Tag archives: Robert Bernstein
Trump famously asked why we can’t have more immigrants from Norway and fewer from “shithole countries.” But what makes a country a shithole country? I have often approached this from the other end: What makes a country civilized? I have generally offered two minimal requirements: 1) True universal healthcare 2) Good public transportation (especially high-speed […]
Current battles over Artificial Intelligence (AI) are tied to the idea of “progress.” For the past century or so we have taken it for granted that progress is a thing. Progress is the idea that we can build on past knowledge to create new technology. Which in turn allows us to acquire more knowledge and […]
With the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) ethical concerns have been raised about whether AIs can be conscious. And whether they can suffer. I find this interesting for many reasons. Notably, we already know that the animals we eat can suffer, yet we raise them in horrific factory farming conditions. Why the speculative concern about […]
Much was written for America’s 250th birthday. But some points bear viewing from a new angle. First, the U.S. was the first country that established a secular government, not tied to any religion or supernatural-adjacent authority. Past monarchs claimed their power derived from a sky god. The Founders were a product of the Enlightenment. They […]
In the early days of the internet our company had a software engineer who managed our internet connection as a side job. When something went wrong, he often had this answer: “Works for me!” How often do you encounter someone with this attitude that if it works for them that is all that matters? If […]
The Wheat and Chessboard legend tells of a king being so thrilled with the invention of chess, he allows the inventor to name his reward. The inventor makes what seems like a small request: Just give me one grain of wheat on the first chessboard square. Two on the next. And just double the number […]
After the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster in March 1979, a strong movement formed against nuclear power. Nuclear power had been pitched after the 1953 Atoms for Peace speech as “energy too cheap to meter.” Suddenly, the price was too high to meter. I then attended a rally where a speaker noted that no one […]
“Everyone needs to believe in something. I believe I will have another beer.” This bumper sticker really made me laugh. In Through the Looking Glass the White Queen proudly tells Alice “Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Having grown up in a secular humanist family, the idea of believing […]
You may know the following quote from German pastor Martin Niemöller. More about him below. “First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out – because I was not a trade unionist. […]
On September 20, Trump posted a lengthy demand on Truth Social that Attorney General Pam Bondi prosecute former FBI Director James Comey, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and New York Attorney General Letitia James. “They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” he claimed, adding, “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing […]
I first “met” Ashleigh Brilliant on a family trip to Chicago in 1969. I saw a rack of his Pot-Shot postcards and bought two of them. One of them showed two iguanas on a rock with the caption: “Why are you so hard to ignore.” In the early 1980s I was at the July 4 […]
Our condominium complex recently had a “meet your neighbors” pool party. One woman “Barb” realized I was on the Board of the homeowner’s association (HOA) and she expressed concern that the HOA fees were rising too much. I explained that our HOA insurance rate had doubled in the past few years due to the Climate […]
Brandon (10) and his brother Legend (7) asked their parents, Jessica Ivey and Samuele Jenkins, if they could walk to the Food Lion supermarket and Subway; less than ten minutes walk from their Gastonia, NC, apartment. The parents were very protective of their kids and reluctantly said yes, but they had to stay on the […]
I rarely carry a phone. I feel like a visitor from another planet watching my fellow hairless apes walk around like zombies, staring and poking at tiny screens. Which is master and which is slave? Phone or user? Phones use us to make more phones, like a virus. Quite a prolific virus. Over 17 billion […]
Who do you think of when you hear the word “elites”? The term has come to mean “educated.” But 100 years ago, it was about economic power. And most people understood which party stood for the economic elites. Franklin Roosevelt made this point very clearly in his 1936 acceptance speech for the Democratic Party nomination: […]
The left used to want tariffs on imports to protect American union jobs. Now it is the far right MAGA that wants tariffs. Why? Trump had no economic policy until he asked Jared Kushner for one. Jared searched on Amazon for a cool book title Death by China. Co-author Peter Navarro cited expert Ron Vara […]
Many Americans feel that the country is headed in the wrong direction. They feel they spend more and get less. Many factors feed this sense but here I want to focus on a nearly 60-year-old idea from late economist William Baumol called “Cost Disease.” There was rage in this recent election about inflation. But inflation […]
Before Trump, many thought that Nixon was our worst president. Nixon lied strategically about starting a war that destroyed the idyllic country of Cambodia. He sabotaged the peace deal to end the U.S. war in Vietnam when Johnson was president. He used the IRS, FBI and CIA against people he didn’t like. He lied to […]
Democrats lost in 2024 because they supposedly didn’t have the right message. Canadian philosophy professor Joseph Heath offers the message Americans are waiting for. Ever since the New Deal, Democrats have been the party of large-scale improvements: rural electrification, Social Security and Medicare and promises of true universal health care, high speed rail, green energy […]
Thank you for writing this brilliant piece, Robert Bernstein. It speaks to something in the current zeitgeist (malaise?) of our times. It’s not merely limited to printer software. Best word I’ve never heard of, before seeing it in your piece. It made my day, and I’m still laughing at how it can apply to almost […]
