Joe Costello has decades experience in politics, energy, environment, and communications. Traveled and worked across the planet. Long a student of democracy, its demise, possible revitalization.
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Subscribe now While the pyramids of Egypt are not the oldest human structures, they do capture the historical imagination like few others. Egypt was one of the greatest agrarian, or farming cultures. Birthed by the Nile River, the civilization of the Pharaohs lasted several thousand years, longer that is from
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If you grew up in Chicago many years ago, there was a daily morning television show called Ray Rayner and His Friends. It was sort of like Good Morning America with old Warner Brother cartoons, though depending what you think of the animated antics of the hosts and guests of
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Subscribe now It's sort of funny, if funny is the word, how Afghanistan has remained in the headlines. One assumed once the US finally left, coverage would fall to at least the imperceptible level it was during the 20 year occupation. More likely, it would fall to the
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Subscribe now In 1980, the New Deal Coalition, which controlled much of American politics for almost a half-century collapsed, never, like Humpty Dumpty, to be put back together again. It was replaced by a more direct corporate rule, maybe best described as unfettered corporate rule, with sprinklings of various elements
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Life in the 21st Century is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. “But since the institutions of the state, which were no longer good amidst the corruption, remained fixed, these renewed laws were not sufficient to keep people good, but
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Subscribe now Webster defines corruption as: a: dishonest or illegal behavior especially by powerful people b: inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means c: a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct d: decay or decomposition In regards to politics, corruption is word heard all
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The FT has a piece on a spouse of a Rupert Murdoch kid pushing democratic reform. There's a long tradition of disreputably gained wealth's philanthropic efforts to leave a shinier legacy. A most recent example is convicted monopolist Bill Gates, though Chairman Bill's charity
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Subscribe now The Covid virus revealed much about the American healthcare system. The pandemic is, fortunately, a not common, though certainly massive event. When such events occur, they test established processes and institutions, laying bare their faults and deficiencies. These can be either acknowledged and reformed or ignored and papered
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Subscribe now Viruses are interesting little things. Some say they aren't even alive, though seems more logical to expand our definition of life. Viruses have been around for a long long time, billions of years. There are bits and pieces of viruses in our cells from way before
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Subscribe now For the first time in a long time, I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey, a strikingly beautiful film, that is also very much meant to be heard, not just for the classical music, but for the long segments of white noise that accompany several scenes. Afterwards, I looked
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You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows Lord, writing about money, you should be making a lot of it to write about it, just like writing about oil. Funnily enough, when I was at a young impressionable age, both were on the front pages,
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The Adams family played a prominent role in the first century of the American republic. Founders John and Abigail's son, John Quincy, following his father's prescribed destiny would also become president, infamously losing reelection to the great unwashed Andrew Jackson. That election was a passing of