Category Archives: commentary

Why is it so hard?

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I think I’ve figured out why it is so hard to get these blogs written. I have a routine. I’ll have an idea, spend half a day thinking about it and doing any necessary research. Then I’ll spend the afternoon writing. Then I sleep on it and the next morning, edit it with fresh eyes and look for a visual or two to insert. Easy, right?

The problem is I keep writing about Donald Trump. He dominates the news and my thoughts. I simply can’t believe what he says. I can’t believe what he does or tries to do. I can’t believe how many people passively remain quiet or openly support his actions. So I write. But overnight, he does something worse. Day in and day out. Now, come the morning, I’m faced with the dilemma, finish the piece from the day before, or drop everything to tackle the latest horror? I’m frozen in the headlights of Trump.

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Parliament: At Least Debate

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One of the more esoteric debates in academia for those studying politics is the contrast between the American form of government, with a strong executive and an elected legislature wielding equal power, with the democratic parliamentary system in which the elected legislature is the ultimate power, the head of state subservient to it and the executive chosen by it. In other words, America v. England.

I frequently got into this debate with my father, a true Anglophile, and we never resolved the issue. The compare and contrast form of discussion was, in many way, ironic because of the historical circumstances. England had a strong executive at the time of the American revolution. King George III reigned at that time, had considerable real power compared with today’s Queen Elizabeth II, and was for Americans the perfect example of a leader to be avoided.

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Again With the Guns

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I have now learned that a great way to increase the amount of public participation on your blog is to talk about guns. The feedback on my last post set a record.

I have also learned that having a reasonable debate on this subject is pretty much impossible. There is so much disinformation out there that people involved in the discussion seem to be speaking different languages.

Part of the problem is that there really is, as I noted in the last post, not a lot of good data on the effects of gun ownership and gun regulation. I know that sounds crazy and I have to tell you, as one who believes in making informed data driven judgments it is very frustrating. But it is true mostly because the government, which funds much of the academic research in the United States, has for years forbidden the organizations responsible for public health and safety to fund studies into the causes of death by gunfire. That leaves us arguing, for example, on the effectiveness of the assault weapons ban which expired in 2004. 

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Guns

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On September 13, 1994, a ten-year ban on assault weapons was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. It had been supported by three former presidents, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reason. The law had a built-in “sunset” provision and was allowed to expire on September 13, 2004, when President George W. Bush was in office.

The so-called Federal Assault Weapons Ban, part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, was limited. It included a prohibition on the manufacture for civilian use of certain semi-automatic firearms that were defined as assault weapons as well as certain ammunition magazines that were defined as “large capacity”.

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Apollo 11 – Those Were the Days

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Of all the thoughts that came to mind as we marked the 50th anniversary of the landing of Apollo 11 on the moon, the one that struck me most was the realization that more than half the people alive on the planet today hadn’t been born yet when Neil Armstrong took that “giant leap.”

That’s Armstrong’s footprint above on the left. And that’s Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin in the middle saluting the American flag. Here’s a bit of trivia for you. Almost all the pictures on the first men on the moon feature Aldrin. That’s because only Armstrong had a camera and infrequently handed it off to Aldrin. On future flights both crewmen were given a camera.

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5G and Wi-Fi 6—Evolution and revolution

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As you can tell by all the marketing hype, 5G is upon us. The mobile telephone carriers are touting their plans to roll out 5G, the Fifth Generation of wireless service, although specifics about the timetable, fees and applications are difficult to come by.

Wi-Fi 6 is somewhat more obscure. That’s because the branding has never really caught on with the equipment makers who instead opted to describe their gear with the string of numbers and letters referencing the IEEE standard which defines the technology. Wi-Fi 6 is 802.11ax. And that is a mouthful for consumers to remember.

This story continues on The Network by Cisco….

 

 

 

 

 

Muller to Barr RE: “Public Confusion”

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I didn’t. I really did not want to write about this again. I’ve got several much more interesting things half written that I’d like to finish. But I keep coming back to what is alleged by many to be the most popular quotation in the English language, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill? For a discussion on the source see quoteinvestigator.

The night before Attorney General William Barr was to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Washington Post first reported that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had, on March 27th, 2019, sent a letter to Barr characterizing Barr’s four page memo to Congress, dated March 24,

The summary letter the Department sent to Congress and released to the public late in the afternoon of March 24 did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance of this Office’s work and conclusions. We communicated that concern to the Department on the morning of March 25. There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel: to assure full public confidence in the outcome of the investigations

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