gsindell

She seemed like what you might call ‘a nice person.’ He seemed decent enough, too. His voice a tad too loud, but not meaning to be obnoxious. They were just enjoying the days between Christmas and New Years, chatting, flirting, browsing the new non-fiction cases at City Lights. Multitasking ran deep in their veins. They were joking, scanning book jackets and discussing several topics at once. I would have turned back to my browsing, when suddenly it caught my eye. She wasn’t even looking at... Read Full Story

William Safire passed away this year and with him the hope for another slew of his year-end prognostications. As an insider’s insider he would frequently predict Israeli-Arab detente, Henry Kissinger’s return to the State Department and Richard Nixon’s final vindication. Of course, since much of his insider’s knowledge came straight from Nixon and Kissinger it wasn’t too hard to predict Safire’s success rate. (About the same as Nixon’s second term.) Into this vacuum someone needs to step... Read Full Story

Recently I was given just 24 hours to explore a first production build of the Apple iTablet — and here are my first impressions and discoveries. First, it’s more like an iPhone than a MacBook. The operating system depends on gestures, and expands the vocabulary. Your hand is going to be dancing. Second big news: it’s not just an application platform and full-color reader and media player. It’s also a dual camera and, yes, read this twice, a phone. And therein lies a tale. For those whose... Read Full Story

Frank Rich gets it right more often than not, and his column in the Times last Sunday swept the entire decade into a neat little dustpan and dumped it in the garbage. His insight is that Tiger Woods is truly the person of the decade, a fraud capping a decade of frauds that started with Enron, wound its way through a phony war, went broke with phony financiers, and concluded with a phony hero. Fortunately Rich ended with a spiritual and uplifting finale that, at least for me, had me singing on... Read Full Story

Our favorite Italian restaurant recently sent us a note with the news that truffle season was upon us once again and we might consider coming in for a few grams of the freshly shaved fungi on our pasta, for a princely supplemental increment of $60 a garnish. Seems reasonable, in a way, when I discover that white Alba truffles are up at $3000 a pound this season. Which brings me to book pricing. Why do we sell books as if they were potatoes when many of them are actually more like truffles... Read Full Story

I had abandoned my plans to buy Sarah Palin’s autobiography. You know how it is — you hear about what is likely to be a great book and you get all ready to read it, but you don’t quite pay attention to what day it’s going to come out, and then all those critics get an early copy and before long everybody is already telling you about all the great stuff that’s in the book and if you don’t put your fingers in your ears and go la la la it’s all spoiled. Sometimes I wish everyone could just... Read Full Story

On August 17, 2009, President Obama addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars: “But we must never forget: This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is a — this is fundamental to the defense of our people.” This is either true or not true... Read Full Story

On August 17, 2009, President Obama addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars: “But we must never forget: This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is a — this is fundamental to the defense of our people.” This is either true or not true... Read Full Story

On August 17, 2009, President Obama addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars: “But we must never forget: This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is a — this is fundamental to the defense of our people.” This is either true or not true... Read Full Story

On August 17, 2009, President Obama addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars: “But we must never forget: This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is a — this is fundamental to the defense of our people.” This is either true or not true... Read Full Story