Once upon a time there was a Republican president who was a friend of the middle class, gave them a break and made the rich pay for it. He presided over one of the most robust economic growths in history, and made America great. No slogans, no razzmatazz, just action. During his administration the tax…
Don’t know about you, but I have an interesting relationship with artificial intelligence. Well, to be truthful, I have an interesting relationship with a lot of human intelligence, too, and that’s part of this rant. I use AI a lot, especially for grunt research and for techie stuff. Second best tech assistant I’ve ever had,…
Among the many American stories which are part true and part myth is the heroic saga of Meriwether Lewis and William Clark whose well-funded expedition, between 1804 and 1806 adventured across North America from the white-settled East to the Pacific. Almost without exception, Americans will tell you confidently that this was the first such voyage…
You know the type – they like to get you in a corner at gatherings, position themselves between you and any dignified escape route, lean in conspiratorily, and begin to share in infinite detail their life stories, their views on fusion energy, and how they would solve the world’s problems. You’ve never heard so much…
You know those times you’re on a phone call, and after you’ve rattled on for five minutes you realize the other party has been disconnected for the last four? I think this is what the great communicator George Bernard Shaw had in mind when he said, “The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion…
The pirates ships of yesteryear were rough companies, filled with a motley and ragtag crew often with nowhere else to go, little internal loyalty, but bound together by convenience and mutuality of self-interest. Or, more accurately, a symbiosis of self-interest. The biggest, baddest pirate got to be captain, and the rest eye-gouged and shanked one…
Houston, we have a problem. As serial adulterer Attorney General Ken Paxton introduces legislation to ensure every Texas school child invokes God’s blessing by reciting the Lord’s Prayer, there’s this one small difficulty. And of course, the same problem shows up anywhere religion is officially mandated. Actually, there are several problems, but first the main…
When I was seventeen I took a job at the local sawmill. I was on the picket crew, our job being to turn leftovers from the lumber side into usable pickets for survey stakes and snowfences. It was neither pretty nor elegant, and it was clearly noisy and dangerous. The saw band was exposed and…
Hopefully, this won’t get me too much hate mail. I don’t intend to defend or put down any particular position, simply to point out that nobody really owns a righteous corner on this subject, and we all need to ponder it at a very personal level. At the literal end of the day, these are…
Let’s call a spade a manually actuated excavation device. Why? Well, I can think of at least four reasons. First, “spade” sounds like “spayed”, which is what we say of a lady dog who has lost her bits. Indirectly, it’s a sex word, and we never actually say sex words, we always use euphemisms. But…