Last week I attended a very interesting debate between Green Party presidential candidates Jill Stein and Roseanne Barr, held at the Victoria Theater in San Francisco’s historic Mission District (watch the entire debate here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGo6wg9TuH8). Both Stein and Barr clearly supported single-payer healthcare — and this is a good thing for everyone over age 35 because, [...]

I’m currently reading a rather good book entitled “The Nurturing of Time Future,” by Howard Richards http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-nurturing-of-time-future-howard-richards/1109407001. Although the author’s love affair with run-on paragraphs causes eye-stain at times, he does make several very important points — including that whenever a country loses its true moral compass, it soon becomes vulnerable to having pseudo-morality imposed upon [...]

How many times have you walked into Starbucks, ordered a “Fair Trade” latte and felt all proud of yourself for supporting small coffee farmers in Central America? Virtuous, even? A lot of times, I would bet. But exactly how many times have you also walked into a computer store or a jewelry store or a [...]

Back in America’s wild colonial days, the main form of punishment for criminals was either flogging evil-doers mercilessly or hanging them in public. In the 1680s, however, William Penn spearheaded a movement to “reform” criminals by placing them in “penitentiaries” instead of just beating them to a pulp or snuffing them out. And the resultant [...]

The other day I went to visit an old friend of mine who I hadn’t seen in years — but now she was dying, truly dying. It was a very sobering experience. Who would have thought that this formerly enthusiastic, vibrant and energetic woman would now be reduced an almost-human shell, a mere skeleton that [...]

Currently many Americans hold a rather low opinion of Shariah Law, a system of jurisprudence used in Muslim countries that appears to be rather harsh, especially with regard to the rights of women and the common man. However, this all-encompassing system of laws is not, as many have assumed, based on the teachings of the [...]

It seems that all we ever hear coming out of Washington these days are statements such as, “The only way America can pay off its debts is to cut Social Security,” always followed quickly by, “For our own good, we have to eliminate MediCare!” And these vociferous demands for cuts to entitlements for America’s senior [...]

I’ve been thinking a lot about food lately. No, scratch that. I’m ALWAYS thinking about food. So the other day I wandered over to eat at Picoso, a family-run Mexican restaurant in north Berkeley that makes the world’s best guacamole. And while walking home past the world-famous Chez Panisse restaurant, I spotted a huge crowd [...]

Last week I attended an “Economics of Happiness” conference here in Berkeley and heard Charles Eisenstein speak. “I see the world shifting from a profit-taking economy to a gift economy, from an economy of ‘how can I take the most?’ to ‘how can I best give of my gifts?’ This future, in which the anxiety [...]

When David went up against Goliath back in the Bible, Goliath was really truly HUGE. But just how did this guy manage to get that big in the first place? I’m assuming that he started out by eating up everything in sight. At first his mommy probably fed him. But as he grew larger, he started [...]

Suppose that you are a cute little baby panda or an adorable newborn lion cub that has been born inside a zoo. What happens to you next? Most likely, you will grow up in a zoo and die in a zoo. But human babies are different from animal babies. It is against the law to keep [...]

Now that my state is about to be invaded by the Republican circus, the only advice I can offer California voters right now is, “Shelter in place!” But as the GOP electoral freak show prepares to hit the Golden State really hard between now and our June 5 primary election, there is clearly going to [...]

Poor Muammar Gaddafi. That man was an idiot and deserved what he got. Why? Because Gaddafi had put all his eggs in one basket — and actually believed that the use of extreme violence would always win in the end. The man had learned NOTHING from history. Historically, the use of violence has only and always [...]

I’ve never been able to get a handle on the fact that there are currently SEVEN billion human beings now alive on this planet. That’s a hecka lot of people! That’s more people than you could ever even see in a lifetime, let alone meet or talk to or even become friends with. That’s more people [...]

My friend JoAnn recently e-mailed me some unbelievably grim statistics — and also a question. “There are currently two million orphans in Afghanistan, as well as five million orphans in Iraq. How many years of war does it take to produce that many orphans?” http://edition.cnn.com/video/?/video/bestoftv/2012/02/08/exp-bs-namdar-afghan-roadtrip.cnn, and http://www.alternet.org/world/70886/?page=entire And speaking of orphans, I’m currently reading a murder mystery about [...]