• O Tempora, O Mores - The current situation in the US is the stuff of bad dreams – according to polls and pundits, the country is likely at the end of its run as a liberal democracy/republic and headed toward a new destiny under an imperial president with fascist ambitions – all neatly spelled out in Project 2025. This isn’t… Continue Reading
• The Road to Fascism - Donald Trump and Project 2025 present the United States with the real possibility of going from a representative, democratic, republican form of government to an autocratic, fascistic form of government. For the record, let us first look at some historical Western European models of the passage from democracy to autocracy to see if there is… Continue Reading
• War in the Holy Land II – World War I - This is a short but dense post based on a memorandum, a speech before parliament, a declaration, a correspondence, entries from a diary, two agreements, a protocol, a revolt, a world war, two armistices, two peace conferences, two mandates, a short war and an interim report. It recounts the intrigues and deal making that led… Continue Reading
• War in the Holy Land - This is the first in a short series of posts on the run-up to the current tragic situation in the Holy Land. This first post deals with the rise and decline of the Ottoman Empire.    The Last Caliphate From the 7th Century BC up to modern times, the history of the Holy Land has… Continue Reading
• AI Agonistes -  Apocalypses Now III AI Agonistes The apocalyptic threats associated with AI development are much in the news these days. The field itself is divided into accelerationists who want to move forward as quickly as possible and the effective altruists  (aka decelerationists aka decels aka doomers) who also want to move forward but who are wary… Continue Reading
• Apocalypses Now II - Climate Change is one threatening apocalypse. Here is another. Artificial Intelligence Everywhere you turn these days, Artificial Intelligence pops up. Indeed the press has been all over it. Thus for its Sept. 7 edition, Time Magazine, in the tradition of its Person of the Year, published a cover featuring the “Time 100 AI,” billed as… Continue Reading
• Apocalypses Now - The words apocalypse and apocalyptic are everywhere these days. And for good reason – the world we have known seems to be coming to an end. Truly several major threats are all converging like Biblical plagues at this point in time. They include climate change, artificial intelligence, the end of Christianity as we have known… Continue Reading
• Brooklyn and Jackie Robinson III - For years, the mantra of Brooklyn Dodger fans was “Wait till next year” as season after season went by without a World Series championship. And 1952 was not to be that “next year,” alas; worse, it was made all the harder to bear as "dem Bums" reached the seventh game of a hard-fought World Series… Continue Reading
• Brooklyn and Jackie Robinson II - The Dodgers met the awesome New York Yankees in the 1947 World Series, the first fall classic ever with a Black ball player and the first to be televised - people didn’t have TVs at home yet and the bars of Brooklyn were packed as resourceful publicans showed the game on early Motorola and RCA… Continue Reading
• Brooklyn and Jackie Robinson -   Brooklyn NY was the epicenter of the US war effort of the 1940s: the battleship Missouri was built at the Brooklyn Navy Yard; the great bulk of the troops who sailed to Europe passed through the Brooklyn Army Terminal in order to board ships waiting at the Brooklyn docks, the best deep water piers… Continue Reading