The BP Oil Catastrophe – Why Can’t They Stop the Flow?

Today BP announced that their “top kill” method of stopping the undersea gusher in the Gulf of Mexico is a failure. Previously they had tried to place a dome over the gusher to contain the oil and redirect it via pipes to the surface. But that was a failure. Then they tried inserting a small [...]

Read Full Post »

The Reason Republicans Oppose Health Care for All

A long time ago, when my first child was born, I found to my surprise and consternation that my employer-provided Blue Cross Blue Shield policy did not cover normal childbirth expenses in a hospital. I guess they rationalized that by thinking that normal childbirth wasn’t a disease, so why should health insurance  pay for it? [...]

Read Full Post »

The Pope – What Did He Know and When Did He Know it?

It is not news that the Roman Catholic Church has been embroiled in sex scandals for a good many years.  Most of these scandals seem to have involved priests taking sexual liberties with little boys and sometimes little girls.  There were major, and expensive, scandals in Boston, Los Angeles, Louisiana, in the U.S. and many [...]

Read Full Post »

China: The New World Leader in Technology

I suppose we should have seen it coming when China launched its own version of the Apollo spacecraft – three Chinese astronauts circling the Earth – a few years ago.  It was at a time when the U.S. space program was, at best, going sideways, partnering with Russia, making short trips to the Space Station [...]

Read Full Post »

The New Threat From Al Qaeda

There is a very old joke that goes something like this: a man is walking along the street at night when he sees another man on his hands and knees crawling around beneath a street light. He walks over and asks the man, “Did you lose something?” “Yes,” the man replies, “I lost a quarter.” [...]

Read Full Post »