In respect to their biology, to their evolutionary history people are much alike, in fact almost exactly the same when compared with representatives of other species. Why is it therefore that the news accounts we read daily, in digital or hard copy, or hear about on the tube, are mostly if not only about the [...]
Archive for October 2009
What is it that keeps peoples apart?
October 31, 2009Are government expenditures threatening the free enterprise system?
October 26, 2009Sometimes I think that this is the only important question confronting the elected leaders of our democracy: Is it the proper and essential role of government to most of all promote fairness or opportunity? Current government spending habits seem to come down on the side of fairness, given that current spending bills will, if nothing [...]
The Pursuit of Happiness
October 25, 2009My daughter, actually one of my four daughters, has just recently made me aware of an interesting and provocative commentary by her former thesis adviser, John Sterman, the Jay W. Forrester Professor of Management at MIT’s Sloan School. The piece was part of an email exchange between Professor Sterman and the NYTimes’s Andrew Revkin, in [...]
More on the Nobel Peace Prize
October 24, 2009Quick, how many winners of the Nobel Peace Prize can you name? Probably a few of your own countrymen? Barack Obama, Al Gore, Jimmy Carter? Anyone else? Well going back a bit further, to 1993, probably Nelson Mandela (and Fredrik Willem De Klerk), and going way back to 1964, Martin Luther King Jr. You’d probably [...]
“It is not good for man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species.” John Stuart Mill
October 22, 2009The year when he wrote this, some 161 years ago, was 1848, in Europe a year of revolutions. Then, as now, technological change was revolutionizing the life of the working classes. From Wikipedia: “A popular press extended political awareness, and new values and ideas such as popular liberalism, nationalism and socialism began to spring up. [...]
Schott’s Weekend Competition: Define Age
October 17, 2009This week Schott’s Vocab is soliciting definitions of age. Lord Cecil suggested: “Old age is the out-patients’ department of purgatory.” Mark Twain is said to have stated: “Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.” Bernard Baruch claimed: “I will never be an old man. To me, old [...]
The threat to Pakistan
October 15, 20099/11 made it become a priority for us, the threat of Al Qaeda taking precedence, at least for a time, over health care, education, illegal immigrants, and global warming, and we set our sights on terrorists and terrorism. And so far we’ve successfully confined the threat, or at least the attacks, to foreign soil. Will [...]
Truths about Healthcare and Education
October 13, 2009Today two op ed writers, Bret Stephens in the Wall Street Journal and William Easterly in the Financial Times, express fundamental truths, the one about education and the other about health care, truths not shared or even recognized by our politicians, but that if they ever were could become powerful driving forces behind significant education [...]
Paul Krugman has it all wrong.
October 10, 2009Paul Krugman has it all wrong in a recent NYTimes op ed piece. “If you had to explain America’s economic success with one word,” he writes, “that word would be ‘education.’” Op Ed writers, even Nobel Prize winners such as Paul Krugman, ought to avoid writing about subjects about which their own knowledge and experience [...]
Ross Douthat in today’s Times
October 5, 2009Many of my “idle thoughts” line up closely with Ross Douthat’s column in today’s Times. He begins by pointing out that the latest census figures show that the gap between the wealthiest Americans and everybody else is widening. This puts the Democrats on the spot because more than the Republicans they have made it almost [...]
