Like a bridge over troubled waters..
--Paul Simon
Our Mission We work to see what's coming over the horizon and to bridge social and cultural divides. We try to provoke conversations about government policies and individual actions that could make Planet Earth more liveable for our grandchildren and their children.
Hot Off The Press
Universal Basic Income is Not a Crazy Idea
Feb 2023 - Youth unemployment is rising in countries at all income levels. If the trend continues, it could become seriously socially destabilizing.
Yes. My Great-Grandfather Was Sultan Hamid II’s Doctor
Feb 2023 - During my one-week visit to Istanbul, I met two Turkish history professors who are experts on the Ottoman Empire. I have hard evidence now.
My Great-Grandfather, Doctor to the Sultan of Turkey?
Jan 2023 - The father of my paternal grandfather, Alexis SORLIN-D’ORIGNY, lived in Constantinople and died there in 1884. But what was he doing there?
The Rieffel family name comes from my great grandmother, Marie Adelaide Rieffel, born in Rosheim, Alsace, France, around 1840. My grandfather was her only child and she could not give him his father’s name because my grandfather was a love child, born out of wedlock. My great grandfather, Alexis Dieudonné d’Origny, born in Lorraine, France, was working as a physician to the Sultan of Turkey when he fell in love with Marie Adelaide on a visit to Paris where she was working with her sister making hats for high society. There is just as much fascinating history on my mother’s side of the family.
Subscribers will get an email notification when new content is posted. My plan is to post new content once a week and to create a monthly Newsletter with the new content of the month and some more in-depth material, including material from other sources.
I don’t know when I started trying to understand things coming over the horizon that would have an impact on my life and on the rest of the world. There is some evidence that I was doing this in the 1960s. Since then I seem to have developed a
pretty good nose for what’s coming, and had some success in writing about it.
Get Ready for Central Bank Digital Currencies
Feb 2023
You can’t possibly miss how human life on Planet Earth is becoming increasingly “digital”. I believe there are now more active smart phone accounts than there are
people, at least above the age of 5. Techies started talking about “the internet of things” years ago and now we are seeing objects like refrigerators connected to the World Wide Web.
Money has not escaped this trend. Unfortunately, in this area, the initial forays into digital money have been disastrous for many people at the same time they produced incredible windfall profits for a few. I’m referring here to Bitcoin and other “cryptocurrencies” that claimed to be better than dollars and yen and other normal, official, everyday currencies.
The big difference between cryptocurrencies and official currencies is that the former are produced by private owners seeking to make personal profits. The latter are produced by government agencies (Finance Ministries and Central Banks) that carry the full “faith and credit” of their governments.
Official currencies are “legal tender”, which means that by law they MUST be accepted for the payment of taxes, for