Magazine Posts

".... Johnson’s premiership fell because it seemed to recognise no distinction between what is true and what is politically expedient. Once that distinction ceases to matter, democratic discourse becomes unsustainable and political communication becomes a matter of permanent decoding..." Read more

"New technology is intervening in the moments where speed matters more than anything. Welcome to the future of emergency medicine". Read more

Image credit: Everdrone

"After a citizen-led campaign to draw fairer voting maps, this year Michigan voters will finally choose their politicians — instead of the other way around......In the United States only 40 U.S. House seats out of 435 are considered competitive. Clearly, this is NOT democracy".....Read more

To serve my country day by day
At any humble post I may;
To honor and respect her Flag,
To live the traits of which I brag;
To be American in deed
As well as in my printed creed.

To stand for truth and honest toil,
To till my little patch of soil
And keep in mind the debt I owe
To them who died that I might know
My country, prosperous and free,
And passed this heritage to me.

I must always in trouble’s hour
Be guided by the men in power;
For God and country I must live,
My best for God and country give;
No act of mine that men may scan
Must shame the name American.

To do my best and play my part,
American in mind and heart;
To serve the flag and bravely stand
To guard the glory of my land;
To be American in deed,
God grant me strength to keep this creed.

Edgar Albert Guest (1881 – 1959) was a British-born American poet who became known as the People's Poet. His family moved from England to Detroit, Michigan when he was ten years old and he lived there the rest of his life. He worked for the Detroit Free Press for 64 years. He published more than twenty volumes of poetry and was thought to have written over 12,000 poems. His poems often had an inspirational and optimistic view of everyday life. Of his poems he said, "I take simple everyday things that happen to me and I figure it happens to a lot of other people and I make simple rhymes out of them. "His popularity led NBC to produce a weekly 15-minute radio program, “Guest in Your Home,” which ran from 1931 to 1942.
The Globe editorialized his passing by quoting Philip Coldren, the late editorial page editor who wrote that the key to Guest’s greatness was “that among the thousands of Guest poems, ‘there has not been a single one that has promoted wickedness or meanness or anything else but kindness and gentleness and peace and hope" 

 In his book, "Amusing Ourselves to Death" : Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business Postman argued that by expressing ideas through visual imagery, television reduces politics, news, history and other serious topics to entertainment. He worried that culture would decline if the people became an audience and their public business a "vaudeville act". Read the excerpt of the book's forward

Neil Postman (1931 - 2003) was an American critic educator and Author. In addition to Amusing ourselves to Death, Postman wrote several other books as well as magazine and newspaper articles regarding technology and education. His other books include Conscientious Objections (1988), Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992), The Disappearance of Childhood (1982) and The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School (1995).

His interests were were very diverse. He wrote on the disappearance of childhood, reforming public education, postmodernism, semantics, inguistics, and technopolies.

Sources: Wikipedia, NeilPostman.org

June 21, 2022, marks the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere - The day with the longest period of daylight - the beginning of astronomical summer, At the same time, the Southern Hemisphere experiences the winter solstice (the day with the shortest period of daylight).Solstices happen twice per year, at the points in Earth’s orbit where this tilt is most pronounced and and mark the change of seasons to summer and winter, respectively.  See more

"Decades of research document the detrimental health effects of BPA – an expert on environmental pollution and maternal health explains what it all means"...Read more

By now, few people question the reality that humans are altering Earth’s climate. The real question is: How quickly can we halt, even reverse, the damage?...Read more

"The path to flourishing is no simple issue of mind over matter. It also depends on society’s systems and structures: Safe, affordable housing. A living wage. Solutions to systemic racism. Affordable, quality food and health care, including mental health care". ....... Read more

"In ways big and small — in schools, in homes, in every facet of life — the United States fails to protect and support its children". Read more

"Genetic paparazzi are right around the corner, and courts aren’t ready to confront the legal quagmire of DNA theft. DNA is a trove of personal information that can be hard to keep track of and protect"  Read more

In the Bavarian village where I was raised, guns are a part of life. Mass shootings are not...Read more