“Homage to Luxenben” for Sale in Print and eBook Versions
As the followers of this blog are aware, each edition has featured a serialized episode from “Homage to Luxenben, Adventures on a Utopian Planet,” by Dan Hurwitz, the writer to whom the “Writer’s Notebook” pointedly alludes. A usage analysis of the blog indicates that these episodes have been some of the its most popular postings. And, as gratifying as these results are, the author would find it additionally rewarding were some of... [Read More...]
Empower the Unemployed
It is my belief that were the unemployed permitted to self-organize and allowed to operate within a free market unburdened of all but essential regulations, they could in time prosper without ongoing governmental aid. This might strike the reader as pure conjecture, but there is, under his very nose, an irrefutable working example of the kind of enterprise I envision. Allow me then to call attention to a contingent made up mostly of young males,... [Read More...]
The Case for a New Religion, Part I
“One form of religion perpetually gives way to another. If religion did not change it would be dead. In the long history of man’s search for God and the basis for right living, the changes always come as something better. Each time the new ideas appear, they are seen at first as a deadly foe threatening to make religion perish from the earth, but in the end there is a deeper insight and a better life with ancient follies and prejudices... [Read More...]
The Case for a New Religion, Part II
COMATOSE BUT NOT DEAD With all due respect to my atheist friends, in their eagerness to count religion out, they are missing the point. Religion is very much with us today. One can hardly open a newspaper without coming across some manifestation of it one way or another. But one need not even have to go that much trouble. An honest conversation with his mirror image would do. Over hundreds of thousands of years, religion has become engrained... [Read More...]
The Case for a New Religion, Part III
Were the reader to imagine that Cartism’s fate required all the trappings of a traditional religion—a pox of churches and schools, an army of clergymen and lay associates, and unrelenting fund-raising campaigns—his skepticism as to the new religion’s ability to gain a public foothold would be justified. But the fact is that Cartism requires none of these things. To get underway, all it needs is a computer system and the Internet. The... [Read More...]
Ideas from Abroad, II
In 2011, US congressmen took some 1600, privately-funded trips abroad at a cost to their sponsors of $5.8 million dollars—a 75% increase over the previous year’s travel. I’ve no doubt that such fact-finding missions were worthwhile, that no ethic violations were involved, that the sponsoring foundations had no ulterior motives, and that the normally harried congressmen were entitled to a well-deserved respite from their heavy work load in... [Read More...]
Sanford, Florida: Lingering Questions
The overwhelming media coverage of the tragic loss of a young man’s life immediately framed the shooting in racial terms. The casual listener/reader of the early news reports could not help characterizing Zimmerman as a hate-filled, trigger-happy white man who, without provocation, gunned down an innocent black kid. Personally, I found the reportage reprehensible. It was, plain and simple, the pusillanimous catering to what were already overwrought,... [Read More...]
Episode 12, Homage to Luxenben
The guard at the entrance to the Research Institute had my name and I was soon being escorted across the campus. I looked about for something that would single out Product Development, but saw nothing that came to my attention. Instead I saw only a mundane arrangement of nondescript buildings, one of which proved to be our destination and we were soon proceeding down a long corridor to Mulhouse’s unit. Before I even had a chance to open my mouth,... [Read More...]
Episode 13, Homage to Luxenben
“Don’t you see how it all fits together?” Neuman was in too much of a hurry to wait for an answer. “God told man exactly what he wanted him to do. By the numbers: Step One, thou shalt have no other gods before me. Step Two…you know the routine. It was all there in black and white. “And what did they do? Turned around and worshipped every fool thing they could lay their hands on. And the same for the rest of the commandments. ... [Read More...]
Painless Solution to Greek Crisis
The solutions to Greece’s financial dilemma are typically framed as a black-and-white choice between the country’s continued dependence on the euro or abandoning it in favor of the drachma. Sadly neither choice seems to offer much encouragement. Even their respective advocates accompany their analyses with any number of dire, and all too credible, predictions that following the other choice would lead to even worse consequences. Austerity,... [Read More...]