The Trump Administration and the mainstream media call North Korea a rogue state. But who’s the real rogue state? The United States issues wild threats of total destruction of a civilian population, yet the North Korean government is expected to stay calm, carry on and not attack the U.S. Meanwhile, the U.S. acts like a crazy scaredy-cat, attacking countries like Iraq on the flimsiest of pretexts, arguing that there’s the slimmest possibility of a threat that justifies it waging a war of aggression.
Why Do Cops Bring Guns to a Knife non-Fight?
The shooting death of a Georgia Tech student by a campus policeman became just another example of trigger-happy policemen killing emotionally disturbed people. What often goes unasked and thus unanswered by police is the question: why do cops think they need to use guns against people armed with knives, especially when there is a considerable distance between them and the victims? In this case the situation was aggravated by the facts that the “knife” was a utility tool that merely had a knife among other tools, and that the blade was not extended.
IPhone and the March Toward Mediocrity
Apple marked the 10th anniversary of the iPhone with the release of a new operating system including AR that could once again revolutionize the way we interact with our devices. Lost in the hype, however, is a reflection upon the millions of jobs and entire industries lost because the iPhone, like the Borg in Star Trek, destroyed and assimilated them. You don’t even need to buy a flashlight anymore! The other issue is, most of the iPhone app versions of the original products that they replaced are inferior to the originals.
Capitalism
One of the major problems with capitalism is inheritance. If this is a meritocracy, how come the children of rich people get to start out life with millions of dollars? One of the other questions, one that doesn’t get discussed very often, is the simple fact that the system relies on unemployment. People have to be unemployed for the system to work. If unemployment ever drops to zero, analysts and markets freak out.
Disaster Fatigue
Once again, a major disaster affects tens of thousands of Americans in the form of Hurricane Harvey in Houston. Once again, Americans generously respond with donations…at first. But the survivors will need help, big help, for years to come. Unfortunately, history suggests that there probably won’t be the sustained attention to Harvey required to make a difference. Just look at Katrina; 12 years later, parts of New Orleans still look like a war zone.
Empathy School for the President
Many psychologists, and many ordinary citizens, agree that something is wrong with Donald Trump, and that whatever it is has something to do with his lack of empathy. Perhaps it’s time to take a page from the classic 1960s James Coburn movie “The President’s Analyst” and send Trump for a few sessions so he can at least pretend to care about people not named Donald Trump.
Censorship? We Don’t Do That Here in the USA
The head of a division of a Washington think tank owned by Google was called on the carpet and fired after he praised a European Union sanction of Google under their antitrust rules. This raised concerns about tech company ownership of supposedly independent institutions and tech CEOs’ refusal to permit any deviation from their official party lines.