When our children were little, their grandparents really liked talking “baby talk” to them. I’d watch as supposedly intelligent adults spent hours talking nonsense to unresponsive infants. Both baby and adult seemed to enjoy it. I hated it. Why? Because my wife and I were convinced that it stunted brain development. Because of that, and [...]

I’ve come up with a couple of out-there ideas — one on the minimum wage, the other on campaign contributions. I don’t pretend they’re realistic; mostly, they’re thought exercises. But I can’t really tell. I’d appreciate people’s thoughts, but I find I’m actually too embarassed to post them here. So they’re up over at Midtopia. [...]

A few things to remember…. In 1992, Bill Clinton was elected President ending 12 years of Republican domination of the White House. Once in office, President Clinton ran to the left. The result was the 1994 election which ushered the GOP in control of the Congress for the first time in nearly 50 years. In [...]

Low hanging fruit are those policies in which the party leaders are closer together than further apart.

I don’t really think so, but after what happened to my family this weekend, I’m beginning to wonder.

NPR had an interesting take on the evolving cashless society this morning, telling the story of a small cafe in Washington, D.C. that has stopped taking cash (you’ll have to click on their audio link to hear the story). The downside? Occasionally upset customers. The upside? No need to make change, no need to worry [...]

Okay, so I’m not sure why we’re suddenly all atwitter about North Korea demonstrating it has nukes, since we’ve credited them with nukes for years. And there’s a possibility they don’t actually have them. But assuming they do, it would be churlish not to try to lay out some ideas for a solution. The blogosphere [...]

(To be read with the preceding post) When I read this at Jack Whelan’s After the Future, I was surprised by my own reaction: almost everything in me leapt to believe it. I continue to be amazed at the paranoia that animates the right wing in this country and the way that paranoia creates the [...]

Crusader against religion Sam Harris (who, largely through his own tireless efforts, now merits our culture’s coveted prefix “bestselling”) in the L.A. Times: Perhaps I should establish my liberal bone fides at the outset. I’d like to see taxes raised on the wealthy, drugs decriminalized and homosexuals free to marry. I also think that the [...]

In case any of you despair about the workers who will be supporting you in retirement: Educational doomsayers are again up in arms at a new adult literacy study showing that less than 5 percent of college graduates can read a complex book and extrapolate from it. The obsessive measurement of long-form literacy is once [...]

If you are interested in any way in the issue of gay marriage — or, if you are interested in the possibility of civil discourse between people who adamantly disagree — you’ll want to follow the intense discussion that begins here today and will continue over the next several days.

Robert Anton Wilson, quoted by Commenter “Nick” at Church of the Churchless: DO NOT BELIEVE ANYTHING This remark was made, in these very words, by John Gribbin, physics editor of New Scientist magazine, in a BBC-TV debate with Malcolm Muggeridge, and it provoked incredulity on the part of most viewers. It seems to be a [...]

Many of our commenters on this post (at AmbivaBlog) took issue with the spirited defense of New Deal-rooted American social democracy expressed by Jack Whelan at After the Future. In my opinion Jack is hands down one of the best thinkers and writers on the Web; I’m particularly blown away by his “post-secular” take on [...]

[Warning, some explicit language herein] Here is someone who rejects the notion that the explosion of digital pornography is a thing to be celebrated, a “glorious Dionysian orgy after two millennia of unnatural Christian repression.” For every positive effect porn has, there is a Larry Flynt and a slew of victims. I have one friend [...]

Or is it that “the GOP and its media and energy constituencies will do everything they can to discredit attempts to deal with global warming or other issues that undermine their respective agendas. And they do it by playing the normal/weird card”? Jack Whelan at After the Future has a keen analysis of how the [...]

In this world, especially where power is concerned, the brilliant sanity of an idea almost always seems to be in inverse proportion to its likelihood of ever being adopted, implemented, realized. And so, on sighting such an idea, the heart always soars, and then sinks. If only . . . but, no. In this case [...]

I’ll give you a hint. It has something to do with our energy crisis. Jeremy Dibbell has the answer.

. . . sign me up. Have you read The Euston Manifesto? (Apologies to Donklephant readers if I’m the last to know about this. However, it was first posted just a month ago.) I might not call myself “left” or agree with every point, but the combination of common sense, firmness and fairness on such [...]

The op-ed by Todd Beamer’s father, based on the Flight 93 movie, is behind the subscription firewall at the WSJ. Cardinalpark, however, has a key excerpt up over at Tigerhawk: This film further reminds us of the nature of the enemy we face. An enemy who will stop at nothing to achieve world domination and [...]

“You’re either with us or with the evildoers.” Only George W. Bush says stuff like that? Not entirely. Todd Gitlin, who has a long history on the left (and unlike Hitchens and others, still is there), discovered the mirror image of that mantra recently when he wrote approvingly about the idea of a liberal American [...]