Sailing the Last Voyage with Newton and Pascal
In the middle of a brief recap of the 2005 season of Donald Trump's Apprentice, this sudden revelation: The degree-holders were no richer than the degree-free. In fact, the average net worth of the street-smart team was three times that of the book-smart one. Were the college kids more intelligent? No again. Time after time, …
Continue reading "Maybe There Is Something to Those Cocktail Parties"
Some people evidently work under that assumption, as this ugly event in New York attests: New Yorkers woke up Thursday morning to find colorful new street art popping up on trash cans along the Lower East Side. Their message is clear – Trump and his supporters are "trash." The controversial posters feature images of “Trump …
Continue reading "Getting Rid of the White People Won’t Get Rid of Christianity"
The problem with left-watching is that, if you do it long enough, it will have you scratching your head more than making you angry. Fifty years ago, leftists hated patriotic people. They burned the flag; the courts affirmed their right to do so. They spat on returning veterans from Vietnam. They pushed the sexual revolution …
Continue reading "They Didn’t Like Patriotism, and They Don’t Like Nationalism. That Leaves…"
And no a moment too soon either: this, another journey of the genre: My education required a metaphysical moving away, I learned. A professor who could see me struggling through change asked me what scared me about it. I told her that I worried I would lose something, and she reassured me that I would …
Well, it's over but the shouting, and there's lots of that: Brett Kavanaugh has become an Associate Justice on SCOTUS, after one of the sorriest episodes in American government since Watergate. (And there are many to choose from...) Conservatives have high hopes for him on the Court, which is why the opposition was so vociferous. …
Some of my readers are aware that I was involved in our long-term family business for about half of my working career, and still do work in that field. One thing I left behind, however, is industrial relations, or dealing with a trade union. Our company had one for many years in Chicago and again …
Continue reading "Amazon.com, the Company that Could Use a Trade Union"
Francis Fukuyama, who predicted the "end of history" at the end of the Cold War, backtracks: Twenty-nine years later, it seems that the realists haven’t gone anywhere, and that history has a few more tricks up its sleeve. It turns out that liberal democracy and free trade may actually be rather fragile achievements. (Consumerism appears …
This video recently appeared on UK Labour's Twitter feed: This is how we re-build Britain: through businesses, jobs and communities. Watch this 👇 pic.twitter.com/4GQXBJdgQa — The Labour Party (@UKLabour) August 25, 2018 If we look at this objectively, the major difference between this and what Donald Trump is trying to do is that Trump is …
Continue reading "The Difference Between Donald Trump and UK Labour"
Elizabeth Kolbert at the New Yorker has written an interesting article about philanthropy, "then and now." "Then" was during the Gilded Age at the end of the Nineteenth century and the beginning of the Twentieth. "Now" is the age of the Silicon Valley magnates. In both cases, the recipients of the wealth are a) burdened …
Continue reading "The Solution Jesus Offered for the Wealthy Wasn’t Philanthropy"
In this excellent article about eventual Chinese rule of the Internet, the first goal of China is this one: Cyberpower sits at the intersection of four Chinese national priorities. First, Chinese leaders want to ensure a harmonious Internet. That means one that guides public opinion, supports good governance, and fosters economic growth but also is …
Continue reading "Sometimes Our Goals and Those of the Chinese are the Same"
