The following essays were published from March to July 2007. Specific topics and literary references are listed in the “March to July 2007 Index.” Essay One The Outlook Is Bleak Re: Anna Nicole Smith by Teri Ong If Guinness gave a record for the world’s longest lawyer joke it would almost certainly be held by Charles Dickens’ novel Bleak House. In most editions, the book runs over 800 pages. It was the novel C. S. Lewis happened to be reading when he said that there never was a novel long enough, nor a teacup big enough to suit his tastes. […]

by Teri Ong In a Time Magazine essay entitled “The Great Reset: The End of Excess” (4/6/09) Kurt Andersen makes the case that the current “economic crisis” is good for us because it is forcing us to rethink a fat lifestyle that has left us bloated and sick as a society. He cites many statistics to show where we have gone in the past 25 years: consumer debt up 35%, savings rates down from 11% to 1%, legalized gambling up from 2 states to 48 states, average weight of humans up 20 pounds per person, etc. Andersen calls it our […]

by Teri Ong On my flight to London three weeks ago, I had occasion to watch a BBC documentary on the “Real Atlantis.” The premise of the archaeological detective story was that the quasi-historical accounts of the sunken city of Atlantis probably referred to the destruction of the Minoan culture by water. The current theory is that a giant tsunami inundated Minoan cities when the nearby volcano Thera blew up in the most gigantic eruption known to man. Educated guesses put the death toll at approximately 80% of the total Minoan population, which essentially ended their highly advanced civilization. As […]

by Teri Ong I arrived in London yesterday at 8:30 a.m. I left Denver at supper time and arrived in London at breakfast time the next day. There is a sense that it feels like a time warp– like traveling into the future. It is a very strange sort of sensation if you take the time to analyze it. You get on a plane; in a short while you are served dinner; you entertain yourself after dinner for a few hours; you attempt to sleep for an hour or two; they turn on the lights, and serve you breakfast. When […]

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