343 results for the search:
by Ed Raymond | Gadfly | June 22nd, 2016
…A $3,456,789 lunch for the homelessIn a country when on any given night we have over 600,000 people homeless, including 64,000 families with about 123,000 children, we have basketball fans paying $49,500 for courtside seats at the 2016 final game of the National Basketball Association playoffs. Lesser seats on the…
by Ed Raymond | Gadfly | June 15th, 2016
…Smarts, sex, and sensibilitiesMinnesota Governor Mark Dayton wants the state to spend $175 million to make public school pre-school programs available to all four-year-olds. The purpose is to close the large educational gap between poor and minority students and their more fortunate Minnesota classmates. He’s starting out small, requesting $25…
by Ed Raymond | Gadfly | June 8th, 2016
…American culture: contradictory, bizarre, hypocritical, and narcissisticRemember that infamous pair of ne’er-do-well TV kids named Beavis and Butthead? Their creator, Mike Judge, produced a 2006 cult comedy called “Idiocracy.” The film hardly made a dime because many considered it to be too over the top about the future. As Paula…
by Ed Raymond | Gadfly | June 1st, 2016
…Are robots becoming the scabs of the labor market?The signs are getting more ominous that the human may lose his dominion over the earth to machines utilizing Artificial Intelligence (AI), manufactured by humans. Perhaps the first sign was when a computer program called BKG 98 beat the world’s best backgammon…
by Ed Raymond | Gadfly | May 25th, 2016
…Have we reached a brave new world where ignorance might count?I was shocked to read that 64 people in Bangladesh died from lightning strikes in two days of tropical monsoon storms, most of them farmers harvesting crops in rural areas. Experts said that exposure to metal equipment, and particularly cell…
by Ed Raymond | Gadfly | May 11th, 2016
…Is Sex between the ears or between the legs?So now we are battling over which humans will use which bathrooms. At least a majority of us have accepted same-sex marriage, gays in the military, and that we have a number of distinctive sexes beyond just male and female. The scientific…
by Ed Raymond | Gadfly | May 6th, 2016
…From havens to havensI take the New Yorker for the cartoons and the occasional informative article. I thought two cartoons in the latest issue explored the conditions in the world and the United States as well as several thousand words could. Through the portals of animal cages by the floor…
by Ed Raymond | Gadfly | April 27th, 2016
…To be, or not to beTwo very important issues were presented to the world on the 400th anniversary of the death of the world’s greatest playwright and poet, William Shakespeare. Pope Francis, in his “Amoris Laetitia” (The Joy of Love), struggled to answer some of the questions about sex and…
by Ed Raymond | Gadfly | April 20th, 2016
…Well, Folks, It’s Time To Sharpen The PitchforksNow we really know the ultrarich in the world are very serious about keeping their money. The Panama Papers prove it. The British Virgin Islands, a tax haven in the Caribbean, has a population of 30,659 in 2016, but, amazingly, it might have…
by Ed Raymond | Gadfly | April 13th, 2016
…None of us made it on our ownIn 1949 a poor, tall, gangly black sophomore kid in Oakland, California was cut from his junior varsity basketball team by the coach after just one tryout. After the cut, one of the coaches told him he should try for the varsity team…