Category Archives: History of Ideas

“Net Neutrality” and The New Enclosure (Part I)

Those of us who oppose allowing Internet service providers to impose tolls on users wanting to use higher broadband transmission speeds are rowing upstream.  This is not only because powerful interests—among them, AT&T, Verizon, and cable companies—want to exploit U.S. policy’s current treatment of Internet access as a commercial commodity, rather than a public utility. […]

July 14, 2014 – 4:43 pm | By Sylvia Kraemer | Posted in Current History, History of Ideas, Intellectual Property, Open Systems, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Why The Liberal Arts?

  It’s difficult to hear a discussion of education in the United States without being reminded of the urgency of increasing students’ proficiency in ‘STEM’ (science, technology, engineering and math) disciplines.  This, we learn, is necessary to secure their competitiveness in a technology-driven job market.  What is too rarely pointed out is that a primary […]

January 23, 2014 – 10:02 am | By Sylvia Kraemer | Posted in Art and Culture, Colleges and Universities, Education, History of Ideas, Uncategorized | Comments (1)

National Public Wi-Fi: Why it Matters to You

  A recent proposal by Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman, Julius Genachowski, would recover some of the country’s little used radio and TV broadcast radio spectrum in order to create a national public wireless (WiFi) network.  Telecommunications companies, which make money selling data plans to enable smart phone and Wi-Fi computer users to access the […]

February 16, 2013 – 3:45 pm | By Sylvia Kraemer | Posted in History of Ideas, Open Systems, Politics, Science and Engineering in the Law, Technology in US Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Senator Rubio’s Mistake

An astronomer writing in Slate recently takes Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) to task for being unable (or unwilling?) to give the astronomers’ answer to a reporter’s question, posed during a press interview, about the age of the Earth.  After noting that the question has nothing to do with the proper subject of the interview, Rubio […]

December 4, 2012 – 5:31 pm | By Sylvia Kraemer | Posted in Art and Culture, Current History, History of Ideas, Politics, Science and Policy, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Why Dieting is Hard for Uncle Sam

Whether devout or passionate, “severe” conservatives (as republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney styled himself), assert a belief that the private sector should command all economic activity, while the public sector is reduced to as close to nothing as possible.  Here is Mr. Romney on his rival Rick Santorum: “Sen. Santorum is a nice guy, but […]

April 11, 2012 – 2:55 pm | By Sylvia Kraemer | Posted in Current History, History of Ideas, Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

The Matthew Effect *

Whatever else the “Occupy” movement accomplishes, it has already popularized the fact–known for a decade to those who pay attention to such things–that the rich in the U.S. are getting richer, while the chasm between them and nearly everyone else is becoming wider, really wider. The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics notes that “the most careful […]

January 20, 2012 – 5:51 pm | By Sylvia Kraemer | Posted in Art and Culture, Current History, History of Ideas, Science and Engineering in the Law, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Berlin: Then and Now, Part I

On the wall in my writing area is a small black and white photo of two adults dressed in 1940’s era clothes.  The woman wears a dark dress with a large white scalloped collar.  Her head is crowned with a rakish hat.  He wears a double-breasted suit and a fedora.  She smiles proudly.  His serious […]

April 23, 2011 – 3:37 pm | By Sylvia Kraemer | Posted in Art and Culture, Current History, History of Ideas | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Berlin, Then and Now: Part II

The tourist buses that unload passengers at the Pergamon Museum and Check Point Charlie rarely stop at the Maerkisches Ufer (quay) of the Spree Canal.  Here reign peace and quiet accompanied by the gentle slip slap of water on the sides of old river barges.  Showing their age, a few barges have been turned by […]

April 21, 2011 – 12:21 pm | By Sylvia Kraemer | Posted in Art and Culture, Current History, History of Ideas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Shadowboxing

Among the fallacies promoted by conservatives eager to unseat liberalism in Washington is the notion that the interests of the ‘free market’ are incompatible with government, and that government programs are taking money out of the pockets of hard-working Americans. Shadowboxing a federal enemy that doesn’t exist, they are are proving themselves either knowingly deceptive in their political rhetoric, or oblivious to the importance of the federal government to our ‘free market.’

September 25, 2010 – 5:06 pm | By Sylvia Kraemer | Posted in History of Ideas, Open Systems | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Let Us Eat Cake

Limbaugh-Beck-Palin acolytes invoke the sanctity of the ‘free market’ to obscure their real fear of social and cultural changes that seem alien to them. But the ‘free market’ ideal will not support what they ask of it.

September 17, 2010 – 5:42 pm | By Sylvia Kraemer | Posted in History of Ideas, Open Systems | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)