Engaging Life with Courage and Intelligence
This is an updated article from March 2025. Who are America’s Christian Nationalists, and why are they merging angry, gutter politics with matters of the divine? As a prelude to my inquiry, I found a quote from Mahatma Gandhi: “An eye for an eye will only make the world blind.” A faithful Christian following the…
I cut my teeth on mainframe computers, the behemoths of the early days of automation. In 1972, central processing units required huge air conditioners that circulated under raised flooring. Disk drives that stored 200 megabytes were larger than commercial refrigerators and cost $37,000 or $185 per megabyte. Today’s computers and disk drives are infinitely smaller…
The 1956 book When Prophecy Fails is a social psychology classic that examines the aftermath of the Chicago UFO religious group, the Seekers, who believed the world was about to end. The book’s authors study what the group members did when the apocalypse did not occur. It takes extraordinary mental tricks to recover after predicting…
America has had a few very intractable problems that tied our society in knots. In the 19th century, it was slavery. After the Civil War, the most significant issues revolved around economic prosperity and inequality. We’ve had many economic ups and downs with winners and losers. Ironically, both are now unhappy. The losers are resentful,…
The most recent Real Time With Bill Maher episode concerned Maher’s recent White House meeting with Donald J. Trump. Maher’s shtick is a unique comic style. He portrays himself as a truth-seeker with no limits. He proudly proclaims his atheism, libertarianism, political incorrectness, and satire. He skewers every shade of the political spectrum, except for…
When we hear the term barn burner (also barnburner), most think of an exciting event, usually a competitive sport. We assign the term to the most thrilling, intense, and captivating activities. The television sports commentator said the recent men’s NCAA championship game “was a barn burner.” However, we can also assign it to other events….
Donald Trump has had a lifetime fascination with professional wrestling. As most people older than ten know, professional wrestling is entertainment, not a sport. It pretends to be a sport, but it is a carefully choreographed masculine drama in which the winners and losers are predetermined. Professional wrestling seeks attention and cathartic release from macho…
The terms lock-in (noun), lock in (verb including different verb forms), or locked-in (adjective) have been around for a while. They have a surprisingly broad range of usages in technical, slang, social, business, medical, religious, and political contexts. Likewise, they have a wide spectrum of connotations, from highly positive to extremely negative. A lock-in can…
This day might not be the best day to ask how humans became so smart. Americans, in particular, seem to be going in the opposite direction, regressing into a bottomless pit of ignorance and idiocy. However, the human race, as a whole, has become the intellectual masters of Earth. Other animals and even plants have…
Yogi Berra once said, “It’s deja vu all over again.” Economic history is repeating itself, although it appears more idiotic than in the past. The Republican Party was once a thoughtful, less radical bunch. They were not in a to-the-death war with the world and found ways to compromise for the good of the nation….