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  • Mitt Romney’s Body Man

    ByJohn Brown

    There’s going to be a novel and movie about a presidential candidate’s Body Man. I can feel it. The topic is too rich.

    I’m not talking about his body guard. Or some wardrobe guy. Or, please, some sexual thing (good grief, people). I’m talking about the dude whose task it is to free up the candidate so he can focus on meeting, talking, etc. instead of rousting about for a pen or cell phone.

    Check out this NY Times video on Romney’s body man.

    One of my favorite stories of all time featured two characters in just such a relationship. That would be Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien writes in his letters that he based their relationship on his observations during his military service in World War 1 of the relationship between a batman and his officer.  “Batman” being, not a Bruce Wayne wannabe with a utility belt, but a Soldier-Servant assigned to an officer in the British army of the time.

    I want a story about a body man. Or a body woman. It feels so delicious.

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  • The Weaponization of Insects

    ByJohn Brown

    This idea.

    Oh, my, heck.

    One of my first novelettes was about using insects as military grade spies. Just a bit of wetware to get control of their brains. Then mount a nano recording and transmitting device…

    How are you going to stop that?

    But wait–insects can be far more sinister.

    Jeffrey A. Lockwood has written Six-Legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War. I can’t wait to read this. I hope it’s not a fluff book. Can’t wait to report my findings to you. Read more about it.

    Oh, and did I mention that I’ve got weaponized insects in the novel I’m currently working on? Crown of a Dark God is turning into such a blast to write.

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    “How It All Came Crashing Down” by Peter B. Gardner

    ByJohn Brown

    Everybody knows that we got into this recession because banks began lending money to people who had terrible credit ratings, right? People who didn’t have to prove they even had a job. I mean, how long are you going to stay in business when you keep handing out dough to people you never hear from again?

    But is that all there is to it? And was it really just the fault of congress because they told Freddie Mac and Fannie May (the organizations that purchased loans) that they had to start purchasing these highly risky things? Or was it all those greedy Wall Streeters?

    In this must-read article, “How it All Came Crashing Down,” BYU econ professors explain how we got into this mess—and what we can learn from it.

    But that’s not the end of the story. Ira Glass and the folks at This American Life uncover deeper causes of the problem in their must-listen show “The Watchmen” (no, not the movie). I mean, come on, we were told these high-risk loans were as dangerous as milkshakes. Shouldn’t SOMEBODY have seen it?

    President Obama keeps saying that the root of the problem was that there wasn’t enough government oversight. Sounds good, doesn’t it?  We’ll get disinterested Uncle Sam to protect us from all these investment bullies. But if we dig a bit deeper, it appears that Uncle Sam was one of the major players at the root of the mess.

    Ouch.

    Read. Listen. They are two fabulous pieces.

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