Mike Pilewski writes about life, politics and culture in the United States
Imagine that the basic needs of everyone on Earth were taken care of. What would society be like? American futurist Jacque Fresco, who turned 98 last week, has spent his life thinking about this. Needs are at the root of capitalism. You have something that somebody else needs; that person has something that you need; you trade these things directly … >>
The popular culture of today’s youth has focused on witches, wizards, hobbits and comic-book superheroes long enough. It’s time for science to reclaim its role as a source of inspiration. There are signs that this is starting to happen: not just the popularity of the film Gravity, but the explosion in recent years of TV documentaries about science, and space … >>
The situation in Ukraine is not going to be an easy one to solve. The consensus in American political circles is that it’s bad and something must be done. How bad is it? Interviewed on a CNN news program on Sunday, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski compared the situation on the Crimean … >>
Marion Stokes died in December 2012, but the full story of her life took almost a year to come out. According to her obituary in The Philadelphia Inquirer, Stokes was a librarian during the 1950s and a political protester in the ’60s. From 1967 to 1969, she co-produced a local TV talk show. In the 1980s, she invested in Apple … >>
The Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, under way since February 7, have taught us a big lesson: Russia may lag behind English- and German-speaking countries in winter sports, but it is far ahead of us in orthographic efficiency. Russian needs only four letters to spell the name of the host city: Сочи. English needs five, while German — for shame! … >>
If you watched Barack Obama’s State of the Union (SOTU) speech Tuesday night (Wednesday morning in Europe), you learned some surprising things. According to Obama: Lots of people are getting jobs in America. Millions of Americans have signed up to get health care. The United States no longer depends significantly on foreign oil. The US government is doing something about … >>
Basketball player Dennis Rodman is an unusual character, to say the least. He is 6 feet, 7 inches (201 cm) tall, his body is covered in tattoos, he has rings through his ears, nose, lip and other body parts, and his hair is a color that does not occur in nature. Rodman has been married three times and has had … >>
Recently in the comments section of this column, a loyal reader asked: “What is the next big, bleeding-edge thing?” We are confronted with bleeding-edge things all the time that are changing our lives in one way or another. Mobile phones and the Internet — and the combination of the two — are good examples. Robotic assistants are helping out on … >>
During the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan had some frank words for the American people. The manufacturing economy, he said, was on its way out. Rather than try to keep it alive artificially, the US would cultivate a service economy. This was an excellent use of semantics. “Service” sounds good. It carries an air of politeness and efficiency and wish fulfillment. … >>
One of the biggest trends of recent years has been almost completely off the radar. At the events for the German and American exchange students I advise, the number of vegetarians has been increasing steadily over the years. Back in the 1990s, there was, on average, only one at each event. In the last decade, there were two, then four, … >>