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 ...
Condoleezza Rice’s views warped
November 04, 2011
Last Tuesday on “The Daily Show,” when Jon Stewart asked former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice if she approved of the general military precedent set by the Bush administration, she casually claimed, “I don’t actually believe in the word ‘precedent’ in international politics.” You heard it straight from a ...
Look beyond spin on Gaddafi
October 28, 2011
To anyone who has celebrated the death of Muammar Gaddafi as some kind of humanitarian victory — say, with a cheery Facebook post — well, you should be kind of ashamed. In your defense, reveling in death at mere hearsay, as if we had some sort of national death religion with a ...
Public, private division not so clear
October 21, 2011
Ya’ll like you some free markets? Well, sorry, a free market system has never actually existed in this country. Remember in high school economics class when they’d use quaint examples like a row of banana vendors on a street to explain pure competition? Yeah, turns out being small ...
Response to critique on DADT
October 14, 2011
Last week on Oct. 3 2011, UT senior and Marine Johnathan Dunham (I apologize for not being able to list his rank) responded to my column regarding the luxurious nature of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in contrast to bigger issues.
I claim full responsibility for any inadequacies in ...
Deeper consequences from Iraq
October 07, 2011
President Obama’s commitment to finally withdraw all troop activity by Dec. 31 of this year is drawing close, and, regardless of your stance on the war, the consequences for sticking around in Iraq need to be objectively discussed.
The arbiter in the decision making process of whether to keep ...
Moving beyond ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’
September 23, 2011
Is the abolishment of “don’t ask, don’t tell” last Tuesday even newsworthy at this point?
I’m just asking. It’s not a loaded question. I’m just trying to have a conversation, why don’t ... oh, come on. No, I’m not dismissing ... no, gays’ rights are ...
UT’s ‘food’ options convenient, bad
September 16, 2011
It’s kind of impossible to eat well on UT campus.
Instead of starting with an ironic build-up on increasingly regrettable food options, let’s start with the fact that at the nexus of campus, the easiest place to get to from everywhere else, there is a Starbucks. They used ...
Military spending cripples nation
September 09, 2011
I miss the Iraq War.
I don’t have much access to strategic U.S. documentation about troop and supply movement in the Middle East. I couldn’t lay down a super cool logistic about when it started becoming apparent that things were slowing down over there outside of some ...
Hail storm highlights hypocrisy
September 02, 2011
You’re likely familiar with the fact that earlier this year, Knoxville and the surrounding area was mildly destroyed by a series of severe hailstorms.
The damage was mostly superficial. Interestingly, superficiality is kind of a huge driving force in our economy. Do you think the daily stock market reading ...
Scientific facts critical to philosophy
August 26, 2011
Beginner-level college philosophy has kind of ruined the subject for me.
I unconditionally loved philosophy as a kid. Who isn’t inspired by a bunch of guys who effortlessly defined the nature of reality — presumably from comfortable chairs? By speculating on the abstract, and then presenting it in a linear ...
