The most common approach to conflict resolution is to start with facts we all agree on. Those seem to be evaporating in the face of disinformation campaigns by all sides. One fact should be easy — we’re all human, and have the same fundamental needs: food, shelter, love, respect. But even that obvious fact fails […]

  As time ticks, Information decays to disorder equivalent to Energy decays as space expands

By assuming the polls were representing the voting. By not carefully sorting out the complaints against the system according to how emotionally charged they were. By not gathering information actually relevant to what people would get out and bother voting for (or against). Trump’s campaign did some of that sorting out, by attacking various groups […]

Excerpted from DarkReading ‘Stone’s movie also hit on the biggest legal vulnerability threatening our constitutional rights: secret laws being written that avoid the critical checks and balances of the American system of balance of powers. One key source of these secret threats is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court system, which issues secret rulings […]

All our political systems started out as searches for the best leaders, and fairness in apportionment of resources. The best hunt organizer would easily become the hunting band’s leader, and his authority would undoubtedly prevail in the sharing of the spoils. And similarly with leaders in other areas of expertise. Until one didn’t share the […]

My take on a recommendation of my son, the film 500 days of Summer — The Art of Love (and Friendship?): emotionally pleasing communications from understanding and acceptance of discrepancies between expectations of an event and its actuality based on differing responses to the continually changing inputs of life.   Preferring one person over another […]

Only laws needed: no violence or threat of violence against person, property or truth. Secrets arise from transgressions of law or morality, and are almost always meant to advantage us over someone else less “in the know”. The value of a secret may be measured in the pain one is willing to endure to maintain […]

The point of literature: a search engine for equity I’ve been conducting a rather intense and thoroughgoing review of the principal themes of literature in the last couple of years, at least as it shows up in television and movies.  It seems to me the point of most of our literature is to explore the […]

My son asked me about selecting a dental insurance plan while he is at college.  The options included choice of an HMO plan or a PPO plan, the difference being: less out-of-pocket (copay) cost but a more restricted collection of dental service providers for the HMO plan. This led to thinking about the general problem […]

My son has been suggesting for some time now that I contact actual scientists about my search for physics which better explain our universe.  Finally I have found one edge of a larger community of such maverick thinkers in the annual contests of Max Tegmark’s Foundational Questions Institute. The first contest essay I read last […]