Do unicorns exist? In Silicon Valley, they do. Unicorns are tech start-ups that begin with a billion dollars or more of venture capital behind them. In fact, there are more unicorns there than Harry Potter has seen in his world because, at the moment, tech is ripe with specula
I wish I could mandate that only those who have lived in poverty be allowed to make laws regarding the poor. In “Getting Jobbed,” Virginia Sole-Smith outlines the absurdities that result when myths about the poor are translated into law by the Congress. (Harper’s, October, 201
I want to pose a question: How can we develop Artificial Intelligence when our own intelligence is questionable; when we can’t agree on standards of behavior or ethical goals; when we know little about how our brains work; can’t define intelligence and have no idea what consciou
I’ve said nothing about the tragedy unfolding in the Middle East and the refugees who are fleeing from almost certain death. What have I to contribute to the discussion? Failed solutions of the past are already being revisited. We can harden our hearts to the misery, as Isra
One of my blog readers is a baby boomer. We’ve never met but sometimes he comments on a blog, particularly in support of women’s issues. Being curious, I emailed him one day to ask how he came to be so sensitive to the goals of feminism. His answer: “I’ve got daughte
Fear and ignorance make a powerful cocktail for evil. Add personal ambition to the mix and what emerges is a concoction so dark, angels weep. When I hear talk about building walls between nations and separating children from their parents by enforcing immigration laws, I whiff the p
Everyone on my Facebook page was seething with anger when 32 year-old entrepreneur Martin Shkreli bought the rights to Daraprim — a generic HIV drug –and raised the price from $13.50 a tablet to $750. He’d done the same with another drug while working for a different com
Over the weekend, I had to open a new web account which required my email address and a secure password. I hate thinking up passwords. I hate recording them in a notebook, which is becoming as large as the English Oxford Dictionary. And I hate having to look up a password up each time
For a wonderful example of how the elite bring contempt of the masses upon themselves, look no further than Grayson Carter’s editorial attack on Donald Trump. (“Steel Traps And Short Fingers,” by Grayson Carter, Vanity Fair, November 2015 pg. 68.) Trump is an easy punching b