Fear comes alive on Halloween. Halloween costumes are practical technology designed to simplify our joking about frightening subjects. The ghosts and the goblins are the outside joke. The inside joke is death. Halloween is the night when death walks around our neighborhoods dressed like a common Joe as if to remind us of its inevitability….
George Washington never joined a political party because he feared that competition between self-serving factions would weaken the nation.
Occupy Wall Street demonstrators camping out on private property arouse the ire of many who believe they should make their point and go home. “What’s their point?” is one charge leveled against these demonstrators. Responses pointing to corporate greed and the excessive influence of lobbyists seem more complaint than plan. Bonus Marchers This is an…
In the 1980 musical comedy film classic “The Blues Brothers,” “Joliet” Jake and Elwood Blues are on a “mission from God” to save a Catholic orphanage. A woman stands in their way and threatens to destroy them. She says: “You miserable slug! You think you can talk your way out of this? You betrayed me.”…
In 1875 the United States Supreme Court ruled that the federal government is responsible for regulating immigration. In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower urgently empowered the Immigration and Naturalization Service to “remove illegal immigrants, mostly Mexican nationals, from the southwestern United States.” The expulsion program’s official name was Operation Wetback. Border patrol, state and local…
The doomsday prophet Harold Camping recently revised his prediction. Camping now predicts October 21 2011 will be humanity’s last day. What’s comforting about this update is that “The end is going to come very quietly, probably within the next month….Probably… there will be no pain suffered by anyone because of their rebellion against God. Unbelievers might just…
A recently leaked memo suggested that British Prime Minister David Cameron’s government was not doing well with women voters. As reported in The Economist on Oct. 15, 2011, this finding may account for “a stream of female-friendly policy announcements, including calls for more women on company boards and new guidelines to shield children from online…
Weapons drones with names like Predator and Reaper are now actively engaged in combat. A recent article in The Economist suggests that the “next generation of drones will have artificial intelligence giving them a high degree of operational autonomy including – if legal and ethical questions can be resolved – the [self-contained?] ability to shoot…
We must never forget that abject poverty is an inescapable reality for more than a billion people living on Earth today. The majority of us pray that civilization will learn to better manage and even overcome this ongoing social catastrophe. Meanwhile, most of humanity expects to better their own personal circumstances. Recession, Depression, Famine Humanity…