The NewsHour is allegedly a “low-key, evenhanded [newscast], inclusive of all perspectives. FAIR studied NewsHour’s guestlist from October 2005 through March 2006 (six months) To evaluate NewsHour's claim to evenhandedness and commitment to the public interest. Here’s what Extra found: At a time when a large proportion of the U.S. public…
In September, 2005, I traveled to London to attend a conference. While in London, I visited Westminster Abbey. Bury Darwin: A Deep Dive into the Historical and Political Context It is hard to imagine a place more rich in history--there was so much to see. But I made sure that I took the…
Mark Foley is a political whore, like most of his elected peers in Washington, DC. Yes, this post is yet another plea for radical campaign finance reform.
Our country appears to be going down the tubes and for the most part it is not because of perverts like Mark Foley are trying to seduce young boys. The reason we are really in trouble is because hundreds of elected officials (Mark Foley among them) are perverting our Constitution by acquiescing in our corrupt (though technically legal) election system.
How often do you hear a politician discussing an issue in a way that makes intuitive sense to you and seems straightforward? Not very often, in my experience. Almost all political conversations emanating from DC are contorted by money. That is why very little political dialogue makes sense to those who are not closely monitoring the flow of contributions. The result is that we the citizens are getting is a steady stream of legislation geared toward helping big contributors (mostly big companies) at the expense of individual citizens.
Today, Salon.com featured an article about Mark Foley, a known sex pervert. Foley has also been busy perverting our electoral system (as have most other elected federal officials) by taking big money from corporate interests and working hard to reward those contributors. Since Foley himself happened to be in the news already, Salon.com made him today’s poster boy in an article demonstrating that political/financial quid pro quo is alive and well.
The Salon.com story …
What have they done with the word “simple”? It appears that they have corrupted “simple” to the point that it means the opposite of what it used to mean (They also done this to the words “essential” and “needs”). Why do I say this?
Just Google the phrase “simple living” or “living simply.” You’ll see many websites preaching the virtues of living “simply.” Many of these “simple living” websites tell us how to re-organize our massive amounts of stuff or how to spend our money wisely when we buy more stuff. Some simple living sites recognize that many of us have many times more stuff than we need. Relatively few sites sternly warn us that our culture blinds us to the fact that most of what we own, possess or desire is frivolous and unnecessary.
Many preachers of simple living fail to focus on a distinction I was taught in grade school: needs versus wants. I was taught that needs are things you truly can’t do without. In this category I would put a toothbrush, a pair of simple shoes and an outfit of clothing not suitable for “showing off.” How much more than that? For a long time, I have struggled to find a good definition for “needs.” Here’s my best shot for now: imagine that floodwaters are rising and that you have one hour to save only the most important things out of your house by placing them into one subcompact car. Those things are your needs. Everything …
Primatologist Frans De Waal has spent much of his career pointing out how incredibly similar the emotional and moral behavior of human animals is to the behavior of many other animals (he focuses especially chimps and bonobos). In this post, I will comment on De Waal's 2005 work, Our Inner Ape, where De Waal substantiates his stunning conclusion (well, stunning to those who just can't bear to acknowledge that humans are animals - see here and here and here) that the precursors of morality are easily seen in animals other than human animals. More specifically, De Waal demonstrates that there is a well-substantiated continuity between the proto-moral behavior of chimpanzees and bonobos and the full-bloomed sense of morality that we see in human animals. De Waal is clearly frustrated that people consider only human aggression to be "animalistic," but not human empathy. De Waal describes studies clearly demonstrating empathy in many animals, ranging from rats to the great apes. Children as young as one year of age naturally reach out to comfort others. Household pets such as cats and dogs can become upset (just like children do) when family members feign distress. Empathy therefore develops even before language. This would seem to demonstrate that top-down rule-based (therefore language-based) versions of morality don't capture the essence of what it means to be moral. [More . . . ]