Tag Archives: Featured Stories

TimeWork Web Reloaded Publication of my article, “The Ambivalence of Disposable Time: The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties at Two Hundred,” felt very much like the culmination of a 26-year long research project that began when I answered a call for proposals from the B.C. Ministry of Employment and Investment. My proposal included a research hub website, which was pretty innovative for 1995. It turns out that no research contract was...

The Cornwall Paradox  The County of Cornwall has been in the news as the site of the G7 summit, just ended. In today’s Washington Post an article “In Cornwall, a jarring contrast of power and poverty,” by Karla Adam and Loveday Morris, a paradox of this visit is highlighted and brought out, indeed, that Cornwall is one of the poorest places in Great Britain, indeed in Northern Europe more generally, but that it is drawing much attention and some...

Record High Job Quitting; Record Low Layoff Rate, MarketWatch 666, AB Commenter and Blogger RJS The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report for April from the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated seasonally adjusted job openings jumped by by 998,000, from 8,288,000 in March to 9,286,000 job openings in April, after March’s record job openings were revised 165,000 higher, from 8,123,000 to 8,288,000 . . . April’s jobs openings...

Coronavirus dashboard for June 7: a Tale of Two Pandemics: the Vaccinated States vs. the Idiotic States The drive towards “herd immunity” via vaccination has slowed to a crawl. The slowing is almost entirely driven by Trump-voting States in the South and West. Those Idiotic States are continuing to suffer from an ongoing pandemic, while in the Biden-voting States of the Northeast, Midwest, and California, the pandemic has all but ended.Here...

Ross Barnett didn’t invent the big lie, but he was a practitioner. One might even say that Ross was to the manor born. The big lie had been a southern thing from the get go; comes with the turf. First you must lie to yourself, and so they did. Hitler appropriated, without acknowledgment, the concept in Mein Kampf, Chapter 10. That wasn’t all he appropriated from the American South; they had beaten him to a lot of the Nazi shtick. Joseph McCarthy...

“Ambivalence” has dropped! “The Ambivalence of Disposable Time: The Source and Remedy of theNational Difficulties at Two Hundred,” Tom Walker,Simon Fraser University  Two things I am especially pleased about that were sort of incidental at the time: 1. The prominence in the title of “Ambivalence” — the future is ambivalent — and 2. The ending quote by Benjamin of a quote about stereoscopic vision.  The “author’s original version” can...

Let me follow up briefly on my post from yesterday on vaccine hesitancy. Demeaning people is the first step towards ignoring their interests or even persecuting them.  Jason Brennan urges us to ignore the welfare of the unvaxxed by painting a picture of them as moral terrorists or extortionists.  He holds them responsible for their confusion and fears.  He pretends that everyone is well-informed and knows how to evaluate scientific evidence, and...

Want a Public Option? Not So Fast, Say Health Insurers. Guess Who is Fighting It! Much of this is from an Op-Ed at MedPage Today authored by Wendel Potter. I have added to it as Wendel discusses the impact of insurance as a major influence on healthcare cost. It is one sided and the commentary ignores increased healthcare costs (pharma, hospitals, healthcare supplies, and doctors). I have touched upon both at MedPage Today and here. The...

A Recent Correlation Regarding Political “Leadership” And The Coronavirus  The recent correlation I have noticed, with others commenting on it also, is that some of the most prominent nations with the most rapidly rising rates of coronavirus infections are led by somewhat authoritarian leaders who have recently dismissed the threat of it and engaged in policies that may have encouraged its spread.  The most dramatic examples are India, Brazil, and...

Whether it be by legislative intent, or due to some interpretation of the law by a judge or by the supreme court; behind each incidence of police brutality, shooting of an unarmed person, or other unwarranted police behavior in America, lies the question of how is it the law of the land allows law enforcement officers to act with relative impunity? Of course, there is the question of whether the law does indeed allow law enforcement officers to use...