347 results for the search:
by Ed Raymond | Gadfly | August 3rd, 2016
…The era of cutthroat hyper-capitalismWe have been down this rock-strewn pathway before. It happens about every three generations because humans have short attention spans, and those who forget history usually repeat it. Capitalism works for everybody only with the condition that we have social mobility—which can only be achieved through…
by Ed Raymond | Gadfly | July 27th, 2016
…Old and new normalsIn the old normal, until the 1980s, we had lynchings by the Klu Klux Klan and others marked by racial hatred and economic inequality. In the last 30 years we have added conceal and open-carry laws and an absolute tsunami of guns on the streets to the…
by Ed Raymond | Gadfly | July 20th, 2016
…Do not pass go, go directly to jail, and never earn any moneySince the light for the philosophy “Greed is Good” was turned to green by Ronald Reagan 35 years ago, local and state governments have increased spending on putting people in jail three times more than they spend on…
by Ed Raymond | Gadfly | July 6th, 2016
…When robots do most of the work…We have reached the point with artificial intelligence and robotic machines that thousands of products are purchased each day that have never been touched by human hands until placed in a shopping cart. So who is getting most of the wealth produced by computers…
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…