nav-left cat-right
cat-right
Recent Comments
Random Articles
Did Rudolf Steiner write ... The following verse, usually attributed to Rudolf Steiner, has been has been...
Simplify government? It’s not clear to me that with the complexity of modern life we can...
Libertarian nonsense Here is a silly graphic that is circulating on the Internet: The historian in...
Feynman’s epistomol... Is science compatible with Anthroposophy? Is Anthroposophy compatible with...
The Two-Party System In a country of 330 million, represented by two political parties in a system...
What to make of Göbekli T... Göbekli Tepe is an archaeological site in central Turkey with stone structures...
Flynn lied on his securit... From the NY Times: “Michael T. Flynn misled Pentagon investigators about...
Steiner on Education “Vague and the general phrases – ‘the harmonious development...

Ryan on Congress

Interesting observation of the week: “We basically run a coalition government without the efficiency of a parliamentary system.” Speaker Ryan on the US Congress.

Trump the Unprecedented

Historian Julian Zelizer explains in the Atlantic what is actually unprecedented about Trump, and what is frequently called unprecedented, but actually has lots of precedent. The short version: Two things are unprecedented: 1. Unfiltered spur-of-the-moment communications from POTUS (Twitter, rambling interviews) including spontaneous constant attacks on friends and enemies alike. 2. Trumps’s financial conflicts of...

The cost of mass shootings

Mass shootings in the US have cost the victims over $750 million in medical expenses over the past 25 years. Just another form of wealth transfer built into the system; gun company investors get rich selling 200 million firearms into the population. Medical industry profits from ER (seriously, have you seen what a trip to ER for dehydration costs?). Ordinary people pay to fix their own damage when they get hit with a bullet....

Intellectually honest headline of the day

Intellectually honest headline of the day: “CERN Scientists Conclude that the Universe Should Not Exist”.

GOP Tax Plan III

The race is on: Can Republicans pass huge billionaire tax cuts before the average voter figures out how much they will have to pay to cover it? Today the House narrowly passed a budget blueprint that transfers huge amounts of wealth to the super-rich on the backs of the upper-middle and middle class. Will the Senate go along? Can they get Trump to sign it and thus please the major donors before the reaction builds to levels...

Social media as operant conditioning

Insight of the day: Social media is a massively distributed operant conditioning machine that rewards people into conformity. Conformity to what? Here’s the novel wrinkle: anything. The owners of social media really don’t care where the bandwagon you jump on is going, as long as a lot of people jump on; people whom they will be able to sell. Social media networks alter society through the intrusion of information...

GOP Tax Plan II

So today we get a few hints and details. From what we can gather, Republicans are pushing for a multi-trillion dollar tax cut, at a time when the budget deficit is at a 4-year high and growing. 80% of the cut is going to the 1%, with most of that actually going to the top 1% of the top 1%. This is nothing less than a raid on the US Treasury by the ultra-rich. There is simply no public-good argument to be made for bankrupting...

GOP Tax Plan

I’d like to comment on the new Republican tax plan, but no one has seen it yet. Apparently the strategy this time is to pass it before anyone has a chance to figure out what is in it. Why? Because the Republican big donors want their ROI. For forty years they have been funding the ascent of the Republican party so that when the party finally takes over the government they can slash top taxes. Now they have the...