Will Social Media Become a Public Good?

by | Jul 14, 2014 | Culture

There was a tempest recently when it was revealed that Facebook had conducted a psychological experiment on several hundred thousand users, manipulating news feeds in order to assess emotional reactions. People were outraged, of course. Nowadays, people are outraged...

You Can’t Take The Sky From Me

by | Jun 25, 2014 | Immigration

Way back when, in 2002, a science fiction series called Firefly premiered on Fox. It was the brainchild of writer/producer/director Joss Whedon, who has made a number of TV and movie hits. The show, which takes place about 500 years in the future, can be characterized...

Beware the Bear

by | May 8, 2014 | Opinion

In a quarter century or so, Russia’s going to be well on the way to Detroit status. Catastrophically low birth rate, the young emigrating in droves (including some that come here on student or work visas, overstay and seek asylum), and rampant alcoholism (men...

Everything Affects Everything

by | Mar 17, 2014 | Economics, Politics

As a brutal February rolls into a hopefully less brutal March, some of us start contemplating the spring planting season, with its promise of home-grown, straight-from-the-vine tomatoes. If you’ve never had a tomato straight off the vine, you’ve missed out...

You Don’t Need Conspiracy Theories…

by | Feb 23, 2014 | Culture, Politics

… to Distrust the Government I was talking with my brother as he was sitting in traffic on the Belt Parkway one sunny Saturday afternoon, when he chimed in with “chemtrails.” He was being sarcastic, of course, amusingly associating the condensation...