If truth is beauty, does truth lie in the eyes of the beholder? Around 30 years ago, post-modernism was the darling of the intellectual set. I tried to read the main authors — Derrida, Lyotard, Foucault, Habermas — but found them impossibly pompous and dense. The best I could make out was that their message […]
Trump speaks as though does he not understand tariffs. He claims that putting a tariff on Chinese goods means that the Chinese will pay the US billions of dollars in tariffs. That’s not how tariffs work: 2. If the importer pays the tariff, he will immediately pass the increase on to the consumer. That is […]
I posted a joking spoof of Trump’s outrageous lie that illegal Haitians in Springfield, Ohio were eating (White) people’s pets. I was called out on this over Facebook, on grounds that I was escalating Trump’s lies into the public domain, that responding to lies only ‘perpetuates the myth’. After all, this plays right into J.D.Vance’s […]
I have already written about some of the evils of for-profit universities in Cambodia and elsewhere. Today I want to focus on the use (or lack thereof) of English in those universities. First, a little background on Cambodia, and many similar countries. The only requirement for university admission is a pass on the public grade-12 […]
In a previous post, I looked at my very young sons and saw no signs of racial or class hatred, and I jumped to the Rousseau-ian conclusion that such behavior must be inculcated by society. Not so fast! It is at least conceivable that we are pre-programmed with an ‘us-versus-them’ gene (call it ‘UvT’) that […]
Hiroshima: Second Amendment Right? I’m watching CNN’s discussion of guns after the latest school shooting du jour. Yawn! Same old boring arguments, thoughts and prayers, second amendment, etc. But there’s one argument I’m not hearing: whether I have the right to bear nuclear arms. The same argument that people use to justify AR-15s should apply […]
What would I do if my son were kidnapped, and the kidnapper demanded a million dollars or I would never see my son again? I would probably beg, borrow, or steal the money to get my son back, without any logical reasoning such as: However, any such logical reasoning goes out the window when it’s […]
A lot of my readers are fathers and will have experienced similar thoughts to mine: the miracle of life, the wonder of witnessing a new human being, etc. So what I’m expressing is probably nothing new, but I feel like expressing it anyway. One of my first thoughts at seeing my newborn son was that […]
The canal will pass through Cambodia and will bypass Vietnam Cambodia declared a national holiday for the start of the new canal, with parades, fireworks, the whole shebang. This canal will allow Cambodian river traffic to avoid passing through the Mekong delta in Vietnam. Phnom Penh will become a major river port, or perhaps some […]
I have written, in earlier blogs, about Hamas’ goal and strategy: the destruction of the State of Israel though global outrage against Israel . To reiterate a bit: First, the October 7 incursion into Israel was not designed to topple Israel in one fell swoop. Rather, it was to provoke Israel into a blind rage […]