Independent Commentary Episodes
Aug. 24, 2020
Qanon, Conspiracy Theories and the Republicans
Qanon is a right wing conspiracy movement with a formidable Social Media presence on Twitter, Facebook and several bulletin board sites like 4Chan, 8Chan and 8kun . Its' theories have been embraced by many Republicans and 1...
Aug. 10, 2020
Implicit Bias and Principled Policing: Does it work ?
Science tells us that 95% of the population has implicit biases yet there is only a 16% correlation between the bias and behavior. So is racist, homophobic and misogynistic behavior not principally triggered by implicit bias ...
Aug. 3, 2020
2084: Was George Orwell's novel 1984, one hundred years ahead of itself ?
Mass surveillance and totalitarianism are two prominent themes in Orwell's dystopian novel published in 1949. But there are two major mass surveillance systems at play in the world today. In the West, the data mining strategi...
July 26, 2020
Science deniers keep schools closed.
California’s powerful teachers’ union the CTA and Governor Gavin Newsom seem to be taking a very slow and hesitant approach to reopening the state’s schools. He has announced that online learning rather than in person classro...
July 16, 2020
The Coming Population Bust
The world's population stands at 7.8 billion today and has increased by 5.8 billion since 1950. But the British medical journal The Lancet and the University of Washington in Seattle have authored a study which posits that th...
July 6, 2020
Spanish Missions: The Spine of Modern California
35 million Californians live within 50 miles of one of the 21 historic Franciscan Missions: They are a key part of the California identity. But the recent destruction of statues of Father Junipero Serra, have challenged the l...
June 30, 2020
Junipero Serra: the Missions and Presidios of California
The destruction of statues of Junipero Serra in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park and in front of Los Angeles' founding church, Nuestra Senora de Los Angeles, was a wanton act of vandalism. Serra, a Franciscan Friar was canoni...
June 17, 2020
Tearing down San Francisco's Asian Art Museum for being too white.
As the statue removal movement sweeps across America and England, it has hit the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. Artists, academics and art historians are demanding that a bust of its' founder, Avery Brundage be removed fr...