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By JON HUER

My wife, who is my severest critic, says I think like a 10-year old, which I interpret as a compliment. True, I tend to be simple-minded and linear as a 10-year-old child would be. After nearly half a century of working as a sociologist, writing a...

By JON HUER

Democrats have been unhappy with the constitutional quirks that favor rural America, in which the GOP minority often outmaneuvers the Democratic majority. Three of the last four Republican presidential candidates won elections without winning the...

By JON HUER

It’s uncommon for us to think that doctors, who help us out of trouble, could be in trouble themselves. Yes, they could be and, now behind the facade of prosperity and authority, they are in deep trouble. But, when doctors themselves are in trouble as...

By JON HUER

Putin rattles his nuclear saber again: The Associated Press reports, “Putin says Russia is ready to use nuclear weapons” [Recorder, March 14]. He has been making such threats for the past two years, especially against the possibility of the U.S. or...

By JON HUER

Three news events managed to grab my attention on March 1:Event One: Alexei Navalny was buried in Moscow. The most prominent political enemy and critic of President Vladimir Putin, he mysteriously died at a penal camp while serving his trumped-up...

By JON HUER

During the holidays, we hear much about giving. A strange thing about giving: We commoners simply “give,” but if a rich man does, it’s called “philanthropy,” literally “love of humanity.” It sounds noble and mysterious, but what really is...

By JON HUER

During this past Christmas, our son, who is an artificial intelligence expert for a Fortune 500 company, spent a week with us and convinced us that artificial intelligence’s involvement in our daily lives in America is much more extensive than...

By JON HUER

American society is now facing a choice between capitalist democracy (if Democrats win) and fascist democracy (if Trump wins). Whichever side wins, both capitalists and fascists —as advertisers do — count on one cardinal weakness that is abundant...

By JON HUER

The most common description that liberal-democratic America uses to refer to Donald Trump’s GOP-MAGA followers is that they are “crazy.” This description seems entirely appropriate. Just watch and listen to Trump — and his followers in the street and...

By JON HUER

The season of love and giving makes me think about “The Mother Teresa Dilemma.” In an age of unbridled hedonism and self-interest, Mother Teresa was a rare person of devotion to her faith and humanity and the world admires and praises her.But,...

By JON HUER

It was legendary how those who wanted Donald Trump’s attention had to use, as one report said, “Compelling visual material. Big fonts. With photos and graphics. In color.” Although this Trump anecdote is somewhat amusing, we all love big fonts and...

By JON HUER

Angry Democrats, united on the cause of abortion, scored wins earlier this month in several state elections and referenda.Amid all this, we need to ask: Why are Democrats so upset with the right-wing push to ban abortion in America? The anger cannot...

By JON HUER

On Oct. 7, Hamas, the militant faction of Gaza Palestinians, in a surprise attack, killed more than 1,400 Jews. Three weeks later, the avenging Israeli military has killed close to 9,000 Palestinians in Gaza, and counting. Such attacks and...

By JON HUER

In our advanced civilization, we worship science but pooh-pooh common sense. But, perhaps surprisingly, science and common sense are conjoined twins, with common sense born first. As history, common sense is the mother of all science. For millions of...

By JON HUER

In the Sept. 6 Recorder, columnist Pat Hynes, in her appeal for world peace (“Peace is as possible”), quotes anthropologist Margaret Mead: “Warfare is only an invention — not a biological condition.” Hynes finds hope in the world’s peace movement and...

By JON HUER

Political observers are unanimous in predicting events in 2024: It’s unpredictable. Just now, change in American society is so ubiquitous that nothing seems to remain the same. Except one cardinal fact: Virtually unchanged and unchallenged, the...

By JON HUER

A front-page article in the Recorder [“Corn and Computation,” Aug. 25] makes me think about thinking: So, what is thinking?Right off, I will declare that only humans, not animals or machines, think because we are the only beings on earth that have...

By JON HUER

We are told that the speeding ticket business is a $6 billion dollar a year racket collected on a half-billion tickets given out in America.The half-billion tickets issued are for those who are caught. But an astronomical number of speeding drivers...

By JON HUER

Today’s Week magazine headlines: “It’s Prison or the Presidency” about Trump’s second federal indictment (Aug. 1) “for conspiring to overturn election.” The very next day, The New York Times-Sienna poll says Trump and Biden are tied at 47 percent as...

By JON HUER

Today (July 20) we went to see “Oppenheimer,” a movie about a quantum physicist who built atomic bombs. And, surprisingly, I discovered intriguing facts and possibilities that connected the two of us — yes, Oppenheimer and me — the movie’s famous hero...

By JON HUER

Among all the socially created privileges, physical beauty — typically among women in a male-dominant world — has always ranked high. Hence, our conventional wisdom naturally connects beauty to special blessings that few women get. John Keats even...