The latest marketer to cash in on the trend of adults wanting to remain children is a museum. The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), that venerable icon to the natural sciences, is now offering special sleepover parties—for adults only. That’s right, for a mere $375 a person ($325 for members), you can snuggle up […]
Have we fallen down a rabbit hole and entered a surrealistic world as Alice did when she fell into Wonderland? Have we walked through a looking glass to a world that looks like ours but operates on a weird kind of logic? I can’t be the only one who looks at the political scene in […]
Read More… from American political situation begins to resemble Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Dennis M. Jones is a billionaire who claims that the $34 million he paid for his new yacht was a form of charity since the yacht creates jobs in the manufacturing, maintenance, cleaning, furnishing, decorating, cooking, and serving industries. Funny, that’s the very same self-serving rationale that society matron Cornelia Martin gave to justify an […]
Read More… from Greedy, self-serving billionaire thinks buying yacht is act of charity
What comes first to mind when you think of the United States? High standard of living? Beacon of representational democracy? The melting pot? Consumer society? Fast food and blockbuster movies? Land of the free? Home of the brave? Not me. When I think of the United States, the first image that comes to my mind […]
Read More… from Fill in the blank: Americans are living in the land of the____. My answer: guns
Two commercials currently on TV are making me—and probably most other viewers—squirm with discomfort. Both are meant to be funny, but once explained, the logic behind the humor may turn stomachs. The first is a spot for Lay’s potato chips that opens with an animated version of the classic Mr. Potato toy getting home from […]
Another transparently deceptive article on wealth inequality by George Mason economics professor Tyler Cowen has me wondering if Cowen has decided to play Washington Generals to Thomas Piketty’s Harlem Globetrotters. The Harlem Globetrotters is an exhibition basketball team known for its entertaining feats of dribbling, passing and scoring, often to a catchy version of the […]
It turns out that Heather Bresch is as much a patriot as she was a student. Ms. Bresch is chief executive officer of Mylan, Inc., a large maker of generic prescription drugs which recently announced that it is buying Abbott Labs for the purpose of moving to the Netherlands and enjoying lower taxes. As Andrew […]
Reading about the 17th century in Geoffrey Parker’s Global Crisis really helps one understand our current challenges. Parker’s thesis is that the extreme weather conditions across the world in the 17th century tipped what would otherwise be normal political disruptions into rapid social, economic and political decay. The Fronde revolt in France, the 30 Years […]
Read More… from Anti-tax sentiment in the 17th century was anti-war; today, it’s pro the wealthy
We’re seeing more theories exploring the reasons why the West dominates the world order or why the West has developed a more advanced culture. A few years back, a scientist tried to show that geography determined when and which cultures would dominate the globe at any given time. In 1997’s Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared […]
Read More… from Racism reborn as theories on Western superiority
A recent survey found that a sampling of about 1,300 Americans rank Ronald Reagan as our best president since World War II and Barack Obama as the worst—just nosing out that supreme incompetent George W. Bush AKA Bush II. I’m not sure what goes into the thinking of most people, but if we judge the […]
Read More… from Ranking the presidents since World War II shows what a sorry lot they have been