By Joel Bowman, on December 23rd, 2018% This is Reality? I am old enough to remember when the U.S. government was being run by adults. That was also true for most of the governments in the so-called civilized world—we had International differences of opinion about forms of government and territorial concerns. Most of us agreed with some of them and disagreed with others, but we were fairly certain that most countries were making decisions about government by relatively rational means, with military conflict being a last resort.
Lewis Carroll’s classic, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, describes an alternative universe in which nothing is what it seems. Alice had . . . → Read More: Down the Rabbit Hole (Redux)
By Joel Bowman, on December 13th, 2018% I take my title from Shakespear’s play, Richard III. The main character, Richard, who is about to become king of England. is not a nice person. It is no surprise that he becomes a terrible king. The play is a tragedy (everybody dies). Although the time the play was written (1593) and the time depicted in the play were very different from our political situation today, the politics of power were similar. A few centuries later, another English writer, Lord Acton, said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Although the current political situation in the States is . . . → Read More: Winter of Our Discontent
By Joel Bowman, on January 20th, 2018% If you watch any commercial television, you have surely noticed how much of the advertising is for prescription drugs If you think that the advertising for prescription medication has increased over the past few years, you’re correct. Such advertising is legal in only four countries, with the U.S. being one of the four. Marketing of pharmaceutical products has been “big business” for a long time, of course. Companies making such products trained an army of sales representatives to take samples around to physicians and others responsible for writing the prescriptions.
They also initiated a major lobbying effort to persuade . . . → Read More: Ask Your Doctor….
By Joel Bowman, on July 15th, 2017% I haven’t posted anything new in a while. I’ve been too busy reading the political news and wringing my hands. My sense is that the world situation is getting worse. We have, of course, had “dark days” in times past. I’m not sure there has ever been a time the planet was without at least one war going on. Most recently, in the States we experienced the World Wars (I and II), the Korean War, the “conflict” in Vietnam, and whatever is currently going on in the Mid-East. We’ve also had Civil Rights challenges, and various other conflicts and difficulties . . . → Read More: Dumbfounded, Discouraged, and Dismayed
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