http://www.ojaiorange.com Celebrate the 50th anniversary of Mensa in North America! The origin of Mensa in North America by Peter Sturgeon. The first handful of Mensa members in North America joined between 1951 and 1959. One such American was a reporter named John Wilcock, who attended a Mensa meeting while visiting England. He returned and wrote a column about Mensa for The Village Voice. http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2010/110610a.php http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2009/110610a.php “Most politicians wait until they get elected to get indicted. I’ve already been there. I’m saving the voters time and money” —former madame Kristin David, hopeful candidate for governor of New York http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2010/103010.php http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2009/103010.php “I feel they have all been bought off. Who is the lobbyist for the American people?” —disgruntled voter in the Los Angeles Times http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2010/102310.php http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2009/102310.php Maintenance of the status quo is the only possible precaution against the West Banks falling under the control of Hamas and therefore Iran, both of which have the declared purpose of putting an end to the Jewish state. The end game of the two-state solution, then, is illusory, wishful thinking, outdated because there are now two incompatible Palestines, and with Israel that makes three states. Three into two won’t go —David Pryce-Jones in National Review http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2010/101610.php http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2009/101610.php "The Republican base is part of a conservative movement. The Democratic base, by contrast, is a loose coalition that elects a new president and then goes home, expecting the new president to deliver miracles." --Robert B. Reich in The American Prospect http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2010/100910.php http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2009/100910.php TRADER JOE’S IS SO secretive about its operations that they declined to cooperate when Fortune planned a cover story. “No ordinary grocery chain,"  raved the magazine, nevertheless, “It’s an offbeat, fun discovery zone that elevates shopping from a chore to a cultural experience”. http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2010/100210.php http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2009/100210.php This week the 50th anniversary of the making of The Misfits film is being celebrated in Nevada. Click here to read a column about the making of the film that ran in this space last year. http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2010/092510.php http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2009/092510.php From FDR to JFK to Clinton, something like the tea party fluoresces every time a Democrat wins the presidency. The only difference: This time theyve taken over the GOP"--Mother Jones http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2010/091810.php http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2009/091810.php Lukenbach, Texas: The romance of this place was in my mind as soon as I heard Waylon Jennings singing the eponymous song and my plans to visit have endured ever since. Its hardly a place at all, being merely a collection of ramshackle, wooden shanties clustered around a post office (1849) which now serves a general store offering everything from T-shirts for lady bikers and Stetson hats to guitar-shaped flyswatters. http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2010/091110.php http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2009/091110.php YEAR AFTER YEAR, the most attractive magazine to be found is not a magazine at all but the super-sized Taschen book catalog, a giant folio of eye-catching pictures and irresistible text about everything from Michelangelo’s life and works to Japanese cinema, from prefab houses to wearable artifacts. Normally, if you’re on a modest budget, you might wince at the elevated prices of these volumes   ($1000 for a Christo and Jeanne-Claude retrospective, $2000 for Dennis Hopper’s 1960 photographs) but the images shown are so huge, so memorable and so abundant, that just owning the catalog (free) is like having a  mini art collection. http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2010/090410.php http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2009/090410.php “The most interesting things in life come looking for you rather than the other way around” —Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness in Monitor on Psychology magazine. IT’S ABSOLUTELY SHAMEFUL the way that the U.S. keeps more people in prison than almost any other civilized country. “Justice is harsher in America than in any other rich country” says the Economist, reporting that proportionately this country incarcerates five times more people than Britain, nine times more than Germany and 12 times more than Japan.  One in 400 Americans were in jail in 1970, now the figure is one in 100 with the number of drug offenders in federal and state lock-ups having increased 14-fold since 1980. http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2010/082810.php http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2009/082810.php IT’S SAFE TO GUESS that the general public never hears about what really goes on in our hallowed halls of congress—the wasted time, the hypocrisies, the idiocies, the basic indifference to and contempt for the ordinary people that these inflated, god-like humans display. Some hint of it is displayed in George Packer’s piece, The Empty Chamber, in last week’s New Yorker http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2010/082110.php http://www.ojaiorange.com/column/2009/082110.php