About 35 years ago, astrophysicist Carl Sagan wrote the best-selling book of popular science, Cosmos, to accompany his enormously popular public broadcast series of the same name. Cosmos is still in book stores, which explains why my son gave it to me a few months back for Hanukkah. Sagan surveyed a broad expanse of science […]
Read More… from A reminder from 35 years ago that we need to ratchet up space exploration
There is absolutely no excuse for the riots and the fires in Baltimore. Violence is never the appropriate way to seek redress of grievances in a civil society. But just because we don’t condone, does not mean that we can’t empathize with the rioters and their concerns. If we want to prevent future violence of […]
It’s so easy to kill an animated figure on a screen in a video game. And then another, and then another, each of them so realistic in their detail that they could almost be human. Pretty soon you’ve knocked off hundreds of imaginary people. Not so easy, though, for most of us to pull a […]
Read More… from Drones & other automated weapons dehumanize the enemy & make it easier to go to war
Charles Blow has written the column I toyed with writing, dreaded writing and avoided writing. In “Has the NRA won?” Blow analyzes the evidence that the United States has become a nation of gun lovers who incorrectly believe that they’re safer with a gun in the house and in the holster. Blow tracks the odd […]
Read More… from Surveys show Americans succumbing to lies of the gun lobby
When Republicans support or pass a law to address a non-problem, they usually have an ulterior motive. Take the slew of recent state laws making it harder to vote. The stated rationale behind these laws is to prevent voter fraud, a complete non-problem since there is virtually no voter fraud perpetrated by individual voters anywhere […]
Read More… from New Kansas law picks the pockets of the poor while humiliating them in the process
OpEdge followers living in the New York City area are in for a treat, I write somewhat fat-headedly. I’m performing my poetry in a feature reading on May 21 at 7:00 pm at the Thirteenth Street Theater, 50 West 13th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in Manhattan. It’s close to Union Square, so there […]
Now the media attacks on Hillary will begin in earnest, if for no other reason than there is nothing much else to say about the campaign to become the 2016 Democratic nominee for President of the United States. Hillary has name recognition, a distinguished record, high scores for likeability and big donors. The current president […]
A coordinated rightwing effort raises $840,000 for a pizza joint in a small town in Indiana through crowd-sourcing when the pizza place supposedly closed down in the face of an avalanche of threats after the owners told local news media that it wouldn’t cater a same-sex wedding. Doesn’t it smell a little cheesy? And not […]
Read More… from Indiana pious pizza purveyors latest example of the rightwing touting bogus victims
Would you pay $17.23 for a smooth gray-colored stone that could fit in your hand, something you could find at almost any municipal park for free? That’s the equivalent value in today’s money of what people paid for Pet Rocks in 1975. Of course, it came with a 32 page manual full of puns and […]
Read More… from What do Pet Rocks and handbags made from frog and anaconda skin have in common?
When did the fight about religious liberty change from protecting the right to practice in private to asserting a right to impose a religious practice on a public space? It’s a rhetorical question, because history tells us that for at least 200 years the religious rightwing has always wanted to impose Christianity on American society, […]