In my early 40s I came to realize the nature of human thought. Thanks to Mary Douglas for her book How Institutions Think. I created a half-hour national public radio interview program on that subject called Social Thought. The program ran for nine years and remains on the Internet. Human beings organize their thoughts and lives hierarchically. The three overarching... Continue reading

Get this issue of the Wall Street Journal right away. Four articles that will shape your mind. How a Philosophy Split Silicon Valley by McMillan and Seetharaman explains the split in Open AI that was caused by a core difference in the view of human beings. The people who kicked out Sam Altman believe in the philosophy of Jurgen Habermas.... Continue reading

Netflix is running a documentary on the history of the earth called Life on Our Planet. It is an eight-part series with gorgeous CGI. I recommend it to anyone. I have one serious problem with the story line. The same problem I have with the consensus view of commerce. The presumption in both cases is that competition is the dominant... Continue reading

This article needs to be read by everyone. That is why I have put it in my blog. RUTH R. WISSE NOV. 9 2023 About Ruth Ruth R. Wisse is professor emerita of Yiddish and comparative literatures at Harvard and a distinguished senior fellow at the Tikvah Fund. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I intended to begin with the story by the Yiddish and... Continue reading

For years I’ve wanted to post two geological signs. I’m too old now. So this blog is the best I can do. The first would be on Highway 1 that goes between Daly City and Pacifica. The sign going West would say “Leaving the North American Plate entering the Pacific Plate.” The reverse side would say the opposite: “Leaving the... Continue reading

I wrote about this subject a year ago in June when the Biden Swamp banned American companies from doing business in Russia. The problem with this act of incredible stupidity is best understood with your own knowledge of the internet world that has come into being since 1995. A thousand major American companies have pulled out of Russia. Some like... Continue reading

There seems to be one universal reason nearly every Lefty I know says they are a Lefty: ‘the Left cares about poor people.’ I’ve heard this all my life, even from my parents. I know that the opposite is true. The Left actually makes life more difficult for poor people in nearly everything the Left does. Regardless of what they... Continue reading

After the recent pandemic lock down there has been a significant increase in air travel. I see several reasons for this movement. The first was the popularity of college education in America. (Table) The number of people going to college as measured by bachelor’s degrees tripled over thirty years going from 10% of the population in the 1970s to over... Continue reading

Is it my job to write this epitaph? It looks like it. My basic thesis is very simple. There are two core human value systems: Envy of social distance. Creative human imagination. Humans form tribes for food and other aspects of survival. For the tribe to grow it implements a social system. There are several social systems. The most common... Continue reading

In 1978 I wrote an article proposing that legislative bodies be created by random selection like juries. My friend ‘Chick’ Callenbach then offered to write a book with me on the subject. It was called A Citizen Legislature. Published in 1981, it became part of every political science course on the planet. The original model was a Greek legislature called... Continue reading

I have a wide circle of friends in Japan and I read several English language Japanese newspapers. I also have friends in many other countries and follow the press in four of them.. Each country has its own political spectrum. The American spectrum is from Hate Trump to Love Trump. Almost everyone in the world thinks America is predominantly on... Continue reading

My best-selling book, Marketing Without Advertising, explains why advertising doesn’t work except on children's products and for tourists. The book explains how to do effective marketing. A wonderful example is in today's Wall Street Journal, (8/3/2023). Bud Light, the most popular American beer, insulted its clients with a frivolous marketing character who is a man dressed as a woman and... Continue reading

Now I’m ready to fix San Francisco. A Japanese friend is arriving with her family and because I can’t handle guests right now I didn’t invite them to stay with me. But then I looked up the hotel they chose. I told them to cancel the hotel and stay with me. The hotel they found is the BEI Wyndham that... Continue reading

I’ve spent my life trying to understand hysteria and made little progress. That means it is at least four dimensional or greater. I’ve solved some very difficult three dimensional social problems. See here. This title ‘Lyin Dog Faced Pony Soldier’ is something that president Joe Biden says often in public and has absolutely no meaning. (1) It is a subject... Continue reading

Alex, is a good friend of mine who lives in Canada. He sent me an article from the NYTtimes on the Japanese stock market. Many people send me Times articles knowing I can’t read the paper because it’s Jew hate is so deeply offensive. After my recent month in Tokyo I bought a Japanese ETF that reflects the whole Japanese... Continue reading

Do you know ‘the dozens’? In the mid 1950s, as an undergrad at the U. of Chicago, I had two black friends. One rich one poor. The rich one was the son of a taxi cab company owner who taught me about ‘the dozens’ and the other was an anti-racism activist who was supported by the students at Roosevelt College.... Continue reading

I look at my fellow Jews who are Lefty and very close to being self-hating Jews. Their love of the Democrat party is shocking now that it is obvious that the Left wants Jews dead. Academia hates Jews as does the NYTimes and the other mainstream media. Hollywood and the power elite want us dead and want the Palestinians to... Continue reading

A few blogs back I attributed a large part of the current employment dump in high-tech to widespread understanding, from Elon Musk’s example, that more than half of tech employees are a waste. I was wrong. Musk found a commercial truth but his fellow tech managers are not smart enough to appreciate his discovery. What is going on, and has... Continue reading

The effects of covid on Tokyo are minor compared to the U.S. Their schools were not impacted; education is far more important to the Japanese. Working from home on computers and Zoom was anticipated. The Japanese firm where I was the key partner (Dynax) did the research on distance working in the mid-1990s. The clients were Mitsubishi and Toshiba. Only... Continue reading

What had to be gone first, what was in place already and what was new that brought this division about? Over fifteen million Americans served in the military in WWII. College graduates usually became officers. It was a source of civil behavior and meritocracy. The rest of society accepted civility as a military necessity. When the war was over the... Continue reading

One of my longtime readers objected to a statement a few blogs back where I called the Democrat Party the ‘party of hate.’ I apologized for using such intemperate language, and explained what drove me to it. There is no excuse. My explanation was that it is my reaction to the rising and very dangerous Jew Hate in my beloved... Continue reading

Four years of covid have kept me from my beloved Tokyo. I have been coming to Japan for nearly 50 years, usually for two months; once longer and now mostly for one month. What is the difference between Tokyo and San Francisco? The food is spectacular here, every meal. In the past I’ve had horse and whale and today I... Continue reading

Evil fools have brought the Bohemian Club into the news recently. The hatred that the Party of Hate (Democrats) has brought to Justice Thomas has boiled over to the Bohemian Club, where he was invited to visit, claiming it to be some domestic version of Davos. It isn’t a domestic version of Davos. In fact the only significant event is... Continue reading

I never see anyone mention the most significant revolution in our society that is a central cause of the major changes in the past half-century. The hereditary elite of America fell apart in the 1960’s. The cause The cause was the rise of the officer class in the military in WWII. The U.S. military, which had for nearly a century... Continue reading

It is readily apparent that America without oil and gas energy will be forced to reduce its living standards. I ignore the race and gender wars provoked by the ‘woke’ and the absurd anti-merit elements of the woke agenda because Americans will survive the turmoil of the first two and will never accept the anti-merit propositions. America will not grow.... Continue reading