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Before I get into tonight�s main story, I want to start off with something that I haven�t addressed yet on this blog. The most commonly asked question I get from people is, �Why did you start this blog?� The answer is pretty simple. Last December, I reached out to the Summerville Journal Scene to write an opinion piece about the dangers of fake news and its effect on the election. The editor granted me that request. So, I wrote the article and it was published about a week before Christmas. Based on the positive reviews that the article received, he asked me to write periodically for the newspaper (one article every 3 months). I took the opportunity and immediately began to pump out articles on a variety of subjects. However, when I started sending in those articles, I did not get a response. I emailed the editor about once a week for a month, asking for a response. There was never a reply. By that point, I had already started this blog. In fact, the first few articles that I published...

I confess, I am an optionality maximizer. When life gives me a choice, I habitually choose the path that leaves open the most future possibilities. I am a qubit that refuses read 1 or 0, a cat that refuses to be dead or alive.  In college, I chose my majors (Economics and Mathematics) based on my estimation of which would leave open the most career prospects, thereby delaying the time for choosing. In my spare time, I am acquainted with many hobbies, but I am a master of none of them. To invest my time in one hobby would mean to give up the possibility of pursuing greatness at another. So I find myself a mediocre writer, a mediocre guitar player, a mediocre painter, and an okay counselor with okay physical fitness. I meditate far more than the modal human but far less than anyone who dedicates serious time to it.  Yes, the bane of the optionality maximizer is dedication or commitment. Without coincidence, I am 34 and unmarried. I have lived in five different cities in my adult...

This was a busy week in the news world. Between the threat of nuclear war, the special election in Georgia, the fall of Alex Jones, and the end of Bill O�Reilly on Fox News, I had lots of subject material to work with. It seems that this vein of plentiful news stories has continued into this week, and I am glad. It�s kind of ironic seeing how a month ago my main struggle in writing these articles every week was finding a story that did not deal with our President. Now my struggle is deciding which story I want to write about the most. This phenomenon is like going from eating food from a vending machine that only sells potato chips to getting access to an all-you-can-eat buffet. It�s an upgrade.             However, I�m not going to talk about North Korea or Alex Jones tonight. I�m going to sort of break my pledge and talk indirectly about Donald Trump. And before I go on, I know that you are thinking that I�m breaking my own rule t...

Marcus Amaker is the Poet Laureate of Charleston, South Carolina. I had the pleasure to watch him perform last September at a TEDx conference in Downtown Charleston and after watching, I became interested with his work. I felt that he would be the perfect person to talk to about President Trump�s proposed budget; and I was right. You can look at his work here:             http://marcusamaker.com             https://tapeloop.bandcamp.com   Here�s the full interview: As an influential artist in the Lowcountry, how do you think the art community would be affected in our area if President Trump�s proposed budget were passed? The budget would cut all federal funding to the National Endowment for the Arts in order to increase funding for the military and the border wall. If the proposed budget happens, then I�m confident that our Charleston community would rise up and become more...

In the book Accelerando , Charles Stross describes a future world that runs on �Economics 2.0�, an indecipherable economic system used by post-human intelligences. Because its workings are beyond human understanding, Stross can provide little detail of how such a system works. But the concept of Economics 2.0 stokes my imagination. If machines are to become first-class economic actors, the economy will adapt to fit their preferences and modes of operation. Humans will find ourselves sharing a marketplace with what amounts to alien intelligence. From our current viewpoint we already see some initial glimmers of the arrival of economics 2.0. Day-trading on public stock markets is dominated by competing algorithmic trading computers, making trades according to statistical models in fractions of a second. But this is an unimpressive example. The movements of stock prices was already so complex as to be indecipherable to human understanding. The entrance of machine intelligences into stock ...

I stumbled upon an article today from the Washington Post that made me laugh.  At the State of the Union Address in 2009, SC Representative Joe Wilson famously cried, �You lie!� to then President Obama. Yesterday, at his own town hall, he heard that phrase chanted by hundreds of people. But this time, it was directed towards him. It�s also fitting to mention that Obamacare was the subject that sparked the usage of that now infamous line.             Wilson�s struggles are just a peek into the problems facing the Republicans right now. Despite their control of all three branches of the US government, the Republicans are having some struggles governing. These past few months have been highlighted by angry town halls, healthcare failures, and infighting, all of which do not bode well for the future. The first sign of impending doom came from a special election in Kansas that was decided on Tuesday night. The deeply red state almos...

We should stay the hell out of Syria, the "rebels" are just as bad as the current regime. WHAT WILL WE GET FOR OUR LIVES AND $ BILLIONS?ZERO   � Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 16, 2013 American involvement in the Syrian civil war is stupid for the same reason that previous American actions in the Middle East have been stupid. There is no realistic end game. Syria will suffer, and her neighbors will suffer, as long as she is at war. The most important strategic and humanitarian objective is to end the war. To obtain peace, some party must grab and hold a monopoly on the use of force in the region. There is only one option for peace as far as I can see. The rebels are a fractious bunch that don't look capable of holding the country, so write them off. That leaves us with the existing Assad regime as the most likely and capable victors. "But he's a dictator" you say. But what makes you think anything else can survive in a country where the borders wer...

Unlike previous weeks, it was actually quite easy to find a story to cover for this edition of the blog. In fact, I had trouble deciding which topic I wanted to write about the most, given the vast amount of subject material available. Needless to say, it has been a busy week. During my weekly scramble for news stories, I had a sense of disbelief of what I was seeing. Surely this was some kind of sick joke perpetrated by my enemies. This multitude of stories was unprecedented. And since this bountiful harvest of stories available now probably will not be as plentiful next week, I will take advantage of the opportunity.             But in all seriousness, this week�s subject is grim. A town located in the Idlib province of Syria became the center of the world�s attention yesterday following a chemical attack that killed 70 innocent civilians, including women and children. The town is one of the last rebel held areas in Syria which ma...