The coming Muslim-Christian coalition in the US?

Posted on December 28th, 2011 in Commentary,Engineerboy,Politics by EngineerBoy

Can't we all just get along? Probably not any time soon...

Disclaimer: the article below represents the noodlings of a dumbass who is talking about things way over his head, but which he nonetheless found interesting as a mental exercise.

When JFK was elected, the US had its first (and so far only) Roman Catholic president.  Barack Obama was the first African American president.  That leaves some interesting milestones still ahead of us, such as first female, first (openly) gay, and first (openly) atheist/agnostic.

I think there’s a good chance that we’ll hit all of those milestones, at some point, and that it’s just a matter of ‘when’.  I also think we’ll hit them in that order (female, gay, secular).  And I also think that as we hit each milestone, it will create a greatly increasing disturbance among conservative US

America’s Economic Bipolarity

Posted on December 23rd, 2011 in Commentary,Engineerboy by EngineerBoy

Income Equality (lower is more equal)

I’m a data person, and any time I have conceptions, preconceptions, prejudices, opinions, or assumptions, and there is relevant data available, I like to challenge my own opinions with facts.  One opinion I hold is that the United States is losing ground on being the ‘Land of Opportunity’ from an economic perspective.

I’ll stop here to state that I understand I’m talking about ‘first world problems’, and that the average American has it pretty good compared to the average world citizen.  Also, I’m not an economist, sociologist, futurist, or any other kind of credentialed -ist (other than ‘technologist’), so these are just the noodlings of an interested observer.

That being said, the people that put together the CIA World Fact Book seem to know a lot of things about