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How today's politics echo pre-Civil War days

11/21/2023

History, it is said, does not truly repeat itself. But, if we listen closely, we can occasionally hear it rhyme. If you know history, last week’s insults and threatened violence in Washington had a familiar tune. Last time something like it played, things didn’t end well.
Last week, a Republican senator from Oklahoma who happens to be a mixed martial arts fighter, Markwayne Mullin, challenged Sean O'Brien, the president of the Teamsters union, to a fight during a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
O’Brien had been posting nasty things about Mullin on social media, which the senator read aloud.

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Should we let AI take care of our elderly?

11/16/2023

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If, like me, you are approaching an age when joints creek and legs move slower, I have a simple question for you.
Would you rather have a human help you with old-age tasks, when you need it someday? Or would you be comfortable with artificial intelligence handling all the necessary tasks?
I’m guessing you might say it depends. For instance, I wouldn’t mind having a self-driving car take me to doctor appointments and drop me off at the front door. A robot might be OK for some of the more mundane or, shall we say, delicate things that accompany the not-so-golden part of the golden years. It might not be bad to have one around if I should fall or need medical attention.

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20 years until financial ruin?

11/9/2023

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What will people say in Washington on that day, whether it’s in 2043 or some time sooner, when it becomes clear that nothing — not cuts to programs or hikes in taxes or bloviating political speeches at podiums — will keep the American economy from collapsing because the nation is unable to pay its debts?
Will it become clear, then, that the budget showdowns of 2023, including the one looming on Nov. 17, were little more than ridiculous fights over discretionary spending that did nothing serious to postpone the day of reckoning? Will they view with shame the large spending programs of the early ‘20s, from pandemic relief to college loan forgiveness, as having hastened disaster?

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Why homeschooling is sweeping the land

11/9/2023

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I have an 8-year-old granddaughter in Virginia who is being homeschooled. Her mother didn’t know she was part of a powerful nationwide trend bubbling just beneath the surface of American culture, brought to light this week in a Washington Post report.
The most important thing to her, she told me in a text, was to be able to meet her daughter where she is, academically — adjusting lesson plans to move quickly through materials she has mastered, while spending more time on things her daughter is struggling to learn.
The local public school wasn’t able to do that.
This is all new and fascinating to me. When my wife and I had school-aged children, homeschooling was seen as something on the fringes of society. That stigma seems to be gone now, drop-kicked by a pandemic that led to a crisis in early learning.

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The first thing we have to do before solving any problem

11/9/2023

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A bunch of really smart people got together at Utah Valley University this week to talk about growth in Utah County, how to prepare for it, and how to plan so they have enough affordable housing, clean air and mass transit to keep it a place where people want to live.
A lot of smart people said a lot of smart things, but it took a politician to say what has to be said at almost every event focused on solutions to government-related problems these days.
That is, we need to learn how to get along with each other. Period. That is step No. 1, and it’s a big one.
It’s why Utah Gov. Spencer Cox has devoted his year as head of the National Governors’ Association to urging people to “disagree better.”

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How today's politics echo pre-Civil War days

Should we let AI take care of our elderly?

20 years until financial ruin?

Why homeschooling is sweeping the land

The first thing we have to do before solving any problem

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