Isn’t It Rich? by Randall Auxier This fellow stands out in a crowd. I’ll bet he wants it that way. Most of us would be unable to connect with him. Say, you and me are having coffee and he wanders into the Starbucks. Are we allowed to stare? Surely the answer is “yes, you…
My name is Hugh and I am a football junkie fan. I am fully aware that there is an overwhelming stench of corruption at the collegiate level and an alarming number of the players at both the pro and college levels are borderline felons — some of them over the borderline. I also know many…
Belly Up Boys! by Gary L. Herstein, Guest Blogger Let me tell you a story. Well, first, let me explain why I want to tell you a story. Science (for example) can give us a pretty compelling account about what and how things are, employing the tools of logical coherence and empirical adequacy.…
Extreme Virtue 11: The Land of the Free by Randall Auxier The stray apostrophe on this sign doesn’t surprise me. No one likes a grammar snob, but I don’t like this sign. It comes from “Goldwater country,” now world famous for its inhospitality. The meaning of “white” is a moving target, isn’t it? With…
A Giant Leap by Randall Auxier There was no internet, needless to say. That gave the US government a kind of control over images that we can barely imagine today. No one fully understood the power back then. I like watching the characters in Mad Men as they gradually discover what images can do…
In Robert Reich’s Facebook post of November 4, 2013, he writes, “The biggest irony of the last three decades is that the football field of American politics has moved to the right just as most Americans have slid downward. Ever since Ronald Reagan first peddled the snake oil of trickle-down economics, the rich have received…
Of Mushroom Clouds and Old Bastards by Randall Auxier These are famous images from the infamous “Daisy” TV ad created for the Lyndon Johnson campaign of 1964. The little girl picks petals from a daisy, counting upward to ten. Being so very young, she makes mistakes. As she reaches ten a booming, disembodied voice counts…
It is hard to believe that in this day and age there are still people who deny the fact of climate change brought on by global warming, despite virtual unanimity among scientists regarding not only the fact of global warming but also the fact that humans are at least partly responsible. But a recent study…
One of the more disturbing consequences of the growth of capitalism and the attendant world view that insists on measuring success in terms of income and possessions is the dissolution of the family. This may seem a strange claim to make, but when one considers the factors involved it will hold up to scrutiny. In…
In the Wikipedia discussion of nuclear weapons, we are told that “A thermonuclear weapon weighing little more than 2,400 pounds (1,100 kg) can produce an explosive force comparable to the detonation of more than 1.2 million tons (1.1 million tonnes) of TNT. Thus, even a small nuclear device no larger than traditional bombs can devastate an…