“Game of Thrones” creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have teamed with HBO to produce a series based on the premise that the South won the Civil War and slavery persists into modern times. You may expect that as an author of a work of alternative history based on that same premise, Southern Republic, I would join the chorus of voices decrying the temerity of two white guys dealing with the loaded gun of slavery. I, for one, will wait until I see “Confederacy” before decidi

Remember the pig people from that episode of the “Twilight Zone” who had the so-called normal looking woman convinced she was hideous because she didn’t have a snout? Just goes to show you that anything seems normal if everyone is doing it. That’s pretty much like this world we’ve built. It’s so far from what should be normal that it isn’t funny. We have all become convinced that it is normal, and right and fitting to foul our habitat. To consume poisonous bio-engineered

I have no degree in economics. Didn’t do well in retrograde analysis of multi-modality geo-economic modeling and changed majors rather than take Statistics. But even I can figure out that capitalism --- rampant, unchecked, pure capitalism as is practiced in this country --- is not sustainable in the long term. I remember one of the first video games, Pac Man, which was a round head with a mouth that gobbled up everything in its path. That is capitalism. We measure our econo

Remember that old commercial that asked “Is it live or is it Memorex?” Well, there is a whole generation of folks who have never heard contemporary musical artists play anything other than synthesized, computerized, simulated music. I say “contemporary musical artists” and not “musicians” because while some may indeed exhibit artistry in the field of music, most of them cannot legitimately be called musicians as that term connotes more than a passing familiarity with at leas

So let me get this straight: Putin personally approved and orchestrated the cyber-shenanigans that leaked hacked emails and perpetuated fake news against Clinton and in favor of Trump, but the beneficiary of and perhaps co-conspirator in his actions gets to keep the job obtained through these misdeeds. There is a long tradition of how we handle cheaters, or those who benefit from the cheating done on their behalf. Think way back to Ben Johnson, the Olympic sprinter – disqual