Gadfly

Blue crayon

July 29th, 2015

From black space to bright blue earth: a fragile thin line

Astronaut Sally Ride, our first woman in space, spent time looking at earth as the space shuttle hurtled around the earth, entranced by a bright day turning into a dark night in a single orbit: “I saw the blackness of space, and then the bright blue Earth. And then it looked as if someone had taken a royal blue crayon and traced along Earth’s horizon. And then I realized that the blue line, that really thin royal blue line,…

Moral Capitalism

July 22nd, 2015

White Cotton, Brown Tobacco, Black Slavery--And Green Free Enterprise Dollars

Our ancestors didn’t wait long. Slavery started in Virginia in 1619 and was “legal” in all British colonies to provide labor for tobacco, rice, and indigo plantations in the Western Hemisphere. I guess if slavery is legal the property on which slaves work can be called plantations instead of slave labor camps.

I see Andy Peterson, CEO of the Greater North Dakota Chamber of Commerce, has the same…

Capitalist Fracketeering

July 15th, 2015

Capitalist Fracketeering: The Idea That Anything That Gets Between Them And A Dollar Is Bad

We all know what fracking means in the oil industry. It’s the process of injecting water and mysterious chemicals at high pressures so that the last drops of oil and gas are forced out of rocks and shale so it can be recovered and sold. Now the high pressures in fracking are being used to separate the last drop of economic blood from the middle-class before it disappears. Ian Martin of The…

God And Fingers

July 9th, 2015

Is This Why God Gave Us Fingers?

There is evidence that fork-like instruments were developed thousands of years ago to facilitate eating barbecue by the fireside. But 10 centuries ago Roman Catholic Saint Pietro Damiani said such instruments looked like the work of Satan, who was usually portrayed carrying a huge trident in his right hand. The Saint said: “God would not have given us fingers if he wanted us to use that instrument of Satan.” That marvelous gay Catholic Leonardo Da…

Climate and Sexuality

July 1st, 2015

To Pope Francis: How About The Sciences Of Climate—And Sexuality?

In his encyclical on climate prepared for one billion Catholics Pope Francis urged them — and the rest of the world — to study and consider what an overwhelming majority of scientists say about the condition of the earth we are supposed to have dominion over. The pope seems to have the habit of not mincing words about our home: “The Earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. In…

An Exciting World: Dementia Cures And Sexy Transplants

June 24th, 2015

We Live In Exciting Times….A Writer’s Dream

I’m a news junkie. It’s been a wonderful week to live in a world with instant communications dominated by presidential candidate The Donald-I’m very-rich with real hair, and the encyclical by Pope Francis which urges us to save the environment so the poor can survive in a world of hyperconsumption. Guardian George Monboit wrote a rather poetic article Why We Fight For The Living World: It’s About Love, And It’s Time We Said So:…

American Medicine

June 17th, 2015

Doctor Henry Jekyll Meets The Evil Health Insurance Agent Mr. Edward Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson, author of many 19th Century action-packed thrillers such as Treasure Island and Kidnapped, wrote these suspense-filled stories from his sickbed, where he was plagued with “bloody lungs,” probably tuberculosis. While doing some research for a column about our bizarre, scam-filled, and often totally baffling health care “system,” I thought of another Stevenson novel, The Strange Case…

Dreams and Nightmares

June 10th, 2015

Whatever Happened to the Idea of the Common Good?

I have always been a faithful reader of Lloyd Omdal’s columns because he can pick a problem apart and submit a reasonable solution with a dollop of humor without preaching. But the former N.D. Lt. governor and retired UND prof was very serious in his May 24 Forum column “’Dream’, is Fast Fading.”

He wrote: “The American Dream is slowly fading as the size of our dependent population grows. North Dakota has thousands of…

Blood moons

June 3rd, 2015

Blood moons and blood days at the National Rifle Association corral

There is a blood moon “gospel” of sorts among Christian fundamentalists that prophecies the Rapture, or the End Times, will begin to take place if there are four blood moons (eclipses) within one and one-half years.

According to old records, four blood moons around 1493 supposedly marked the expulsion of Jews from Spain -- and the European discovery of America. Another four heralded the founding of the state of Israel…

Maxims

May 27th, 2015

“If You Don’t Know Where You Are Going…”

A reader recently sent me a marvelous computer -- animated video of our rover Curiosity landing on Mars in November of 2011. The depiction of the separation of various rockets, the bizarre complexities of the landing, the parachutes, the rover container bouncing across the sparse Mars landscape, the unfolding of the parts, and then the awakening of that marvelous creation of humans was simply amazing. Particularly for a young farm boy who…