Has it occurred to you that the computer runs our lives today, but we still seem wedded to voting in person or through the obsolete postal system?  Why don't we completely convert to E-voting online?  Such a process also works better for pandemics, bad weather and other challenges faced by citizens.  Should also be cheaper. The first stage of the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Network was created half a century ago during the Cold War to develop a system for disseminating information after a nuclear attack.  Their work allowed academic and research organizations to share information with the Defense Department. All this effort led to what officially became the internet  on 1 January 1983.  Thus, theoretically, the technology has been available for nearly 40 years to vote online. Turns out one country has already taken this step, Estonia , while Switzerland, German and Norway are experimenting.  Estonia is a small Baltic co...

I was sent this heartwarming story of Sephardi Jews who miraculously survived the Holocaust having a son who went on to lead an effort to develop a vaccine for COVID-19.  Maybe it's a natural inclination to treat all ethnicities and worshipping beliefs equal, or ignorance, but it occurred to me that at my advanced age I knew very little about the Jewish religion.   When I grew up in Hawaii, there was the dominant Caucasian sector, and everyone else as second-class citizens.  Being Japanese, there was also the matter of where Okinawans fit into this society.  My junior-year English-Social Studies teacher Mildred Kosaki and her husband had just returned from the Mainland, and she kept emphasizing the matter of Civil Rights, but we students just had no concept of Black-White relationships.  Nor were we aware that there was another group, Jews, in this national mix. Then I went away to college, when I remember a girlfriend asking me if I knew what a Jewish girl...

Froma Harrop had a recent op-ed entitled, Some countries are happier than others--or are they?   Essentially, she said, Finland is the world's happiest country--fourth year in a row!  At least, according to the World Happiness Report from the United Nations.  The U.S. ranked 14th in the latest, but here is a compilation from 2018-2020, where we are shown at #19: Apparently, this UN report did not ask anyone how they felt about the weather.  How can you be happy when the worst day in London, every day, is like Finland everyday?   One February I went to Helsinki and experienced something that was stunning.  Well-covered with gloves, hat and neck wrap, I walked outside my hotel on a sunny day and instantaneously my nose froze.  The ground was really slippery with ice.  I told myself the next time I come here I would wear a motorcycle helmet  ( in case you fall ) with face covering pre-treated for fog breath.  Maybe golf shoes with real spi...

From the New York Times this morning: The Pfizer and Moderna shots  appear to work against the variants  found in New York, Britain and South Africa. Women in the U.S. are getting vaccinated  at a higher rate than men . The Senate passed a bill to help law enforcement agencies  review hate crimes against Asian-Americans . The House voted along party lines to  grant statehood to Washington, D.C. , a Democratic priority that faces obstacles in the Senate. Is this another Democratic ploy for something that just will not happen?  What about global warming, gun control, minimum wage and whole slew of other liberal dreams?  No way because of something called a filibuster in the U.S. Senate.  But it only takes a majority vote to abolish filibuster.  Why not? This is easier said than understood, but: The nuclear option leverages the fact that a new precedent can be created by a senator raising a point of order, or claiming that a Senate rule is bein...