Blog Entries for Tony Ellis

Coffee Talk

tony@tonyellis.com — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Information Democracy

tony@tonyellis.com — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 01:00:00 +0100

The fact that the government website posting the full text of the financial bail-out plan crashed last week because so many people were trying to access it is an encouraging sign for the future of our democracy. For many years now, the information flo

Size Matters

tony@tonyellis.com — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 01:00:00 +0100

This past week’s financial troubles illustrate an obsession with the value of size and the inherent dangers of uncontrolled growth that have been plaguing our financial, commercial (and social) life for far too long. Quite apart from the old sexual innuendo about the value of “large

Eat Your Greens

tony@tonyellis.com — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 01:00:00 +0100

One problem with modern culture is that everything becomes so quickly commercialized and faddish that good intentions often get lost or subverted in the process. The Green Revolution is a good example; the term “green” being so overplayed that it is in danger of ending up in the ver

Where are the Founding Mothers?

tony@tonyellis.com — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Watching the Obama and McCain event at the Saddleback Church on television Saturday night, I was reminded how much male testosterone infuses the political landscape these days. CNN chief political correspondent John King several t

Spam, Spam, Spam

tony@tonyellis.com — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 01:00:00 +0100

I have to take a break from my normal musings on politics, the environment, etc. to talk about SPAM. I’m old enough to remember SPAM 1.0, immortalized by Monty Python in their Viking canteen song and consisting of canned animal parts not dissimilar in nature to the C

Global Citizens

tony@tonyellis.com — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 01:00:00 +0100

I was sitting in Charlie’s basement the other day discussing one world government. Charlie (not his real name but, trust me, the name works fine) is a rancher out west. Getting on in years, he likes to spend his days holed up in his machine shop c

Fear Not

tony@tonyellis.com — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 01:00:00 +0100

I’ve always wondered where the phrase “God-fearing” came from and why it should be so commonly used in this country as term of respect. To me, the last thing we need to be afraid of is the Divine, which, acco

Point of View

tony@tonyellis.com — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 01:00:00 +0100

There is a line from an old Simon and Garfunkel song called The Boxer (supposedly about Bob Dylan) that has forever stuck in my head: “…a man sees what he wants to see and disregards the rest.” There are many versions of this popul

Event Horizon

tony@tonyellis.com — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Event horizon: a boundary in space time used to describe the apparent edge around a black hole, beyond which nothing can be seen.

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I was on the phone recently with my friend Doug in San Francisco discussing the calamitous weat

Karma Chameleon

tony@tonyellis.com — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 01:00:00 +0100

The word karma is now in familiar usage in the west. Like the words “guru” (spiritual teacher) and “pandit” (Vedic priest), both are of which are now used to refer to experts in anything from hair products to investment portfol

It's Only Words

tony@tonyellis.com — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Sifting through the usual well thumbed magazines in the waiting room at Dr. Love’s Alternative Health Clinic (yes that is his real name) I stumbled upon an interesting pam

One Heart or Two?

tony@tonyellis.com — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 01:00:00 +0100

During Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential bid I was asked by one his party organizers what I thought might be a good rallying call for his campaign. “No more lies,” I suggested. One of the big political issues then was (and still is) the Iraq War. Kucinich was

Environmental Consciousness

tony@tonyellis.com — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0100

If you haven’t already seen it, I highly recommend Al Gore’s new speech about the urgency of the global warming crisis given at the Technology, Entertainment Design (TED) conference and posted on their website this month (

Transcending Politics

tony@tonyellis.com — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

The word “transcendent” seems to be cropping up a lot these days in the political debate. Senator McCain, speaking in Vermont today, said “we face a transcendent threat from Islamic extremist.” Former presidential candidate, Gary Hart, blogging on Huffington Post recently,

Across the Universe

tony@tonyellis.com — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

On February 4th NASA beamed The Beatles’ song Across the Universe literally “across the universe”. The next day, His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the founder of Transcendental Meditation about which this song was written, left this world

Whales and Sextants

tony@tonyellis.com — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0100

Recently I was discussing the Democratic primaries with some close friends (all of us well preserved but aging Baby Boomers). “Who do you think has the best healthcare plan, Hillary or Barack?” someone asked (are we really getting that old?). “Neither,” I replied. “B