June 28th, 2017
How many Americans shot themselves or others today?
We won’t know for awhile how many Americans were KIA or WIA from firearms on June 14, when Republican Majority Whip Steve Scalise of the House was critically wounded by some of the 71 rounds fired by James Hodgkinson and the police.
Actually it was not a big mass shooting deal, although Scalise was made the national center of attention by his congressional colleagues and the mainstream media.
In the first 165 days of 2017 we had only…
June 21st, 2017
From Homer’s Odyssey to Buddy Holly: The times they are a-changin’
When Robert Zimmerman, born in Duluth and raised in Hibbing, better known as Bob Dylan, won the Nobel Prize for Literature (worth almost a cool $1 million), he said, “When I received this Nobel Prize for literature, I got to wondering exactly how my songs related to literature. The music of Buddy Holly changed my life, along with Homer’s Odyssey, Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, and Erich Maria Remarque’s All…
June 14th, 2017
Red blankets, thousand-dollar pills, and angry Irish
It makes for an interesting week when people, rats, monkeys, and the Irish wave the middle finger with wild abandon toward their erstwhile enemies. The Irish finally showed how fed up they are with the “state” Roman Catholic Church that treated pregnant girls horribly in forced-labor laundries and transferred priests who took sexual advantage of adolescent boys for centuries.
Irish voters sent the Vatican a final goodbye finger…
June 7th, 2017
How long does it take you to pay your Social Security taxes for the year?
Jay Gould was one of the richest capitalists in the United States in the 19th century, bribing legislators, robbing, killing, and hiring a private army to fight labor union strikes over wages, hours, and working conditions.
He and his associate Jim Fisk tried to corner the gold market so they could raise the price of agricultural products and increase the price of shipping on his railroads. Gould came from a poor…
May 31st, 2017
A good sign: the Spanish are finally giving up bullfighting
Sometimes it takes thousands of years to rid a society of a cultural icon. Bullfighting has been an integral part of Spanish society for almost a thousand years.
Bullfighting was first mentioned in the Epic of Gilgamesh which covered prehistoric bull worship and sacrifice in Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean area. It later moved to Rome to entertain the crowds in the Coliseum.
In the 1100s the rich brought bullfighting to Spain…
May 24th, 2017
The rich live 20 years longer than the poor
Several recent incidents in the airline industry are sending messages to the Ninety-Nine Percent around the world. If you can’t hold it, don’t book a flight.
A male passenger was removed from a flight because he had to pee while the plane was sitting on the ground. He violated the rule that toilets are closed while waiting for take-off. He had been sitting in his seat for more than half an hour and had told the attendants he had to go. They…
May 17th, 2017
It’s time to end religious slavery, discrimination, racism, and sexual violence
Religions have authorized slavery for thousands of years. It still exists in many corners of the world and is outlawed in few countries.
Religions have allowed men to marry several women at one time, which is now a crime called bigamy in some countries. Remember: Osama bin Laden had four wives.
Churches in our South taught that blacks were inferior to whites and pushed for Jim Crow laws to make sure blacks…
May 10th, 2017
How about cow’s tongue for school lunch?
King Donald of Trumpistan has decreed that the school lunch regulations propagated by Michelle Obama back in 2010, after serious research and debate by medical authorities and dieticians, did not have enough fat, sugar, and sodium.
So he has ordered the Department of Agriculture to follow the desires of food corporations such as General Mills, Schwan’s, Cargill, Land of Lakes, and Hormel, that over the years have added millions of tons of fat…
May 3rd, 2017
The absolute destruction of the American dream
It has become commonplace. The majority of college graduates in the United States now are forced to move back home to their parent’s basements, sometimes for more than a decade, because the 2016 graduating class is the most indebted in history.
They might make more than $15 an hour in a job, but they cannot afford homes, cars, or other accoutrements of a middle class life.
There is no doubt that economic growth and the national…
April 26th, 2017
Are we nearing the end of the human race?
Moore’s Law is a rather simple observation made by Gordon Moore back in 1965 when he founded Fairchild Semiconductor and Intel, two very important computer chip makers. He remarked that he thought the number of transistors in a circuit would double about every two years—and would continue to double every two years for at least another ten years. The art of doubling computer chip capacity every two years has now continued to 2017.
With the great…
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By Alicia Underlee Nelsonalicia@hpr1.comDairy Queen restaurants across the country will raise funds for Children’s Miracle Network hospitals during Miracle Treat Day on Thursday, July 31. At least one dollar from every Blizzard…
By Michael M. Millermichael.miller@ndsu.edu The Northwest Blade, from Eureka, South Dakota, published a wonderful story in August 2020. It’s called “Granddaughter keeps Grandmother’s precious chamomile seeds,” by Cindy…
October 3-5, 2025Memorial Union at NDSU, 1401 Administrative Ave., Fargo With the theme of “Existence is Resistance: Healing Through Unity,” this year’s summit will kick off with a professional development day followed by a…
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By Ed Raymondfargogadfly@gmail.comWhat are the four freedoms of Donald John Trump? Nearly a century ago, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said every citizen in the United States of America should have four freedoms: Freedom from…
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By Greg Carlsongregcarlson1@gmail.com As a follow-up to “The Whale,” a raucous adaptation of the first novel in Charlie Huston’s Henry Thompson series was a good choice for eclectic auteur Darren Aronofksy, whose bold visions…
By HPR staffsubmit@hpr1.com Mark the first weekend of October on your calendar. It’s the weekend of the Studio Crawl, which takes us all on a wonderful, metro-wide tour of our talented (and often wacky) arts community. On October…
Alicia Underlee Nelsonalicia@hpr1.comPenn & Teller are returning to their roots. The legendary magic and comedy duo will appear on the Crown Stage at the Minnesota Renaissance Festival in Shakopee, Minnesota, where they first…
By Annie Prafckeannieprafcke@gmail.com AUSTIN, Texas – As a Chinese-American, connecting to my culture through food is essential, and no dish brings me back to my mother’s kitchen quite like hotdish. Yes, you heard me right –…
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By Vern Thompsonvern.thompson@rocketmail.com Working in the Bakken oil fields of the Williston Basin is so different from my home in Fargo. I'm not judging, because the people working and living in western North Dakota are very…
