Connective Visions

Although the source was a U.S. one and ultimately deserves the credit, my kudos to Norway for bringing me my own national news before the standard channels here did. Last night, my first awareness that the House had passed the health-care reform bill came from the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet – which I was not visiting [...]

My father finished his midday news viewing today and announced, “They say it’s going to rain.” As it was pouring buckets outside, I couldn’t argue with them, and I said so. He frowned and said, “Yes, but I didn’t turn on the TV to find that out. I want to know when it’s going to [...]

This weekend, I had two occasions to encounter the topic of envy. When that much envy surfaces, it seems time to give it another look – especially when both episodes have, for me, a component of delight, which is not the noticeable offspring of envy. What Is Envy, Really? The first occasion came when friends [...]

Note: Having read about 50 articles on how to write blog headlines for search engine optimization (SEO) and return on investment (ROI), my considered decision was to go with this one, which is highly unlikely to satisfy anyone with an MBA. It is a consciously passive-aggressive move on my part as a writer, the point [...]

Today I sporadically followed the results of the curling semifinals on NBC’s Olympic Web site and on my beloved Facebook group, The Norwegian Olympic Curling Team’s Pants, as I didn’t have the station access (or time) to watch the whole match. The group’s updates were most reassuring as NBC had the Norway vs. Switzerland results [...]

I’m a terrific fan of the Winter Olympics. I am no fan at all of sports commentary, and I generally ignore it. But several comments on the 2010 Vancouver Olympics have caught my attention and seem worth a bit of critical probing. One was Andy Rooney’s closing remarks to the American news-magazine show 60 Minutes [...]

Upon visiting my father in the living room, where he was watching the midday news, I got a dose of the commercials used to target his audience group. They are dominantly directed toward senior citizens, with the assurance that the viewers are incapable of “regular” lives. Most advertising comes from pharmaceutical companies and describes a [...]