A Primer for Voters, Lesson #3:
It is a truism of political analysts that while most Americans say they do not trust the members of Congress, they tend to trust their own representative. This is a bizarre dichotomy.
Category: Free Content
A Primer for Voters, #2: The Free Market
We are often reminded that “There is not only no such thing as a free lunch.” This is true in one sense, since, while I may get my lunch free by robbing the restaurant or blackmailing the proprietor or extorting money fraudulently that enables me to spend other people’s money on lunch, but then the restaurant or my victims are paying for the lunch.
A Primer for Delusional Voters in Several Easy Lessons, Lesson 1: Capitalism
I don’t know how many of our readers s intend to vote in the next or any election, but if a vote is to be anything more than a shot in the dark at a tree rustling in the breeze, a citizen is morally obliged to spend a little time grappling with political realities
Back to the Future II: The Olympics
I haven’t paid much attention to the Olympics for years. It. has been a long time since the Games were a genuine amateur sport. All my life they have been big business that guaranteed endorsements and jobs to the winners. When the allowed professional basketball players in, it was a public declaration that they were giving up the pretense.
Back to the Future
I’ve been in 15th century Florence, to be precise, colloguing with Petrarch, Pico della Mirandola, Savonarola, Cosimo and Lorenzo de’ Medici, Machiavelli, and others. As a traveler in time and space, I was eager to share my thoughts on the American present, which for them is an unimaginably distant future.
Book of July: Cyril Kornbluth
Cyril Kornbluth was a popular science fiction writer of the 50’s and 60’s, and a frequent collaborator with the somewhat better known Frederick Pohl.
Tuscan Convivium
Our next program abroad is scheduled to begin roughly, for Oct 16/17 and will last 7 days with the possibility of additional days in Rome.
The Great Debate at the End of the Universe
Before going to bed, I made the mistake of checking the news and found clips of “the debate.” I exhausted my vocbbulary of Americanisms drawn from Captain Billy’s Whizz Bang. Gee Whillikers. Holey Moley.
The Stoic Revolution….
I keep my FB account for a few reasons. I do occasionally get news of distant friends. Sometimes I can also share something from the Fleming Foundation, in the hope–usually vain–that it will attract a new subscriber–who feels our work is worth the quarter or fifty cents a day we charge.
Ask Mr Autodidact, NS 2: Faith Hope Charity
I have been asked more than once to clarify what is meant by faith, hope and charity. Faith and hope seem, in English at least, to overlap: If I have faith that my friend will pick me up for work in the morning, doesn’t that mean that I hope he picks me up?
