A couple of weeks ago, someone asked me why Veterans' Day traditionally was celebrated on November 11. The reason is linked to the official end of World War I. The Treaty of Versailles took effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. Some people who were in the trenches in Europe described how the sounds of gunfire suddenly came to a stop. World War I was fully mechanized brutality that wiped out a generation in Britain, France, Germany and the other…

   Breast cancer hits many people. On Saturday, November 2, from 11 am to 1 pm, Civil Discourse Now will stream live from Mike's Pub at 5135 South Emerson Avenue. Our focal topic will be breast cancer. Several breast cancer survivors will be guests. Also, skyping in from the Southern Illinois University School of Medicine, will be Randolph Elble, Ph.D., who conducts research at the school's Simmons Cancer Institute and Department of Pharmacology.  

   Many people hype the 1960s as a decade of, well, decadence. From my extensive field research in the 1970s, and interviews of people who were in their late teens or early 20s and either in college or the military or both in the 1960s, the period, particularly after release of The Beatles' album "Revolver"---as an arbitrary, perhaps, but no less accurate gauge of change in there---was a time in which conventional mores were tossed aside to some degree. With all due respect---a cliche that…

   How people determine "hits" on a website, podcast or other individual shows or posts on the internet is, like so much of the internet (at least to this holder of a Bachelor of Arts degree) something of a mystery. Numbers can be derived from various places, but nothing seems to consolidate or total all of the hits from all of the places. The previous record for "hits" for a blog on this website was after the storm hit the State Fair and I wrote about the contract the daughter of the…

   A death in the sport of cricket---not the safe, barroom dart game made safer still when played with plastic-tipped darts, but the competition in which players wear padded, white uniforms and brandish clubs to swing at spherical projectiles---has occurred in South Africa. Thirty-two-year-old Darryn Randall was struck in the head while at bat in the town of Alice in the Southeast Cape. He had been a world-class cricketer. He was struck in the head during a match. There was no indication…

   A town loses its high school and over the next 40 years sees people move away. Residents take action and do very cool things to rejuvenate the place. Civil Discourse Now streamed from such a place yesterday.

   In 1971 New Ross High School was consolidated with other schools to form Southmont High School. New Ross is located about ten miles southeast of Crawfordsville on U.S. 136. Wikipedia gives the town's population, from the 2010 census, as 367. Several years ago, residents…

   New Ross is located on U.S. 136 12 miles southeast of Crawfordsville. The 2010 census placed the population at 347. The town has its own zip code (47968) and fire station. Three years ago residents decided to put on a play to raise money  for the Leland Cornett Memorial Park, a nature park. The money is handled by a 501(c)(3) organization. The first year, the play was put on by members of the New Ross High School class of 1971, the last year of the school's existence. The next's year's…

   This weekend's Show we shall discuss Hallowe'en, as well as current matters in the news.

   Next weekend the focal topic will be breast cancer. Guests will include survivors of the disease (of whom my wife, Sarah, is one). The topic is very serious, but there will be some humor. There has to be some humor in the face of such a terrible malady.

   November 9 we shall stream live from the White River Yacht Club and engage guest panelists who include military veterans, since…

   Saudi Arabia has long been seen as an ally of the United States. This is a general concept embraced in various columns and articles. United States military forces were allowed to stage actions on the peninsula for the 1991 Gulf War. This apparently upset Osama bin Laden. He was aghast that the holy ground of the peninsula upon which his religion was born should be touched by the combat boots of infidels.

   A lot of people in this country do not realize "Saudi Arabia" means Arabia…

   WARNING: The following blog contains discussion of baseball, a sport many people find boring. If you are prone to narcoleptic episodes, or profess to find baseball "boring" while, in the next breath, you gush enthusiasm for what, in this country, is called "soccer," please read no further.

