Essays by Kent
- Universal Business Access to the Internet (Mon, 26 May 2008)
Businesses have their own needs when it comes to Internet access.
- Climate Change Coming “Faster Than Expected” (Tue, 15 Apr 2008)
Why Climate Change will happen faster than people expect. Why we have to prepare now.
(This article also offers some help to those having trouble visualizing or explaining the mathematics of global warming.)
Updated slightly 17 Apr 2008, 18 Apr 2008 and 12 Jul 2008.
Also, additional updates being made regularly to list of more recent articles specifically relating to acceleration of processes and effects.
- Groundhog Vote (Mon, 10 Mar 2008)
These are my thoughts on why everyone, especially the super-delegates, should be voting for Obama.
- No Child Left Behind (Thu, 14 Sep 2006)
This is a record of the Hearing Testimony that my wife and I submitted to the Commission on No Child Left Behind. (Testimony is being filtered through the Aspen Institute, and may or may not appear in the formal record.)
- Labor Day vs. Thought Day (Mon, 4 Sep 2006)
Labor Day is a celebration of the people's willingness to work. And in the Manufacturing Era, that was perhaps all it took to stay ahead in the world. Today, in the Information Era, we need to start to think about creating a "Thought Day", perhaps in March, six months opposite "Labor Day" where we address the question of whether the US is confronting the Information Era by properly educating its public, requiring the necessary degree of literacy, especially math and science.
- FDIC (Mon, 6 Jun 2005)
The real way to protect "the little guy" is to make the FDIC protect $100,000 or $130,000 or even $500,000 per person rather than per account.
- Health Care Reform (Thu, 26 May 2005)
Two issues that need serious reform in the health care industry are the coupling of health care with employment, and the use of pooling to provide preferential prices to healthy people by the insurance industry.
- Blaming Free Speech (Mon, 23 May 2005)
The cost of a free society is that sometimes words will be confused, misunderstood, misconstrued, etc. As the Supreme Court has noted, the proper answer to perceived "bad speech" is just "more speech". The public will sort it out. But if we instead start tightening controls on what people can say just because some ill effect comes, we'll soon have no free society left to defend.
Updated Tue, 24 May 2005.
- Use of the Filibuster to Block Judicial Appointments (Wed, 16 Mar 2005)
If it takes a super-majority to change the constitution, it should also take a supermajority to change those who interpret the constitution. Otherwise, you create a loophole in which one can change the effect of the Constitution by installing judges who interpret existing wording different ways (whether by more strict conservative readings or more liberal readings).