Monthly Archives: September 2018

Contradictions of shark romance

“We all knew this day would come” ran the big front page headline about the fatal shark attack in Wellfleet. Well, actually, no, we didn’t. Six deaths annually worldwide on average (and first fatality in Massachusetts in 82 years) is pretty good odds Sure, those odds rise when you eliminate all the people who don’t […]

September 28, 2018 – 10:17 am | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged | Comments (0)

Crazy poor Americans

Can we talk about “Crazy Rich Asians”? We crazy, poor Americans are turning out in crazy numbers to see this movie, whose exotic opulence transcends its cliched romantic comedy plot. The movie seems fresh, not just in its all-Asian cast, but in widening our continent-locked, monolinguistic diversity horizon. The plot takes us to Singapore, where […]

September 13, 2018 – 10:52 am | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Good for us; shame on us

You know that trick of eyesight: how you can see a moon crater as concave or as convex, but not both at the same time? It keeps flipping between. There was a story in this paper recently that produced for me something of the same effect. Back in the 80s and early 90s, Ben Buck, […]

September 3, 2018 – 1:07 pm | By Brent | Posted in Columns | Tagged , , | Comments (0)