Gadfly

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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Would a liberal Democrat or a conservative Republican kill baited bears?

Since King Donald ascended to the throne of a political party that doesn’t give a damn about anything except cutting taxes and filling their own wallets, he has been busy signing destructive executive orders.

Shortly after entering the White House oval office on the first day of his reign he signed a vague order on Obamacare that basically announced the Republicans were going to repeal and replace it at the…

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Random thoughts of our great leader

Our leader does not particularly like Republicans. They are crooks who helped ruin the country. The mainstream news media is the enemy of the American people. The Clintons were terrible for the country. When we invaded Iraq we should have taken all of the oil under their sands.

Nuclear weapons are not so bad. The residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are actually healthier because of all the radiation! We should build more nukes because nuclear accidents…

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Where is a Socrates when you really need him?

I was born in 1932 during the Great Depression. I was brought up in a tiny farmhouse without electricity or plumbing. I walked two miles to a little country school for eight years, uphill both ways, of course. So many fascinating things have happened in my 85 years, I wish I could live at least another twenty.

We have just found 15-foot-square footprints of dinosaurs in Australia that lived 130 million years ago that make Ty Rex look like a…

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What does a comma cost? Sometimes, $10 million

We may be in the middle of March Madness basketball in the United States, but nothing can surpass the madness we are dealing with in national and international politics, particularly since King Donald ascended the White House throne.

After months of hard investigative work, the FBI has found out who stole a football jersey with the number “12” that you can buy online for $100—one that was probably “manufactured” in Bangladesh for $2.…

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How can we be so stupid?

So here we go again with healthcare costs. Doctors once were paid pigs, chickens, and veggies for delivering babies. But now we have $10 Tylenols, $1,000-a-day pills, $10,000-a-day hospital rooms, $100,000 surgeries, $300,000-a-year drug protocols, and $500,000 organ transplants.

We are the only industrialized country that does not have health insurance for all its citizens—and sometimes even visitors. A visitor to Paris who ends up in a hospital has the bill…

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Living in the eye of the wealth hurricane

An old Cree Indian prophecy may outline what our future looks like: “When all the trees have been cut down, when all the animals have been hunted, when all the waters have been polluted, when all the air is unsafe to breathe, only then will you discover you cannot eat money.”

Here is one view by C.J. Polychroniou in a Truthout article, “Socialism for the Rich, Capitalism for the Poor: “The United States is rapidly declining on numerous…

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Is it really high noon all over the country?

The inconvenient truth of unintended consequences has struck again. The National Rifle Association, under the leadership of top-gun Wayne LaPierre, once described by New York newspapers as “the craziest man on earth,” has been pushing for every kind of gun-carrying scheme, with or without permits, with or without any kind of firearm training, whether the carrier is completely nuts or not, and whether the firearm is concealed, open, or…

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Onward, science soldiers, marching off to war -- to fight ‘alternative’ facts

After just a month of the reign of King Donald the First, about 1,800 of our top scientists registered their frustration with the unscientific mess in the White House and Congress by publicly protesting the administration’s actions in Boston’s historic Copley Square on Sunday, February 18.

Most of the protesters were members attending the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of…

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North Dakota bigotry, a national one-week strike, and plutocratic plundering

First, a rant about the Republican North Dakota Legislature. There’s no doubt there are about 70,000 North Dakotans you consider to be second-class citizens. They are your gay brothers and sisters, your aunts and uncles, your neighbors, your co-workers and your bosses, your sons and daughters, your nurses and rehab therapists, and the people sitting next to you in the pews of your church.

Because they are…

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