By the time we're done 500k will look like a Countrywide down payment. So perhaps it didn't matter which one the Dems picked. Having said that, I always go back to Will Rogers: "I don't belong to any organized party, I'm a Democrat." Still true. The reason Bernie was so resonant was that h...

I suspect most real, deep happiness is an accident. Otherwise we can only be as happy as we plan.

If we were cold hearted about it, it's boys we'd slaughter. We need fewer of them. In some ways, this has been the function of war, to thin the herd. Sadly, the way it's been prosecuted, it's been absolutely counter evolutionary.

Flynn and Manafort to start. Mueller likely will also hit the other folks we know who failed to declare foreign agency, a couple of them are dem operatives. The fusion story itself is a smokescreen. The part I'm watching for is whether this swings toward the financial malfeasance or focuses on the f...

Ya, technology, hell, the second phase of the neolithic revolution, steals most people's productivity. At this stage, the only thing for it is to find work you love. The alternative takes time and ammunition.

So, yes, but... Hypocrisy is embodied by folks who say "it's her choice..." but flip out when the girl has a drink because suddenly it's child endangerment. Failure of consistent logic hugely irritates me. I think the political hypocrisy which deserves criticism is embodied by the guy who ...

I've been trying lately to do this. On the bike, if I did, I would not be here. Flow of traffic: being passed by 50% of cars and passing 50%, is 10% or more over posted. One reason I chose to stay off interstates if practical. So I confess I used to violate rules of time and space routinely. I'm try...

I would love a disaggregated 'me too,' which is to say, "harassed" and/or "assaulted." Break it down explicitly, and maybe add a set of initials afterward, kind of a "You know who you are...and I know who you are...." Some of this is slippery standards and misunderstand...

These are folks who fought a civil war over which alphabet to use.
We should have seen this coming. I agree that it was partly our fault.

I don't see humanitarian, economic, and security concerns being separate from each other. According to Dept of Labor, after every major immigration wave our economy has improved significantly. If we let people come out of humanitarian ideals, those immigrants will be able to infuse our economy. I t...

It's terrible and cruel, but I raised all of my children to be superheroes (secretly). I tried to equip them with confident self images, so they evaluate themselves independent of others' opinions (So far, Check, even if it's not great for careers) I privileged useful over happy, though that was a c...

Having worked for years in education, dominated numerically if not hierarchically by females, I've known my share of predatory women too. Similar goals, slightly different techniques. Systemically, these abuses are a cancer. We have to relinquish the insecure idea that without this quarterback, CEO,...

Sanitation, totally agree. My newest kick is a rule that magnifies penalties for those in the public trust. Police, priests, teachers, senators who get convicted get double or triple the sentence because they represented that they could be trusted. Also, a newsmedia style rule that attached the word...

So, governments and laws and economic systems each have theoretical ideals, which are never realized. Fear and selfishness always come into the equation. An economist recently won a Nobel explaining that people in economies didn't act rationally - who knew? (Anyone who ever shopped with a teenager f...

We spend a lot more money getting ready to kill people (and actually killing them) than we do on healing. I'd suggest it is a right under the life and pursuit of happiness section. Every right is understood, or should be, to be fundamental but not absolute. Speech is slightly constrained, etc. I obj...

Ya, textbooks uniformly suck, and I know because I tried to help write one that didn't. Mediocre success. So many big conglomerates have their hooks in schools and the folks who make school decisions that it's a marvel that they operate at all. Fixing them? We don't have time here, but it begins wit...

The future is a moving target. So educating for the future is also a moving target. For all the kids I taught how to balance a checkbook, that's getting to be obsolete info. Did they manage to internalize it sufficiently to adapt to the new modes of behavior? So many of the jobs and skills that run ...

Reality Perception morality Reality is the goal of math, physics and science in general. What wavelength, what mass, what velocity? Red (an arbitrary label for a non-arbitrary fragment on the visible spectrum) is red for everyone with human eyes and processors. It's red for machines. It's a measurab...

So, wrong, or at least in the absolute, about zebras. More primitive than horses? Cro Magnon horses? Lizards are hard to train too. Maybe it takes a certain minimum level of abstract capacity to form relationships outside your tribe. Having said that, there's a guy who has trained planaria, and not ...