Gadfly

​Death by Wrist-Checking

July 18th, 2024

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

How can anyone be lonely with eight billion homo sapiens on Earth?

The world seems to be in the throes of a PTSD pandemic. Even the price of happiness is going way up. Back in 2010 two Nobel Prize laureates studied the complexities of happiness and determined that in most cases $75,000 a year would buy some of it. But this figure applied only to day-to-day moods. The two experts said happiness “plateaus” at some figure depending upon the individual.…

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​Nine Levels of Hell on Earth

June 20th, 2024

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Should ‘The Chosen One’ be Sentenced to Spend Months at each Level?

It’s not unusual on this planet, we have had hundreds of men and a couple of women who have used religion to become dictators and gods in countries and empires when the only god they believed in was themselves.

Think Nero, Caligula -- and his horse, Qin Shi Huang Di, Hirohito, Genghis Khan, Joe Stalin, Catherine the Great, Adolf Hitler, Kim Sung-un, and Donald Trump – I love the…

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A Garage in the Sky

May 16th, 2024

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Is It Possible to Move from a Tent on a Sidewalk to a Garage in the Sky?

There have been wealthy people who added a car elevator to the mansion for their Bentleys so they could unload groceries close to the kitchen, but I have never seen a high-rise apartment building advertise a sky garage for each of the 62 apartments in a high-rise—including the 62nd floor penthouse. On a barrier island called Sunny Isles Beach 30 miles from Miami, a developer is…

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Where Boosters Meet Fences and the Rich Invest in Junk, Stuff, and Celebrities

April 16th, 2024

by Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

According to my great-grandfather many years ago, my French ancestors migrated from Normandy to Quebec to Manitoba to Wisconsin to Minnesota over the spread of more than two centuries, finally settling in or near Little Falls and then spreading to the Twin Cities. People left Europe for two major reasons: economics and freedom of religion and freedom from religion. France had been involved in many big and small religious conflicts between religions and…

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Riding the Economic Merry-Go-Round

March 21st, 2024

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

The Catacombs under Paris Contain the Bones of Millions of Feudalists

Sixty-five feet below the Paris streets are about 170 miles of tunnels that go through stone quarries, galleries, and ossuaries that contain the bones of six million French who died between the 9th and 18th centuries. Along the tunnel walls are ossuaries where human bones are stacked in the form of crosses, hearts, and even a structure called the Eiffel Tower. The entrance is in the…

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Sex and the World

March 21st, 2024

by Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Why Jerry Lee Lewis Sang: "There’s a whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on"

For the last couple of months, the “Star Spangled Banner'' was not the national anthem. It was Jerry Lee Lewis’s song about sex titled “Whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.” At the same time there was a whole lot of sex going on the continents and in the great depths of the oceans. Pope Francis even got into the act by proclaiming in St. Peter’s Square at a general audience…

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Bowls and Superyachts

March 21st, 2024

By Ed Raymond

farfgogadfly@gmail.com

Two Super Bowl Seats at a 60 Minute Game would Pay a Year’s College Tuition

The final seat price is in. The average seat price for the 2024 Super Bowl is $9,850, figuring in scalpers, grifters, and the like. The super rich paid as much as $66,000 for an executive skybox seat. Meanwhile, back on earth, we have 45 million American adults from 18 to 95 who owe $1.7 trillion in college student debt. The average annual tuition for public universities in…

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Dung beetle politics

February 15th, 2024

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Politicians could learn a lot by watching dung beetles work for a living

The 400,000 species of beetles is the largest order of insects discovered on Planet Earth, so far. Insect researchers believe that the orders of bees, wasps and ants may be larger, but no one has counted them, so far.

Homo sapiens cannot live without beetles. More than 300 species of beetles are used for food by many animals, including humans. Some beetles are agricultural, forestry…

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​The Doomsday Clock is Broken

February 15th, 2024

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

MAGA Throwaways: helmets, reason, masks, regulations, seatbelts, and books

There was a time when troops in trenches and foxholes moved from killing each other to recognizing the enemy was also a human being. Christmas morning during World War II in Europe was one time in between firing artillery pieces and machine guns at each other. After the war when countries were divided up or added to, there was an incident between American and East German troops…

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Angry Orcas and Crazy Horses

January 18th, 2024

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

There are signs 2024 is going to be a disastrous year

My favorite philosopher William Shakespeare was said to recognize 20,000 flowers and often used their qualities to complete a scene, to add meaning to plot and dialogue, and to put another hat or cloak on a character. He understood that the theologians of the time had created the Elizabethan Chain of Being so kings could claim a divine right to rule came directly from God. The chain stretches from…

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