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Missing coverups
The Bush administration recently admitted that it has authorized wiretapping of U.S. citizens without getting authorization from a special court which oversees wiretapping requests. The court was set up in the 1970s responding to the Church commission, which discovered the extent to which wiretapping was used to investigate anti-war and civil rights protestors during the…
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Names
I started a new job in January, and it has clearly had a significant effect on the frequency of my blog postings. I’ll see how it goes over time. Seeing Charles Taylor in the news has made me think about names. Taylor is a fairly common name, and Charles Taylor, who is the descendant, on…
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Studying Science
There has recently been some more suggestions that the U.S. is going to run short on scientists and other technical people, and that the best way to solve this is to encourage students to study science and engineering. As a computer programmer, I am certainly in favor of encouraging students to study science. But if…
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Abortion
I’m not sure I have anything new to say on the topic of abortion, but I’ll take a stab at clarifying my thoughts. I’ve been working on this little essay for about a month, off and on; it’s a complicated issue. Abortion is an interesting point of contention in the U.S. because both sides generally…
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Dangerous Ideas
The Edge has an interesting, and long, collection of mini-essays on the topic What is your dangerous idea? At that link you can find the answer to that question as written by a hundred or so different people. The answers range from false and insipid to truly interesting. I’m not sure that any of them…