BC

I suspect that what the "Western world thought about energy and energy transfer" was confined to a fairly small number of people. It isn't that the 99...

Taking a text apart to examine the language is an act very unfriendly to literature, or really, anything somebody has written. Most people hate having...

A regular rhyme scheme was not implemented, but the length of the lines fits the iambic tetrameter of the lines. The absurdity of the poem is maintain...

was that supposed to be '-wordly' or '-worldly'? Words, words, words! Yes, from 'wordly' affairs we may, might, should, would resign. How many times h...

It's not 'free verse'; it is more like 'escaped verse' that wasn't properly guarded.

This is the way our world works. It's not a conspiracy; it's in the DNA of ruling class behavior.

Good disambiguation, Thanks! I think that is true, BUT the banking operations of medieval Jews likely were not continuous into the 21st century. The R...

You grew up with her; what better way to insure compatibility (or possibly murder in the case of hateful siblings)?

Whatever turns you down

On the one hand, I'm not worried about you being a neo-nazi; you might not be quite right about the dominance of Jews in banking. On the other hand, I...

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/30/Bugsy_Siegel.jpg/440px-Bugsy_Siegel.jpg Old Bugsy Siegel was instrumental in the creation of...

I think it is true that many immigrant groups, be they Italian, Finnish, Jewish, or... tended to form tight communities glued together by custom, memo...

Xanax quells the hackles' rise.

I thought The Godfather was great; I could barely stand watching Goodfellahs. I loved the Sopranos. The Pope of Greenwich Village was a good take on '...

Perhaps separation is the problem with the American Ayn Rand. She is a reasonably successful writer -- by which I mean her books are at least quite go...

Yes. In principle, I think we should separate the work and the author. Or, the politician/producer/coach...and his sex life. Why shouldn't we let some...

He claims to have only a casual interest in philosophy. Sort of like me. Once upon a time, long ago, I read Camus and Sartre. I haven't had any desire...

Humans have been corruptible from the beginning (write in your preferred date here ______________ I doubt that corruption has been "normalized" or gon...

Maybe their native food just isn't that great? The Norwegians aren't eating Lutefisk in Norway because it is disgusting to normal palates. The descend...

Sorry; there are always exceptions. One sister (79) is more anxious and bothered than ever--right winger; next sister up (82) is as driven to perfecti...

Lawns are stupid.

Clark is right: the intensity of emotions may fade as one gets old and it's been a tremendous relief. The thermostat has been lowered for rage, lust, ...

So, State Farm is #42 in the Fortune 500 list; Revenue Decrease US$79.395 billion (2019) Net income Decrease US$5.593 billion (2019) Total assets Incr...

It's OK to feed them Spam for a couple of days. We are a rich and generous country. BTW, in fairness, people make stupid decisions all over the countr...

Since I'm cluttering up the immaculate Shoutbox with cultural documents that look a lot like ads, here's a "CLIO Award Winner". Clios are advertising ...

More cultural documents. Never an ad. Good neighbors are boring, This is a good use of emus. Emi`? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEpe5ssUVXA This is...

This is a cultural document, not an ad. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1TL4PNkhHE

I don't know much about the insurance business either, but what the hell. This isn't a business school exam. I thought insurers spread the risk throug...

It's been a long time since I had more than 1 beer or 2 beers, at most. When I did drink more, I didn't get hangovers for beer. Ditto for cocktails. B...

you beat me to it, but YES. The USA has an untitled aristocracy of heirs and entrepreneurs who began accumulating about 15 minutes after they landed o...

A 'word of the day' -- don't know which day, no date, but

An honest drinker.

Oh, I DO hope so!

We, being animals, can hardly do otherwise.

"In this society" or in any society? Yes, we internalize it so it seems like our own game. Except that we can know the how's and why's, can't we? Not ...

100%!

Back in 1968 when I went to Boston for a stint in the VISTA program, I expected people to be unfriendly. I quickly discovered that my expectations wer...

Sure thing! All you need is a sparsely populated world of hunter-gatherer bands composed of a few dozen people at most. It could be as you suspect tha...

That is true, but it doesn't exhaust the utility of the state for projects launched by the vanquished class of people. In a functioning society, even ...

I like "make a decent living". In 2000, the president of the U of MN agreed with one of the unions that $16 was a minimum living wage. two decades lat...

Silly me! How did I fail to notice these splendid features?

Capitalism does not approach the low bar of "not perfect". There are several countries that are doing well with governmental / economic systems that i...

I disagree that a liberty-denying authoritarian system is unavoidable or inevitable -- while granting that often enough we have opted for, cooperated ...

The Scots are most kind and generous.

You are taking offense to the rhetorical device of hyperbole, something one might employ in the Shoutbox. True enough, I am not well informed about th...

Odd. There are much better justifications for Israel's presence in philistine territory than Genesis. Maybe the Globe columnist hadn't read Exodus yet...

I've been run over by obvious ironies on a number of occasions.

. We need an irony alert icon.

That seems like a pretty dubious claim--in the same way that the Russian sponsored and administered referendum in eastern parts of Ukraine are "legal"...

Past performance is no guarantee of future results, but I wouldn't count on it. Before the British civilized the Scots they were barely past the barba...