With Trump going after billionaire-funded media in America, and Italy facing probes over its banking-system-controlled media, it is perhaps no surprise that yet another generally corrupt nation - Greece - is facing a parliamentary committee investigation into spuriously large 'bank loans' and highly-concentrated advertising spend made to various political parties and media groups in 2015.
Can’t you see the writing on the touchscreen? A techno-utopia is upon us. We’ve gone from smartphones at the turn of the twenty-first century to smart fridges and smart cars. The revolutionary changes to our everyday life will no doubt keep barreling along. By 2018, so predicts Gartner, an information technology research and advisory company, more than three million employees will work for “robo-bosses” and soon enough we—or at least the wealthiest among us—will be shopping in fully automated supermarkets and sleeping in robotic hotels.
Michel Houellebecq’s novel Submission provides a glimpse of the first post-secular society, imagining a future France that gives in to the rising influence of Islam.
Ears pressed against texts the rhythms of which they have memorized over decades, some professors can similarly syncopate their pupils’ minds and hearts. Students with the sense and luck to find them discover quickly that the status quo in most courses doesn’t apply in this one; regurgitation is anathema. These teachers forge thinkers, showing their pupils how to analyze and assess for themselves.
In his coquettish refusal to accept the Donald, Paul Ryan says he cannot betray the conservative “principles” of the party of Abraham Lincoln, high among which is a devotion to free trade. But when did free trade become dogma in the Party of Lincoln?
As early as 1832, young Abe declared, “My politics are short and sweet, like the old woman’s dance. I am in favor of a national bank … and a high protective tariff. These are my sentiments and political principles.” Campaigning in 1844, Lincoln declared, “Give us a protective tariff and we will have the greatest nation on earth.”