Gadfly

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…

Read more...

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…

Read more...

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…

Read more...

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…

Read more...

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…

Read more...

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…

Read more...

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…

Read more...

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…

Read more...

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…

Read more...

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.…

Read more...