A system of values and beliefs that organize a society and result in various practices and artifacts that are associated with the general characteristics of that society.
I had just finished reading Bill McKibben’s new novel, Radio Free Vermont: A Fable of Resistance, when I stumbled upon Bill Gates’ blog, http://www.gatesnotes.com, which I had not looked at for quite a while. I have to admit, I had been rather miffed at the overconfident elitist strategy Gates pursued at the Paris Climate Change … More Bill Gates or Bill McKibben: You Do the Math
Jubilado Jubilee “So much to do, so little time.” That cliché never meant much to me. The “so little time” part had no meaning. I was busy with my life and there was always tomorrow. It seemed as if I had all the time in the world. Careers go fast if you are busy and … More Diary of a Mad Jubilado: (first in a series)
Timing rules. Change waits for no machine. When I bought that apple coring machine, I expected to prepare and process our apple crop in record time. We had a somewhat smaller crop this year, but preparing the apples for storage in freezer or “canning” them in Ball jars is both very labor-intensive and slow. The … More Rotten Apples: Nature Overcomes Machine
MSNBC, CNN and the network nightly news anchors and commentators for weeks could not stop talking about all the politicians, men of power and celebrities who have groped, assaulted, or raped women over the years. It had started awhile back in Hollywood with Bill Cosby’s now all but forgotten drugging and raping many women over … More Media, Abuse, and Groping for Dollars
I just bought an apple corer- peeler-slicer, a mechanical devise you attach to a counter top to core and peel apples or pears in preparation for canning or cooking. It is an interesting technology. It has multiple moving parts, and it is all hand-powered. It has no digital controls and it is constructed it entirely … More The Apple Core: Machine Meets Fruit
With the proliferation of digital sources of “information” and technologies of communication, it seems more and more difficult to determine the difference between fact and fakery. Social media allow just about anyone to post outlandish claims and arguments without a shred of evidence. Fake evidence and false logic proliferate. If it is sensational enough or … More Fake Everything
It is not easy for America to sort it all out when police openly commit widespread racial profiling of Black lives and gratuitous violence on Black bodies, and so many white folks fail to object to the fact or even acknowledge it. It is not easy for America to sort it all out when the … More Take a Knee for Me
Remember the old movie, The Manchurian Candidate? The 1962 political thriller depicted a veteran of the Korean War, who had been brainwashed while a prisoner of war, to assassinate the leading presidential candidate so that the vice-presidential candidate could win the presidency. A secret “palace coup d’état” would then impose a draconian suspension of democracy in … More The Manchurian President and His Great Wall
As the corporate dominated congress struggles to perpetrate the greatest insurance scam ever upon the American people, it might help to put the concept of insurance itself in perspective. The deliberations’ secrecy is a big clue. The attempt to eliminate health insurance coverage for some 23 million or more Americans and destroy Medicaid for the … More The Insurance Scam
Trump is not merely rolling back countless federal programs that attempt to protect society from the ravages of unrestrained extractive corporate capital and industrial consumerism. He is going one worse. Think of the premise of his actions and the way he frames those actions in claiming to “make America great again.” That premise is that … More Overcoming the Trumping of Democracy to Restore the Commonwealth
