Gadfly

​It Took Two Tons of Metal

December 27th, 2023

ByEd Raymond 

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Tevye: “Oh, Lord, You Made Many, Many Poor People. If I Were a Rich Man………

Whenever Corky and I get a chance to watch “Fiddler on the Roof” we make some popcorn. The short stories about Jewish life titled Tevye the Dairyman and His Daughters were written in Yiddish by the Jewish writer Sholem Aleichem between 1894 and 1914. They are about life in an area called the Pale of Settlement of Imperial Russia near Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine today,…

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A Mixture of Red, White, and Blue Can Be Ugly

December 9th, 2023

A Mixture of Red, White, and Blue Can Be Ugly

by Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

These Colors Can Produce Beautiful Flags or Ugly Bruises

As a football player playing guard in the middle of the line, I estimated at the end of eight years of high school and college that I had been hit approximately 14,000 times in 80 games alone, not counting scrimmages and practices. So, the beautiful red, white, and blue colors on the flag presented before the game mixed into some ugly bruises during and…

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A Mixture of Red, White, and Blue Can Be Ugly

December 9th, 2023

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

These Colors Can Produce Beautiful Flags or Ugly Bruises

As a football player playing guard in the middle of the line, I estimated at the end of eight years of high school and college that I had been hit approximately 14,000 times in 80 games alone, not counting scrimmages and practices. So, the beautiful red, white, and blue colors on the flag presented before the game mixed into some ugly bruises during and after the game. I had mixed purple, blue,…

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More-a-Loco and Trump Towers of Babble

December 2nd, 2023

By Ed Raymond

farggadfly@gmail.com

Donald Trump: A Social-Psycho-on-Path Reproducing MAGA Zombies

I have been asking members of the Make Amerika Great Again (MAGA) cult for years to identify days, weeks, months, years, decades and/or centuries when America was great, so I can know what the Orange Genius sitting to the far right of the Christian God is planning for the Divided States of America. Not a word yet.

Perhaps the genetic discovery that we share 99.9% of our DNA with chimps, great…

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​Two Examples of Silly Math

November 25th, 2023

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

How Many of Napoleon’s Hats Will Save Planet Earth for Homo Sapiens?

Before I get into this week’s subject of why we need to double the number of college majors in English and Humanities if we are going to save Planet Earth for our grandchildren, I must admit I have a passing interest in mathematics.

I think I was hooked on math statistics when I read there were 635,013,559,600 hands I could be dealt if I played Bridge for all my lifetime. I have…

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​Robbing Peter, Paul – and Mary

November 18th, 2023

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

The Purpose of a College Education: Do We Work to Live or Live to Work?

Because of the increasing costs of college, the staggering $1.7 trillion of student debt owed by 45 million American students and parents ages 18 to 95, and the failure of states to support with taxes vocational, community, and two-year colleges, and public colleges and universities, undergraduate college enrollment in the DSA dropped eight percent between 2019 and 2022---and is…

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Thugs, Thieves, and Theocrats

November 11th, 2023

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

“Trump Cabinet Member: ‘If a Document Has a Staple in It, Don’t Give It to Trump.’”

Among the most fascinating papers in the world would be the transcripts of Donald Trump from the elite universities he attended. What courses did he take? What were his major studies? His speech is free from literary allusions, classical images, historical facts, and intellectual musings.

When George W. Bush was president, I never really thought he was dumb, he…

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Back-to-Back Barbarians

November 4th, 2023

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Well, Whaddaya Know! Barbarians Have the Same Life Expectancy!

A barbarian is defined as one belonging to a people or tribe considered to be a primitive civilization filled with fierce, brutal, and cruel persons who are uncultured and insensitive. If there has been a century in the history of Homo sapiens when we didn’t have any barbarians acting up, please let me know.

The Roman Empire conquered half the known earth, but expired when barbarians…

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Of Pitchforks and Penthouses

October 28th, 2023

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

Everybody Needs to Understand Critical Economic and Racial Facts

Once in a great while one runs across an innocent-looking article that is like a combined X-ray, sonogram, and MRI examining your country. Daniel Immerwahr in the October 23 New Yorker in “The Pitchfork of History: Beyond the myth of rural America” covers some facts that are not often covered by the media in its struggles to never stop presses, turn out lights, or shut off cameras.

Did…

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Eyes for Eyes and Babies for Babies

October 21st, 2023

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

How many centuries have religions been fighting each other in the Middle East?

In the early foggy, frosty morning of December 25, 1914, before cannons roared and bullets whizzed, songs of Christmas were heard by German troops in the trenches on the Western Front. It was “all quiet on the front.” The music came from English troops in trenches a few hundred yards across No Man’s Land.

As the singing continued, troops left trenches without weapons…

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