   I take this break from argument over over-population and other serious matters to address an issue very personal to me. As I have written here, and stated on "Civil Discourse Now," several…

   Over at Ogden on Politics, my good friend---always be wary when someone, in a political context, refers to another person as "my very good friend"; either a jab or pursuit of a job will follow---Paul Ogden has missed another point. He refers to an item written by a Catholic priest, Father John Hollowell, about a sign hung in a Northview High School, Brazil, Indiana, hallway that promotes the idea "Zero Population Growth/It's Up to You, No More Than Two." Paul's blog, and Father…

   In 2008, the United States Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U.S. 881, upheld Indiana's voter ID law. The case had come up from the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Judicial Circuit, where Judge Richard Posner, in a 2-1 decision, held the law was constitutional. Recently, in an interview on HuffPostLive, Judge Posner acknowledged the decision was wrong and the dissent at the Seventh, written by the late Judge Terence Evans,…

   We will stream live from "Body, Mind, Spirit," on Saturday from 11 am to 1 pm for this week's "Civil Discourse Now." "Body, Mind, Spirit" is an exposition of people and providers in the holistic movement. As I blogged earlier this week, the website, http://bmse.net/bmseweb/event/eventhome.php, gives more details of booths where one can see "the best advances in alternative health and as always the nation's finest selections of…

   Paul Ogden replied to my modest proposal, of a couple of days ago, that voters in open primary States should cross over, or threaten to cross over, in primaries to protect the seats of those members of the United States House of Representatives who have resisted threats by tea baggers (a name originally used by such groups) to primary Republican incumbents who are not sufficiently right-wing. The premises for my argument were that in Congressional districts such as the district in which I…

   "Body Mind Spirit" stages expositions around the country. This weekend one such exposition will be at the Indiana State Fairgrounds. As the release for the exposition states:

  "Body Mind Spirit brings refreshed energy to the holistic movement in 2013. Join us for the latest in new thought presentations, the best advances in alternative health and as always the nation's finest selections of psychics and mediums. This year we have themed our events 'Time to Explore' and we invite…

   Math, when applied to Congress, can be a strange thing. "Majority" used to mean, in the United States Senate, 60 votes. In the United States House of Representatives, it used to mean 218 votes. Now the nation is perched on the edge of that hackneyed fiscal cliff. The reason, in large part, is the threat tea baggers, who hold fewer than 50 seats in the House. That is around 12 percent of the House Membership.

   In an abstract to an article, "Getting Primaried: The Growth and…

   Children in the early 1960s were taught about the discovery of the New World. Christopher Columbus was depicted as a courageous gambler. Contrary to widely-held belief, we were taught, he thought the World was round. He took his case to the benevolent monarchs of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, who decided to gamble on this well-intentioned man of vision. Columbus set sail with three ships, the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. As the voyage west grew longer, his crews became mutinous.…

   One could argue people should try to reach inside themselves, each to find that "noble savage" of whom Jean Jacques Rousseau once wrote. Between romps with his latest wealthy female backer, Rousseau envisioned a primordial figure who was innocent and resourceful. The "noble savage" had no need for government or the social contract, the fictional agreement a person makes with the sovereign in which the former trades freedom for security from the latter. 

   There would appear to…

   On my father's side of the family, construction contractors go back at least three generations. Starting at the age of eight, I worked Saturday mornings for 50 cents per hour to clean the office and shop areas of my old man's plumbing, heating & air-conditioning place of business (always called, by him, "The Shop"). He gave me a choice: that or I could attend catechism classes. I chose dollars over deity. Later, he went solely into commercial sheet metal work. I continued to put in…

   Speaker of the House John Boehner denied this weekend there are enough votes in the House of Representatives to pass what is called a "clean" bill to fund the Federal government. A "clean bill," in the context of the current shutdown, would be a bill that authorizes funding of the Federal government without any extraneous provisions, i.e. provisions to de-fund the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. President Obama addressed the Speaker's statement and asked the Speaker send…