“When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.” This was the nightmare of Ben Franklin. Yet, with passage this spring of a $4 trillion bailout of an economy facing historic losses because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Nancy Pelosi’s House having voted out another $3…
For as long as there has been human language, humans have been using it to manipulate one another. The fact that it is possible to skillfully weave a collection of symbolic mouth noises together in such a way as to extract favors, concessions, votes and consent from other humans has made manipulation so common that…
Façade of collegiality The Covid-19 outbreak took by surprise politicians who had lost sight of their primary function: to protect their fellow citizens. Panicked, they turned to a few gurus. In this case the mathematician Neil Ferguson of Imperial College [1] and the physician Richard Hatchett of CEPI (Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations), former collaborator of…
Scott Adams has a perfect phrase to describe our political divide. “One screen, two movies.” What he means is that two people see the same event and process it in completely opposite ways, depending on their perspective. That perspective is made up of a whole host of things — current state of mind, personal experience,…
It is a very linguistic fact that the term “race” exists in all languages derived from the Latin one. For instance, the meaning of this term is identical in English and French like in some other languages or very similar regarding the meaning. However, the term “race”, basically, refers in all of those Latin derived…
In the end it took a self-proclaimed ‘meathead’ like Joe Rogan to give new meaning to the phrase “Star Wars.” Because if there was ever a moment where someone with real star potential just went to war on our behalf, it is Joe Rogan signing a $100 million exclusive deal with Spotify. Don’t take my…
