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LATEST ARTICLES ( 1470 )

• Fantasyland — My Talk Tuesday, June 18

  

  Next Tuesday, June 18, at noon, I will give a talk at the Albany Public Library, 161 Washington Avenue, focused on Kurt Andersen’s book Fantasyland: How... Read more

  Posted on 11 June 2019 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• “Automating Inequality” — Using Technology to Screw the Poor

  

  Automating Inequality is a book by local researcher Virginia Eubanks; I attended a talk she gave. The focus was upon three initiatives ostensibly aimed at... Read more

  Posted on 07 June 2019 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Hate, Love, Humanism, and (of Course) Trump

  

  I’ve been called a hater, in blog comments. My extensive political analyses written off as simply hate. As though Trump hate is somehow built into me; a... Read more

  Posted on 04 June 2019 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• What Love Becomes

  

  Love triumphs. They marry and live happily ever after. The End.But not always. In Jan Marin Tramontano’s new novel, What Love Becomes, we meet two fortyish... Read more

  Posted on 01 June 2019 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• The Crisis of Followership

  

  Great Britain has a crisis of leadership. One main party now headed by an agit-prop Marxist; the other by a hapless prime minister, who has now quit, leaving th... Read more

  Posted on 30 May 2019 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Reparations for Slavery?

  

  Reparations for slavery is becoming part of the “progressive” full Monty that Democratic presidential candidates must endorse. It’s a terrible idea. Read more

  Posted on 27 May 2019 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Humans Becoming Gods — Or Chips in a Cosmic Computer?

  

  Yuval Noah Harari is a thinker of Big Ideas, with a capital B and a capital I. An Israeli historian, he wrote Sapiens: a Brief History of Humankind, about how w... Read more

  Posted on 24 May 2019 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Follow-up — Tony Milillo — The Pathology of the Hard Left

  

  My last post concerned abortion. I also put it on the Capital District Humanist Society’s Facebook page, where one Tony Milillo entered two comments — highly... Read more

  Posted on 22 May 2019 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• The Cruel Republican Abortion Extremists

  

  I’m not “pro-abortion.” My humanism valorizes the dignity of human life; and advancing it through reason (rather than religious dogma). Read more

  Posted on 21 May 2019 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• What Are We Saying When We Talk?

  

  That was the subject for a fascinating entry by “Johnson” (after Samuel), The Economist’s language columnist.We typically say language is for communicating and... Read more

  Posted on 18 May 2019 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Plan-free Fact-free Anal Sphincter Foreign Policy

  

  Everyone before was stupid. He knows everything. Intelligence briefings, consulting experts, careful planning — loser stuff. The great deal-maker’s own great... Read more

  Posted on 16 May 2019 POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Faking Democracy

  

  Kings used to rule everywhere by “divine right.” It was unquestioned. “Democracy” wasn’t even a thing. But in modern times it has acquired such universal moral... Read more

  Posted on 13 May 2019 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Abdi Nor Iftin: American

  

  I was only half listening when the story began on NPR. But soon it was riveting. Abdi, a Somali refugee barely surviving in Kenya, struggling to reach America.... Read more

  Posted on 11 May 2019 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Steven Pinker: Rational Optimist

  

  Steven Pinker is one of my intellectual heroes. Probably the closest to my own thinking. His new book is among the finest I’ve ever read.In 2012 he published Th... Read more

  Posted on 07 May 2019 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• The Answer to the Opioid Crisis

  

  Drugs now kill around 70,000 Americans annually. More than AIDS at the height of the epidemic; more than the entire Vietnam war. Most are opioid deaths.More... Read more

  Posted on 03 May 2019 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Trump Escalates Assault on Democratic Governance and Rule of Law

  

  Recently I wrote about Venezuela’s slide into dictatorship. Such regimes hold elections but exploit their control to effectively deny citizens a... Read more

  Posted on 29 April 2019 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Biden for President

  

  When I saw Joe Biden’s 3-1/2 minute announcement video Thursday morning, as a longtime observer of American politics I was frankly shocked. It was not what I... Read more

  Posted on 27 April 2019 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Cultural Lies — Or Partial Truths? David Brooks, Individualism, and...

  

  “We’ve created a culture based on lies,” David Brooks says, and they’re the roots of our political problems. Hence we need a cultural revolution more than a... Read more

  Posted on 25 April 2019 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Russia & Norway & Trump & Mueller & Truth

  

  Russia has invaded Norway. That’s the premise of the Netflix series Occupied, recently reviewed here. Now we’ve started Season 2, eight months have passed and... Read more

  Posted on 22 April 2019 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY

• Venezuela’s Tragedy: Lessons for America

  

  Javier Corrales is the Dwight Morrow professor of political science at Amherst. I recently heard him give a talk about the situation in Venezuela, divided into... Read more

  Posted on 19 April 2019 CULTURE, POLITICS, SOCIETY