Howard bloom

England’s Morrisons, a 470-store British supermarket chain, has tried something innovative but disturbing. In a few of its stores over the Christmas season, it installed a robotic intrusion detector designed to act as a night watchman on construction sites, in mines, and on farms.  Morrisons tried this machine to detect, not trespassers, but shoplifters. The robotic
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The big question is whether it will cause World War III. Early Wednesday morning, at 3 pm in the afternoon Iranian time, a suicide bomber a mile from the modest grave of Lieutenant General Qasem Soleimani in southeastern Iran’s Kerman province blew himself up.  Then, 20 minutes later, as people crowded to the explosion’s site to
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At 10:52 Wednesday morning, The Wall Street Journal reported new data from the National Center for Health Statistics on suicide in the United States.  The data was shocking. According to the Journal, last year close to 50,000 Americans committed suicide.  That’s the highest level of suicides since 1941. 50,000 is not just a lot of suicides
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The SpaceX Starship has launched its second orbital test flight. Which means that America now is about to have two mega-rockets, two of the biggest rockets ever to take to the skies. One is SpaceX’s Starship.  The other is NASA’s Artemis Moon Rocket. How do the two stack up against each other? The Artemis Moon Rocket’s engines generate
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We all know what happened Saturday.  Or we think we know. Gaza fired what it said were 5,000 rockets at civilian targets in Israel.  And Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel using a massive bulldozer to tear a hole in the smart fence draped with razor wire that separates Gaza from southern Israel. Over 1,500 invaders streamed through. Some of
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This is a story of the prizes and the prices of fame. At 8:00 Wednesday morning, September 20th, Donald Trump Jr’s X account proclaimed, “I’m sad to announce, my father Donald Trump has passed away. I will be running for president in 2024.” Then the account burped out a Tweet about Joe Biden complete with
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In a story that appeared Wednesday morning, September 14th, The Wall Street Journal exposed a hidden crisis called the silver tsunami. What’s the silver tsunami?  It’s a tidal wave of homelessness among the elderly.  Senior citizen homelessness today is five times what it was in 1990. Who are today’s homeless elderly? Baby boomers. A privileged
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One of the world’s most fabled neighborhoods for the rich and famous is Beverly Hills, the home of Taylor Swift, Jennifer Aniston, Adele, Jack Nicholson, and Eddy Murphy. And in Beverly Hills is one of the most luxurious and expensive shopping areas you have ever seen, Rodeo Drive. But is the allure of Rodeo Drive
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Wednesday morning at 8:30 am Eastern Time, India landed its first rover on the surface of the moon.  It’s called Chandrayaan-3.  Which means “moon craft” in Sanskrit. Fourteen hours later, the Chandrayaan-3’s rover rolled out and, said India’s space agency, “took a walk around.”  But, unlike America’s rovers on Mars, which keep on trucking for up to
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Thomas S. Dee, an education professor at Stanford University, has just released the results of a study he carried out in partnership with the Associated Press.  The study’s topic is student absenteeism in 40 states, and the results are disturbing. The Dee study concludes that 6.5 million students are chronic absentees.  They are absent more than one
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In 1968 Pope Paul VI established a Global Peace Day. A New Year’s Day on which the Pope gives a speech “reflecting the signs of our times.” Wednesday August 9th, the Vatican put out an announcement about the speech the pope will give at next year’s Peace Day, coming up on January 1st, just four months
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The Washington Post ran a headline Wednesday, August 2, saying Donald “Trump has been indicted before. Historians say this time is different.” Why is this time different? From the Democrat point of view, we are at a turning point in American history. The next 458 days, many Democrats feel, will determine whether we have a
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Digital IDs are sweeping the world, but are barely seeping into America.  This American techno-sluggishness has disturbing implications. We Americans have traditionally led the world with our technologies and our infrastructure.  That is no longer the case.  Our roadways and airports make us look like a third world country.  Even our water and sewage systems are
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Cleveland, Ohio, has now been rated the most stressed-out city in America three years in a row. The personal finance company WalletHub compared 182 cities across what it called “four key dimensions” of stress: work stress, financial stress, family stress and health and safety stress.  The five most stressed-out cities in America, WalletHub concluded, are
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