On the passing of George McGovern

If memory serves, I met this man when he made a stop at Indiana University Northwest. I was nearing the end of my college career and it was an evening event. He was there during the turmoil of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

McGovern was probably a little to the left of me at that time in my life. I considered myself a left-leaning moderate: to the left on social issues, to the center on economic issues, and a deficit hawk. I remember him being an articulate, honorable and decent man who was spending his evening addressing us. Most of us in attendance had little idea who he was. He was a footnote – the unfortunate reason for Watergate.

Breezy books engage in career and workplace mythbusting

The challenge of any work is that it engages the reader. There is nothing so annoying as a book that takes itself too seriously. In the cases of two recent efforts, the authors have important things to say, but they are not afraid of speaking in an engaging style. “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” by Cal Newport and “Rework” by 37Signals founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson take aim at the myths and misconceptions that surround careers and the workplace.

How NASA seeks to travel the galaxy in 80 days

It’s fall and that means it’s time for the latest thing in NASA thinking: Warp drive. For the general informed reader, you know that warp drive is mostly magic. It is a Star Trek technology that allows Federation ships to cross the galaxy relatively quickly and allows the show to tell a story that would be different from one that hewed to science fact.

However for the more well-read reader, two words make up NASA’s more recent thinking on the subject: Alcubierre drive.

Senate Republicans tell veterans ‘fight for a job on your own’

Jobless veterans suffer some more as Senate Republicans offer a blatantly political election-year snub to President Obama. While five GOP senators sided with the Democrats on the bill, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who was a captain in the 1970s in the U.S. Army reserves, was key to blocking the vote. Sen. Tom ‘Dr. No’ Coburn, of Oklahoma, stayed true to his nickname, preferring to talk about the abstract idea of bringing down the debt rather than address the plight of jobless in the here and now.

Middle East violence requires a middle road approach

A story in the Washington Post does a fine job of explaining what the recent spate of Middle East violence against the West is really all about. It is a historical struggle within Islam to come to terms with its wounded pride in the face of modernity. It is about the struggle between the younger generation that sees what the West has to offer and wants it on their terms vs. the older generation that wants none of it.

In the face of all of this is the question that America in general and the American President in particular always faces: what should we do? The real question often is: what can we reasonably expect to accomplish even if we do nothing?