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01 Sep - 30 Sep 2006
01 Oct - 31 Oct 2006
01 Nov - 30 Nov 2006
01 Jun - 30 Jun 2008
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Thomas Friedman on Public Participation
Here is a recording of Thomas Friedman reading from his book Longitudes and Attitudes, the editorial he filed on December 9th, 2001. It has some really important things to say about the American people and methods of leadership. What if it had been this way?
Full article
Freedom and Justice in Islam
Bernard Lewis of Princeton writes:
By common consent among historians, the modern history of the Middle East begins in the year 1798, when the French Revolution arrived in Egypt in the form of a small expeditionary force led by a young general called Napoleon Bonaparte—who conquered and then ruled it for a while with appalling ease. General Bonaparte—he wasn't yet Emperor—proclaimed to the Egyptians that he had come to them on behalf of a French Republic built on the principles of liberty and equality. We know something about the reactions to this proclamation from the extensive literature of the Middle Eastern Arab world. The idea of equality posed no great problem. Equality is very basic in Islamic belief: All true believers are equal. Of course, that still leaves three “inferior” categories of people—slaves, unbelievers and women. But in general, the concept of equality was understood. Islam never developed anything like the caste system of India to the east or the privileged aristocracies of Christian Europe to the west. Equality was something they knew, respected, and in large measure practiced. But liberty was something else.
Full article
Empty the Prisons!
DIFFERENT PEOPLE: ERRING PEOPLE, OBSTINATE PEOPLE, NONCONFORMING PEOPLE, UNCONVENTIONAL PEOPLE; PEOPLE WHO REJECT AUTHORITY, PEOPLE WITH MENTAL HEALTH OR PSYCHOLOGICAL/SOCIOLOGICAL PROBLEM PEOPLE
Reward! Reward! Free room and board....
173,000 California people are currently receiving free room and board, utilities, medical and dental care, clothing, laundry and security from their state.
$90 a day times 365.25 days times 173,000 people
Full article
Paul Erlich on Population
In 1968, the Stanford entymologist Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, a bestselling book that alerted the world on the doomsday crisis of the 20th century population explosion. He argued that the world was coming to a point where it could no longer support its own human population and that mass famines would ensue. In the course of the seventies and eighties, when many of his predictions didn't come true and the "green revolution" dramatically changed the food-supply equation, Ehrlich's ideas fell rather more out of favor. Over the course of my higher education in the last half-decade, hardly anybody talks about population as the problem. It is considered unhumanistic. Political and more transcendent economic forces are now seen as the cause, rather than the result, of structural famine.
On October 17, 2006, the population of the United States officially reached 300 million. It reached 200 million, incidentally, in 1967, the year before Ehrlich's book was published. Whether or not there is need to recover his crusade, this milestone offers a good opportunity to at least look back on it an wonder.
In homage to Ehrlich, the Center is pleased to offer an exclusive, fuzzy and incomplete, but nonetheless classic, recording of a lecture from his heydays.
Full article
Suggestion For Grandson About Tuition
Investigate the Scandinavian sovereignties where they sense the importance of learning and offer everyone 20 years of free public education. :-)
Imagine, that educational offer? 20 years of free public education , whenever you want it -- is made to everyone in some Scandinavian countries ?
That is the equivalent of our American present K-12 and an addition of 4-year college and university educations like our wondrous GI-Bill after WWII, and even another year for a Master's Degree or some specialized whatever, and still two more.... Imagine? Free?
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