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 […]

Read More →

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 […]

Read More →

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 […]

Read More →

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.’

Read More →

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.

Read More →

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

What History Will Not Teach Us

Glen Beck and Newt Gingrich have reminded us how political argument by historical analogy can lead us astray.

Read More →

September 4, 2010 – 3:51 pm | By Sylvia Kraemer | Posted in History of Ideas | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Creativity Rocks!

Widely adopted personality tests and tests for creativity have become one of the most familiar examples of scientific positivism in the study of human psychology. By their nature, however, they cannot succeed at what they claim to do. A science of ‘creativity’ that excludes artistic and literary expression has much to do with a commercial society’s efforts to co-opt the full range of human experience, and very little to do with the qualities that make that experience the extraordinary and irreducible phenomenon that it is.

Read More →

August 12, 2010 – 8:24 pm | By Sylvia Kraemer | Posted in History of Ideas, Science and Policy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (2)

‘Climategate’ Redux

When hackers in 2009 obtained data and e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, they did more than light the tinder box of ‘global warming’ skepticism. The disclosed material also exposed a dismissive attitude shared by many scientists toward the public’s right to know the full results of research funded by public funds, an especially worrisome attitude when that research may influence important national and international policy decisions.

Read More →

July 28, 2010 – 9:02 pm | By Sylvia Kraemer | Posted in Environmental Policy, Open Systems, Science and Engineering in the Law, Science and Policy | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (2)