February 1, 2012 My son recently sent me a very beautiful but frightening piece of video art that more than 609,000 people have seen since it was uploaded onto Youtube in October 2010. The video punches us in the face with the realization that we have already poisoned the Earth with radiation from testing nuclear […]
January 31, 2012 The mainstream news media in the United States have put a completely negative spin on the news that by 2060 Japan will lose one third of its population by natural means—no famine, no war, no epidemic, no forced expulsion, just fewer people being born. The articles all dwelt on the pension crisis […]
January 30, 2012 Over the weekend, Gannett columnist Michael Reagan (the adopted child of former president Ronald Reagan) decried the double standard that compelled the news media to publicize Newt Gingrich’s past sexual peccadilloes after it ignored the affair that John Edwards was having as a candidate for president in 2008 while his wife was […]
Some in the news media have praised Rick Santorum for his “Why can’t we all just get along” moment in the middle of the Jacksonville, Florida performance of the traveling reality show called the 2012 Republican debates. The pundits missed the main point of Santorum’s words: what Rick did was express approval of the corruption […]
January 25, 2012 Progressives, liberals and blue-dog Democrats face an interesting mental puzzle: Who do we want to win the Republican presidential nomination: Mitt Romney, who is seen as being able to attract more centrist and independent voters and therefore more likely to defeat Obama? Or Newt Gingrich, who is seen as less likely to […]
I’ve been reading Daniel Kahneman’s very accessible and entertaining Thinking, Fast and Slow, which is his highly anecdotal take on more than 40 years of research by him, his students, his friends and his associates about how the mind operates. I recommend it highly to anyone who wants to know why people think as they […]
One of the four short subjects on the “Blackboard” page of the New York Times’ quarterly “Education Life” insert is a gee-whiz Cheez-whiz feature on CliffsNotes Films recent release of animated seven-minute versions of six of Shakespeare’s most often-taught plays. That’s 7 minutes a play. From the publisher of study guides which all too often […]
The one-day protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA) accomplished its objective: With three major sponsors running from the proposed legislation, SOPA and PIPA backers are scrambling to revise the law to make it more palatable to the Wikipedia’s and Googles of the world. The Stop SOPA/PIPA […]
Read More… from Another skirmish won and lost in three-way battle for control of the Internet
My son and I enjoyed the distinct pleasure of having lunch in a Chinese restaurant in Santa Cruz, California with G. William Domhoff the other day. Bill Domhoff has long studied and written about the sociology of power, which means he explores who has power in the United States, how they got it, how they […]
Rich Karlgaard’s publication, Forbes, has long glorified the lone captain of industry who shapes the destiny of companies and nations. The flip side of its great man theory is the belief that people are responsible for their own fates and should not depend on government for handouts. Before and during Karlgaard’s rein as Forbes’ publisher, the […]