Conflict Pornography

Conflict: competitive or opposing action of incompatibles: antagonistic state or action. Pornography: (3): the depiction of acts in a sensational manner so as to arouse a quick intense emotional reaction. What else could it be, other than conflict pornography, when a major media source unnecessarily frames a story in such…

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Two Americas: Two ways to play in water

Those who are truly interested in community-building (rather than striving to enhance their own status through resource-exhausting displays of material wealth) might want to take note of two ways city folks play in water. This idea occurred to me while walking through Tower Grove Park in St. Louis last week.…

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More Cartoons

RJ Matson, Roll Call Mike Lester, The Rome News-Tribune Pat Bagley, Salt Lake Tribune Postura Climatica Tab, The Calgary Sun The G-8 Dario Castillejos, El Imparcial de México Televictim Angel Boligan, El Universal, Mexico City [Admin note:  All Cartoons are being published at DI with full permission by Cagle Cartoons]

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Complacency II

I wrote about complacency once before. I focused on the complacency of most Americans in the face of the energy crisis that is clearly upon us. We have no assurance that gasoline won’t double or triple in price over the next five or 10 years, throwing our economy into a massive depression. With stakes like these, you would think that prolific energy wasters like us would immediately jump on our energy consumption problem by enacting a national conservation plan to cut our petroleum use in half. This could be accomplished by modifying our wasteful energy usage in dozens of ways. For instance, we really could carpool. We could build up our mass transit systems and encourage their use. We could walk and bike more. We could make our homes much more energy-efficient. Instead of building new homes in existing farm fields, we could renovate homes that already exist. While we’re at it, we could cut our use of all other forms of energy in half too. For instance, the technology already exists to make zero-carbon footprint buildings.

Others have written extensively regarding many methods by which we could reduce energy use. Due to the widely accepted law of supply and demand, cutting our use of energy would also have the effect of lowering the price of energy (relative to whatever it would have been had we not taken such measures), thereby diminishing the financial damage from our perennial trade deficits and budget deficits.

My concern is that so many people …

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What’s with white people and bottled water?

What's with white people?  If you'd like to know, check out this Salon interview of Christian Lander, creator of Stuff White People Like. Here's an example of Lander's sharp sword: "The presence of an improper apostrophe on a menu can ruin an otherwise delicious meal for a white person."  As…

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