What Keeps those Family Researchers Employed? Some time ago, my ten-year-old grandson, who shares the Sundwick family name, asked me where the Sundwicks came from. His dad referred him to me. Unfortunately, I had only a vague understanding myself of our family’s origins. What I knew came from my late cousin John (also a Sundwick)Continue reading “Thinking About Genealogy”
Category Archives: Past
Engineering Values and Virtue
The engineer’s job is to make things that work. This can be quite complicated, and it requires both education and practice in certain modes of thinking. It requires a design, a model, testing and measurement of that model, then usually some constraints related to costs. Patience, humility, and a certain level of creativity are allContinue reading “Engineering Values and Virtue”
Deep Meaning of Politics
If we concede that world systems consist of people (as well as other things in nature), we have to acknowledge that politics, and politicians, are here to stay.
Bureaucratic Decay
Things do fall apart over time, even organizations — bureaucratic decay of all kinds of organizations can be forestalled with some planning and energy, but perhaps not prevented entirely …
Liberalism: Its Death Is Greatly Exaggerated
Liberalism has been the main founcation of all Western societies for some 350 years — surely, its problems today can’t be so great as to be its death knell!
Class War?
Much has changed in the world since Marx and Engels published their Communist Manifesto, but somehow it still resonates with many of us. Why?
What Are They Afraid Of?
We can’t all be righteously cosmopolitan, but at least we should temper our discomfort with alien cultures by tossing aside the feeling that our culture is “superior” to theirs …
The Current Emergency
We’re not doing so well, as a country or society, these days. Our real emergency situation has more to do with a “social malaise” … only partly due to our current administration. Some in the media ecosphere are also at fault!
What Comes Next?
History is not a science — it doesn’t predict the future, or “repeat itself.” But studying history does develop critical thinking and other great skills. It shouldn’t be minimized!
Scarcity and Abundance
Everybody is talking about scarcity vs. abundance — the key to the whole discussion is not economics, but politics, and asking the right questions.
Warp and Woof 