Engaging Life with Courage and Intelligence
The translation of the news flash in Spanish is “Dictatorships Do Not Function.” For anyone who believes that authoritarian regimes are good for anyone but the dictator and his family, there is a perfect example to bet against authoritarians. The BBC, NPR, Al Jazeera, and South Korea’s intelligence service—consistently cite an initial North Korean deployment…
America’s economy and society are at a critical juncture. Like an energetic bunny, America dominated the twentieth century. The American Puritans in the North and West used technology to industrialize, electrify, and computerize the country. The Southern Cavaliers provided most of the fossil fuels needed to energize our progress. The USA developed a diversified economy…
Hubris is the great sin of the tragic hero, the flaw that brings about their downfall. [Britannica] Origin of the word hubris: From the ancient Greek word hybris, which initially meant wanton violence, insolence, or outrage. Over 2,400 years ago, several playwrights, including Sophocles, wrote Greek tragedies about the catastrophic outcome resulting from excessive pride,…
Many of us, either continually or occasionally, regard the “strange” actions of others as being stupid, evil, or uninformed. There is no need to provide examples of “strange” actions since America is now so fractured that it would be harder to find examples of shared “solid” understandings. In light of the chaos in the public…
NOTE: I took the day off today. This blog post was generated almost entirely using artificial intelligence. Any errors, omissions, or political slights are not my fault. However, the AI included footnotes, which is more than I ever do. I used evato.com to generate the images. The landscape of U.S. immigration enforcement is undergoing a…
If a rabbit does not see, hear, smell, or feel a bobcat coming, the rabbit will be the bobcat’s next meal. I have no perception of the microbiome of subterranean ecosystems. Likewise, I am unfamiliar with the current pop song “Born to Die” by Lana Del Rey. These two facts do not mean that I…
Artificial intelligence (AI) is not likely to cause the demise of the human race. Instead, AI-like humans are more likely to trigger our downfall. These AI-hybrid humans will not be half-human, half-machine cyborgs, as depicted in the movies. Instead, they will be fully human, driven by their burning desire to dominate others. They will not…
I hope my predictions of the future are wrong. Almost everyone except the very poor or the very rich plans for the future. Most of us need to plan and perform mundane activities, such as holding down a job, balancing our checking accounts, and keeping appointments. People who employ others must also be concerned with…
Flash: American farmers have been liberated from the “burden” of selling their products to the world! An inconvenient question: Why are all those shipping containers filled with American sorghum sitting on loading docks? U.S. sorghum exports to China declined 95% from 2024 to 2025. Before the trade tensions between China and the Trump Administration, China…
Full-Autonomous Weapons are Here We are now entering the age of autonomous machine intelligence. According to Ukrainian Major General Vladyslav Klochkov, Russia is testing a new weapon, the Shahed MS001, which features an AI brain developed by Silicon Valley. This new weapon is a hunter-killer that “thinks” for itself. There are no human operators, optical…