Here follows a tale of two cities — not, as in Dickens’ novel, Paris and London, but Paris and Madison, Wisconsin. Besides the obvious differences between he City of Light and a modestly sized Midwestern state capital and college town, there is also this: that while Dickens could justly write of the world he described, the world of the French Revolution, that “it was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” no sane person could say at least half of that about the world today. The best of times it certainly is not – not with Donald Trump on the loose. More

When we rather coolly refer to “real estate” or the “ownership of the means of production” we are actually talking about, at least philosophically, is the loss of unity between subjectivity and objectivity. The common air amid these hills was an aspect of the common land which were systematically stolen by a parcel of Parliamentary rogues.  When Wordsworth thought of the common air or the common wind it was in association with this vast loss affecting not only England but the USA whose landmass was surveyed then divided into squares, after precisely targeted settler violence terrorized the indigenous inhabitants, to be sold also in the 1790s.  More

The drumbeat for ketamine as a way to halt the rising suicide rate is upon us, as the New York Times has now joined the chorus. This is encouraging news unless of course you recall a couple of things: how recent enthusiasm from the medical-industrial complex for increased opioid use for pain resulted in the current opioid epidemic; and how the NYT has joined other notorious choruses such as Ahmed Chalabi’s one that sang about WMDs in Iraq. More