Yes. I know that isn’t a real word. It’s my mashup of one word I try to never use with Marshall McLuhan. Marshall who? Here’s a short intro. McLuhan was a Canadian academic who, in his 1960’s studies of the media, coined the phrase the medium is the message. McLuhan’s basic premise was that the…

As we head to the US election- less than a month away at the time of writing- it looks like party time on November 3, 2020 for Joe Biden and the Democrats. Poll after poll shows Biden beating 45, many by significant margins. There is also a vertical win in the cards down the ticket,…

I’ve borrowed from that noted philosopher, Yogi Berra, for the title of this post. Déjà vu is indeed kicking in all over again, as science is politicized and weaponized by people with political and other agendas. While there are many instances through history of science being kicked around this way- and I’ll also touch on…

Let’s go back to the last few weeks of October 2016. Back then, a Hillary win, a big one, seemed inevitable. Polls indicated that; the sordid ‘grab them by the pussy’ tapes had surfaced; and, it was only going to be a few weeks before DJT would return to his arena- free to hawk his…

I’m borrowing from Chelsea Handler for the title of this post. Once upon a time in Democracy, we had an imperfect system of coexistence, but one that largely worked. This system recognized that society was composed of factions of people with different ideas, opinions and goals but that they would recognize these differences as valid,…

The prediction business is tricky. The potential to have your crystal ball go pie shaped and perhaps blow up in your face is pretty high, sometimes even if you’re looking at stuff in the near future. I’m thinking of all the pollsters who predicted a smashing Hillary victory in 2016– until the actual day she…

In these intemperate times, where we live along stark binary axes- good and bad, right and wrong, black and white- I have found myself exploring the boundary between the physical and temporal worlds, and the fuzzy boundary between them. The Real World This is the classical world, the one we inhabit, where actions have predictable…

Plenty of people will look at this title, narrow their eyes, and go eh? What link can there possibly be between two eminent philosophers of science, and disruptive business and society at large? As it happens, quite a lot—perhaps. For reference: Karl Popper, later Sir Karl Popper, was from Austria but spent most of his…

As the US lurches to a monumentally important election in just a few weeks, it’s worth looking at what Tuesday November 3 might have in store for us, from the perspective of the backlash lens.   Backlash is defined as “a strong and adverse reaction by a large number of people, especially to a social or…

In an age when corporations are gargantuan, not merely huge, I have been thinking of E.F. Schumacher and the themes he addressed in his very influential- for me- 1973 book Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered. The Thesis Schumacher, who was influenced by Gandhi, Buddha and others, covered a lot…