A funny thing happened on the way to the Forum

Karl Marx once wrote about the abuse of the worker by the capitalist system and the use of labor pools as capital. Fast forward a 100 + years and where do we find labor as capital being exploited to its extreme? China, one of the few "Communist" countries left in the world, is also the greatest manufacturing power by virtue not of its raw materials, coal, steel etc, but by virtue of its incredibly large and for the most part docile labor supply.

It is indeed ironic, and yet it would not surprise Marx at all for he never envisioned a Communist society in the agrarian peasant society that was China until quite recently. So just to go out on a limb, the next communist revolution seems due in none other than the Communist controlled, labor rich, state capitalist system know as China. It is an irony that would have made Marx smile sadly.

As one reads of Apple factories springing up overnight and labor abuses that would never be allowed in the West, one recalls George Orwell's simple yet elegant treatise, Animal Farm where t he pigs sit down with the farmers and feast while the animals toil to supply the party.

Even an Apostate has to Call Foul

Even an apostate Christian must call foul when Mormons claim to be Christian. First of all Christians adhere to a rigorous understanding of the interrelationship of God, Son and Spirit in the one God that is represented by the Trinity, Mormons do not make that distinction at all and regularly see the three parts as separate and not even equal players . Heavenly Father (and the unspoken but presumed Heavenly Mother) rule and Jesus Christ acts as a good son doing the Father's bidding and trying to set things straight with Heavenly Father's other more wayward children. At best Mormons are Arians, but at their heart they are Polytheists believing not only that Jesus could become God, but that we might also become such.

Top heavy cruise ships

For the past 15 years cruse ships have been getting bigger and bigger and taller and taller. The recent disaster on the Costa Concordia highlights this issue. As soon as the ship started taking on water it started to list heavily hampering evacuation efforts. We have all seen the pictures of the ship aground and on its side.

It is up to engineers and architects to determine if the listing was the fault of the design or not, but it has long been the buzz of passengers that these ships are being designed without regard for the effects of too much weight too high above the water line. It is time to look at ships design with this safety issue in mind.