America’s action harms Middle East
April 27, 2012
“First you push into territories where you have no business to be, and where you had promised not to go; secondly, your intrusion provokes resentment and, in these wild countries, resentment means resistance; thirdly, you instantly cry out that the people are rebellious and that their act is rebellion; fourthly ...
Conservatives miss mark domestically
April 20, 2012
Domestically speaking, it’s been too long since I’ve heard a compelling argument for why I should not revile, much less vote for, a conservative. We’re still waging our own ancient war of the interests of the very many versus those of the very few, and the dangerous ...
US struggles with income disparity
April 13, 2012
America is the most unequal country in the developed world.
When looking at a bar graph regarding life expectancy between the richest and poorest neighborhoods within countries, income can mean quite a lot — there is a clear correlation here, with bars highest among the richest and smallest among the poorest ...
US/Chinese relations need change
March 30, 2012
China. We’re still kind of afraid of it. The common picture that can be pieced together about China from the multitudinous sources of casual information is disapproving and mysterious because it is based on the assumption that China conflicts with American interests.
A general attitude of ambivalence regarding China ...
On witnessing aggravated assault
March 09, 2012
Not too long ago in the Fort I happened by a scene on 17th and Laurel, just a bit above that annoying four-way stop above Niro’s and Fort Sanders Yacht Club: two shirtless, 18- to 25-year-old guys were stomping around, in what was hopefully an artificially induced rage, demanding ...
Video game potential not maximized
March 02, 2012
The video game industry is doing well. Since 2002, annual product line receipts for the entertainment software publishing industry have increased over 130 percent, from about $4-9 billion in the last eight years. At real annual growth rates of around 17 percent from 2005 to 2008, it’s showing a ...
Online courses next step in education
February 24, 2012
I don’t know how orange it is, but you know what’s a pretty big idea? Free online university-level courses over the web. The implications of this medium of education are astounding, and everyone should be extremely excited about it, despite the fact that the potential is largely marginalized ...
Threats to free Internet intolerable
February 17, 2012
The “History of the Internet” on Wikipedia gets down the basic time frames of the net’s basic permutations and technological benchmarks, and while it can be woefully inaccessible it is adequate to draw some interesting conclusions from. Yet most noticeably divorced from the “History” is the rise of Google ...
Hold your beliefs, toss your prejudice
February 10, 2012
I like to think of myself as an agnostic, not an atheist. It can be difficult to pinpoint the most relevant differences between the two in the context of being an American — and all of the woeful complexity that comes with. I also reject the idea that agnosticism, regarding belief ...
Better alternative to religion-bashing
February 03, 2012
Lately, I’ve been getting increasingly frustrated with people who tend to be over-zealously anti-religion, in kind of that knee-jerk, predictable, uncritical way — be they atheists, agnostics, antitheists or whatever label is needed to hold oneself in bitter distinction from half of America’s population.
Surely there is the potential ...
Internet continues to alter media, TV
January 27, 2012
The unforeseen consequences of technology have given humanity a pretty hard time. The massive troop charges into machine guns in World War I seem to be an appropriate poster child for our collective inability to comprehend the most obvious effects of technological advancement, symbolizing how much physical suffering and death ...
‘Conservative’ religion holds paradoxes
January 20, 2012
It seems like the rest of the Western world has answered the question of religion. England, Italy, Germany and France, themselves the ancient seats of one brand of Christianity or another, have slaughtered each other under the auspice of religion for nearly 10 centuries. Though an old statistic, it is ...
Political realities trite, still troubling
January 13, 2012
I don’t particularly want to spend a lot of energy writing about the Republican primaries and debates this semester, so might as well get most of it out right now.
I’ve never considered myself religious, but a limited Catholic upbringing instilled a certain empathy with people who were ...
Politicians pander on cognitive level
November 18, 2011
With politics, as usual, being little more than an exercise in emotional immaturity, I’m compelled to revisit a 2006 psychological study from Emory University that irrevocably (and irreverently?) puts politics in its place.
The study took people who merely described themselves as being left or right and analyzed regions ...
Humankind adapts to climate change
November 11, 2011
I remember considering myself up-to-date on the scientific specifics behind climate change before I attended a lecture on climate change ethics — a subject that should not be as novel as it is — here at UT a little while ago. It was a nice refresher on the theory of climate change ...
