One can almost hear the wailing Blues line – “Why Obama and Romney Ain’t Your Man”. It has a haunting truth to it as it careens around your head to a pulsing back beat. Day after day the the obvious becomes a refrain ever louder. These dudes aren’t going to do anything about the...
Readers of this blog have seen at least a dozen articles about how the GOP is running of the the rails – no longer functioning as an an effective party in our political processes and sabotaging our Democracy. This is a very serious assertion. But take a look at the evidence: In A Two...
Return of the Left in China. The story of Bo Xilai has an eerie mirror to US politics. The populist Chinese leader from the western and more impoverished province of Chongqing had ruled with tough sometimes brutal policing. But he had also catered to the Left movement in China that would see reforms on housing, food...
This morning I had a strange encounter with two women from the WatchTower organization. They came to the door holding the Bible and asking me if I believed in the Bible while quoting from Scriptures. Now to put this situation in context, I am rushing to finish some computing work for a later meeting...
Free online university courses have really hit their stride this quarter. Courses from Michigan, MIT, Stanford, University of California at Berkley are available now. Free course material has been available from a variety of sources. Near and dear to this blog and web developer are the w3schools set of tutorials on all key coding in web...
There are three troubling events that are occurring and raise concerns about the ability of Body Commons that is the USA to “heal thyself”. The first is the Trayvon Martin case in Florida. A white shot a black youth in very questionable circumstances. It is the aftermath that is the concern. TheDailyBeast has been...
Ross Douthat at the NYTimes has written a spirited rebuttal of the notion that the Republican Primary Process has helped to scuttle the Party’s Presidential prospects. He insists that … well lets let Ross speak for himself: Let’s stipulate that this has not been the most edifying of primary seasons. The policy debates have...
While the Takethe5th has been doing this series of articles on The Wheels Are Coming Off The Republican Party , Paul Krugman at the NYTimes has been tearing the hide off the Big Elephant . Here is a Krugman sampler of three of the most recent editorials: 1 – Moochers Against Welfare There is a...
In case you had not noticed, The Wheels Are Coming Off The Republican Party. You know that is the case when George Will on ABC TV’s This Week with George Stephanopoulis starts taking historical potshots at the Republican chances of defeating President Obama ‘when it should be a cakewalk”. But more seriously, the...
We said it here first but now David Brooks at the NYTimes is confirming what has become ever more obvious – the wheels are coming off the Republican Party. And this is not just the fact that all of the GOP Presidential candidates trail President Obama in the polls. David attributes the phenomenon to...
Both fascinating and frustrating reading. The story of Joseph Needham collecting together the history and legacy of China's technological triumph's is utterly fascinating. But frustrating is the failure of Winchester to shed clear light on why a)China did not already have such a hitorical trove in Beijing and b) why did China miss out on the Industrial Revolution while Japan, even more reclusive, did not.
