“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 deciding whether its treatment warrants that particular criticism. But I will confess that the idea of two white guys (albeit with a modicum of diversity in the writing staff) presenting a series on a topic on which their worl

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 food-like substances. To spend our days and weeks and months and years toiling away at some job that is as meaningful in the scheme of things as a pimple on a flea’s butt. To birth children who we know will live a worse

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 economic success as a country on many factors, but at heart, the key economic indicator on one level or another is consumer spending. Every industry is devoted to the consumer, thus the economic condition of industry is a fun

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 least one musical instrument. So accustomed to manipulated computer-generated beats and laying down multiple tracks in an attempt to create an authentic sound, the vast majority are completely unequipped to recreate those sa

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 – disqualified and stripped of Olympic Gold. Or Pete Rose, who broke Ty Cobb’s record for hitting, then got banned for life from baseball for betting on baseball games. How about Tonya Harding, the skater who had her husband wha