In Salt Lake City, from November 19 to 24, chief negotiators will meet for a summit on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, described by one observer as "the largest-ever economic treaty, encompassing nations representing more than 40 per cent of the world's GDP."  "Pivotal Trans-Pacific Partnership Section Revealed," PopularResistance.org, 11/13/09. When one has to find out details of trade treaties from Wikileaks, one is left with a skeptical opinion of what the latest treaty holds.

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   Alums of DePauw and alums of Wabash should gather at the Broad Ripple Tavern around 5 p.m. as a counter to the males-only "stag" held at about the same time at the Murat. DePauw alumnae and Wabash transgender alums are welcome to attend the informal gathering at 735 Broad Ripple Avenue. The same cannot be said about the "stag," an event that was on hiatus from the late 1980s until a couple of years ago. Wear your school colors, or not. Saturday the game will be played at Blackstock…

   Private colleges have more latitude, in some respects, than public universities. Race is not part of that latitude. Bob Jones University originally did not accept African-Americans for enrollment. In 1970 BJU softened that position. Black students were accepted for enrollment, but interracial dating was prohibited. Students guilty of such conduct could be expelled. Even membership in an organization that espoused a belief that interracial dating should be allowed subjected a student to…

   This Saturday is the Monon Bell Game, the annual contest between the football teams of DePauw University and Wabash College. I graduated from DePauw. As I wrote last week, I received an e-mail invitation from the DePauw Alumni Association to the Monon Bell Stag, a party held, this year at the Murat, in which drinks are served, dinner had and humorous speakers speak. The "stag" did not occur for about a dozen years. Perhaps the notion of an all-male event for alumni of two schools, one of…

   In a column in "The Washington Post," Fareed Zakaria quotes former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates as saying there are more members of military marching bands than members of the United States foreign service. The United States spends more than the next seventeen countries most generous to their defense budgets.

   In the last couple years' debates on the national deficit, much has been made of cuts to "entitlements." Implicit in the label "entitlements" is the notion people are…

   I moved to Broad Ripple in 1987, at the start of my second year of law school. There are aspects of Broad Ripple one must live here to understand. For example, for several years I thought Christ the King was a portable casino under a big tent. Also, I never understood how to find Conner's Pub, only that under certain circumstances, I ended up there, sort of like explorers stumbled onto Shangri-la, but without the mountains and snow and with a juke box heavy on my kind of music as beer was…

   My father was vague about what he did in the years 1929 to about 1935. He maintained several stories that, when later I considered them, were inconsistent or simply did not make sense. He said he served in the United States Army, variously as an artillery person or a pilot of biplanes. Enlistment in the military was something many men in the depression that hit agricultural communities of the United States and in the Later Great Depression sought out. In the military, one had a job, three…

   In an episode pf M*A*SH, Hawkeye becomes angry at an infantry officer. The officer insists on taking his unit back up into the hills to recover the bodies of members of his unit killed in battle the previous night. Hawkeye emphasizes the pointlessness in risking lives for those already dead. When I saw the episode---not as a re-run, but I have seen it since---I had worked construction, during school breaks, with a veteran of the Korean War (or, more accurately in history books, "police…

   Matt Stone has been a guest panelist every few weeks since our podcast began in early 2011. Last Saturday our Show focused on breast cancer. Matt did an excellent interview of his mother, a breast cancer survivor, and his sister. Matt blogged, over at his blog site "Indy Student," about the difficulty an interview of such a personal nature poses. You can listen to the interview, and the entire Show, on the Civil Discourse Now Face Book page, Live365, or at Indiana Talks. Our three guest…

   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…