Social Sciences

Among others oozing angst about “democratic socialist” Zohran Mamdani’s election were two refugees from the USSR (one was Garry Kasparov) speaking on an anti-semitism panel Tuesday. Socialism, they…

A commenter contested my statement that gang murders are a much greater menace to public safety than homelessness – at least, here in Albuquerque. So let’s unpack. Preliminaries We’ll first…

Surely you’ve noticed that many countries are subsidizing births – and others are banning abortions – even as tech lords lament the number of “useless people” in the world. You’ve noted the…

My June 28 column on the Middle East drew a comment concerning Palestinians ejected from their homes by the post-WWII influx of European Jewish refugees to what’s now Israel. Eighty years after the…

       The book is author Alex Hannaford’s lament about changes in Austin, Texas, since his initial visit to the city in 1999. This at first spurred your reviewer, who moved to…

Our outrage over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is due to our preference for democracy over autocracy, and to the danger of Russia pushing further westward into Europe. Perhaps most of all, we…

Ever had a nervous breakdown by reading Facebook threads where absolutely incompetent people entertain similar ignoramuses by providing explanations of everything from quantum physics to the way…

Black people are no angels but when we are not being angelic, we still should have rights.  All people should have the same rights when under the power of law enforcement that they do when they…

A fascinating development has emerged in the forensic testing of controlled substances. A "white box" study aimed at establishing error rates for this commonly-practiced forensic discipline is…

A few weeks ago, in an article where I discussed some new ideas for fundamental physics research, I briefly touched on an incident in which Paul Frampton, a well-known theoretical physicist, got…