Category Archives: Commentary

Banned Books Week

Remember “1984″ and “Animal Farm”? They’re banned in some American schools. In fact, a partial listing includes most of my required reading for our high school classes in the early 1960′s. List, links and article in Commentary. Continue reading

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Amazon e-book Price Dispute

The manufacturer’s cost of printing and reproducing an e-book is about zero. If e-books catch on, legacy book publishers would sell more titles and more books, but not at hardcover prices! This sounds like that old music industry deja vu, all over again. Shame on Macmillan. Excerpt and MarketWatch article link in Commentary. Continue reading

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2COR4:6

What’s to say about a gunsight model number? Not much, unless it happens to be the code to the Christian Bible passage in chapter 4 verse 6 of Corinthians. This hit the news yesterday. A small and very devout Michigan firm makes the gunsights, which include some of the finest military rifle scopes in the world. Read 2COR4:6 in Commentary. Continue reading

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Wind Power

Wind power is already here. It’s here to stay, already connected to the grid, and already contributing to a reduced dependency on

fossil fuel solutions. We posted some cost calculations to Scientific American … Read Wind Power in Commentary.

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“Actual” Veterans

Who is “actually” a military veteran? Does veteran status confer some special political wisdom or authority unavailable to civilian voters? Why do some veterans think their military service status makes their considered foreign policy opinions outweigh your opinion or mine? Continue reading

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There Goes The Knowledge Base

What’s happening to the legendary American know-how in the USA today? It’s not exactly “brain drain”, but it’s not the parallel phenomenon of “brain gain”, either. We’re losing our know-how, but the language to describe what’s happening is still alien to our vocabulary. Continue reading

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Evolution and Fake Science

Intelligent design vs. science: the current controversy is no longer so much what people are free to believe, but what constitutes legitimate science, and whether we remain free to teach scientific inquiry. Continue reading

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Costco Gas Price Flap Cooling Down

What about Chevron, Shell, Arco, Union 76 et al? The suit named nine major gasoline retailers in the U.S. Since it turns out that wholesale deliveries in hot-climate areas have already been priced, in effect, by weight, not by volume, it seems only fair that other major retailers suck it up and follow suit. Continue reading

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Getting a Handle on the Economy

Serious thinkers on both sides of the aisle are right: we need to roll up our shirt-sleeves and figure out what it will take to make the system work. Tell conservative whiners and vindictive liberals to get with the program or get out of the way. Continue reading

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Newspapers Tanking

The venerable San Francisco Chronicle may close within weeks.

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