In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond - and his response is magnificent: “Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and...

Another on my books I haven’t read list is White Fragility by Robin Diangelo. This white woman makes a strong case that white people are overly defensive about matters of racial history. It’s a good point. You don’t have to look very far to find rabid examples of...

College and high school The Freakonomics broadcast on Sunday last (5/17) interviewed some of the people tasked with the responsibilities of making decisions about school opening procedures. The show also featured some very favorable prognostications as to the future...

by Jim Stehr The 1918 influenza pandemic killed an estimated 17 to 100 million people world-wide, including 600,000 in the United States.  Warren Harding became president in March 1921 when unemployment was 23.1%.  Harding, and more so his successor Calvin...

I enjoyed this Carl Sagan video on the existence of God (Link below). Note the use of the capital "G" in God. It makes no sense to discuss small letter g's. In the video, an audience member off-camera asks Mr. Sagan if we shouldn’t start giving more credit to the...

WinLoseorDraw has been reading Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein. He recommends it, highly. The author re-enforces many of the opinions expressed on this blog with scholarly and professionally conducted research. Imagine that. WinLoseorDraw found a two page Interlude,...

If the election were being held now instead of November, who would you vote for? It’s an impossible choice with no good answer, but I will tell you something of my preferences. But first: Our elections have devolved into popularity contests. It's not a good way to...

by David Howard Beginning in the 1700s in Europe, we began to see the forming of a strange and seemingly self-contradictory alliance of intellectuals and artists and writers that made up a large part of what we now call the Enlightenment.  Broadly speaking,...

America was born before the Revolutionary war. It was born when thoughtful people here started reading political philosophers and theorists of the early 1700's like John Locke. At our very inception it was clear that we would stand for two things: Free Enterprise and...

A chess player who uses the screen name Timbeau wrote "There is only one political party in the US and it has two wings: One is called Democrat and the other Republican. The fundamental differences are non-existent. Both have a long history of managing the country on...