Ian Underwood

The other day, I was watching some Disney classic movies with some kids.  At the beginning of The Jungle Book, I was startled to see the following, on a blue screen: This program includes negative depictions and/or mistreatment of people or cultures.  These stereotypes were wrong then and are wrong now.  Rather than remove this … Read more

Here’s how you lead:  You go out and do something you think everyone ought to be doing, and do it so successfully that other people follow you.  That is:  You lead from the front, by example. Here’s how you rule:  You decide what everyone else ought to be doing, and you threaten them with punishment … Read more

The median wage for a food service worker — the amount he makes in a whole year, before taxes — is about $22,000.  Your local public school gets paid about that much for each child who attends, whether the child learns anything or not. In contrast, the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School (VLACS) gets paid … Read more

I recently read an article about Democratic Party strategists discussing the importance of avoiding the words ‘socialism’ and ‘socialist’ in future campaigns, because they don’t sit well with large numbers of voters. To be clear, they weren’t talking about giving up socialist policies.  Just about calling them something else.  Lying about them, if you will. … Read more

In 1984, Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin starred in All of Me, a physical comedy in which one body had to be shared by two very different personalities, with very different goals.  As you might expect, there was a whole lot of lurching going on. It was very funny to watch Steve Martin moving around … Read more

For the longest time, there seemed to be consensus in Hollywood that if some object conveyed too much power on its bearer, the only acceptable solution was to destroy it.  So Harry Potter had to destroy the Sorcerer’s Stone.  Lara Croft had to destroy the Triangle of Light.  Frodo had to destroy the One Ring.  … Read more

While he was Vice President, Joe Biden committed an impeachable offense, then confessed to it on video in front of an audience.  So why aren’t impeachment hearings being held yet?  What are we waiting for, Christmas? How do we know it was impeachable?  Because he actually did the thing that President Trump was accused of … Read more

Let’s say your marginal tax rate is 25 percent.  That means, out of the next dollar that you earn, you have to fork over a quarter to the federal government, and you get to keep the rest. (That’s one way to look at it.  A more accurate way to view things is that out of … Read more

Here’s how a budget works.  You have some income to work with (a salary, for example, or a pension, or the interest from some investments), and you figure out how you’re going to live within that income.  This is true whether you’re talking about a household or a business.  With a budget, income limits expenditures. … Read more

I just watched the fascinating documentary Out of Shadows, and learned for the first time that Disney owns both ABC and Fox.  I was surprised, and dismayed… and confused. If you look at the movies that Disney produces for children, there’s a strong theme that runs through many of them.  Most of the ones I’m … Read more

Is there anything more hysterical than impeaching a president who has a week left in office?  If there is, I’m having trouble thinking of it just now.  It’s hysterical in both common senses of that word:  the original meaning of ‘marked by uncontrollable extreme emotion’ (or simply ‘out of control’), and the more modern meaning … Read more

The phrase Ontogeny Recapitulates Phylogeny isn’t strictly true, but it packs a lot of insight into a small number of words.  It’s also fun to say. Basically, it asserts that the stages an animal embryo undergoes during development are a chronological replay of past evolutionary forms for that species.  For example, if there are fish … Read more

A lot of conservatives have a problem with evolution.  They see a natural world with a lot of organized complexity, and they can’t conceive of that developing or operating without someone being in charge.  (How can uncontrolled processes produce something as complex as an eye?)  Without some kind of central control system to design and … Read more

At some amusement parks, you’ll find signs in front of some of the rides telling you that you have to be at least some minimum height or you can’t get on the ride. There are a couple of things to note about this.  First, it has nothing to do with how old you are.  A … Read more

As we count down the days until the federal mask mandate, and the federal economic regulations that are sure to follow it, it’s worth thinking about how America, once the world’s most stalwart opponent of communism, has come to embrace the notion that a small group of ‘experts’ — most of them not elected by … Read more