For Goodness’ Sake

Some years ago, in Australia, I appeared on a platform with a prominent intellectual, many times more famous than I. We were asked what it took to be good. The famous intellectual, who had had a brilliant career, answered that in order ...

In a Barbie World

One of the most fervently held dogmas of the 1969 wave of feminism was that the only reason boys and girls liked different toys was due to sexist socialization. I was young in the early 1970s when androgynous “unisex” fashions were ...

Much of the Hot Air Is Coming From Washington

Baby, it's hot outside. Right on cue, a New York Times headline links this surge in temperatures to "climate change." Temperatures have climbed to well over 100 F in Las Vegas, Arizona, much of Texas, and New Mexico in recent weeks. ...

Web of Sin

Earlier this month, Elon Musk set up a new tech company, xAI, in order to “worry about a Terminator future” being accidentally facilitated by the ever-increasing powers of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). There has been much ...

Hive Mentality

It is said that there is a world shortage of bees, but it has not so far affected our house in France, where most summers, when we return, we find a swarm that has constructed a nest between one of the windows and its shutters. They ...

Smears for Money

The Southern Poverty Law Center just released a report claiming there are 1,225 hate and anti-government groups in America. These groups cause "fear and pain (in) Black, brown, and LGBTQ communities." The SPLC lists such groups on its ...

The Victim Sweepstakes

Signed a third of a century ago by George H.W. Bush, the landmark 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act remains an illuminating example of the curious ways in which politics and policy tend to operate in modern America. The central ...

Covid’s Original Sins

At the request of those who think the Covid origin lab leak theory is “settled,” here’s the response you asked for. All studies/articles mentioned are linked. If this topic matters to you, read the links, don’t just rely on my ...

Statue of Churchill, Parliament Square, London

Why So Churlish About Churchill?

The recent news that the website of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London contained a derogatory description of Sir Winston Churchill, whose state funeral the building had held following the great man’s death in 1965, caused a fuss in ...

Memorial Hall, Harvard University

Balderdash U d/b/a Harvard University

If Harvard were renamed Balderdash U, it might be forgiven for what at least two of its spokesmen wrote following the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that Harvard’s affirmative action violates the 14th Amendment. The Supreme Court ...

Why AI?

Today I received a most kind, unsolicited offer on the internet to “amplify my potential” with, or by, ChatGPT. At my age, however, I think it’s a little late in the day to “amplify my potential”: I have reached, or failed to ...

Hunter’s ‘Love Child’ and Conservative Madness

Right-wingers (and The New York Times' Maureen Dowd) are browbeating President Biden for not embracing his son Hunter's illegitimate child -- the result of drug-crazed, unprotected sex with a stripper. Conservatives are so enjoying ...


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