team went into the negotiations with a maximalist position, which is to say making inflexible demands despite not having the cards, as Trump would say. Iran called their bluff and refused to concede. And that is where the talks ended, albeit there is a contingent of professional diplomats remaining behind from both parties, an important detail because it is often these unseen professionals who are responsible for succeeding where the high-profile envoys fail. Before they occurred, I wasn't sure if the talks would end with the Trump regime agreeing to ...