The magazines of Wal-Mart

Wal-mart is where America shops, right?  Therefore, the magazines offered by Wal-Mart must be what America reads.  On this assumption I traveled to a sprawling St. Louis Wal-Mart supercenter yesterday to photograph the magazine rack.  There were many titles, indeed.  You’ll see them in the photos embedded in this post.  Because there are so many titles, there must also be quite a breadth of information, right?  You’ll be the judge.  I’m putting up this post with the hope that we can all put our heads together and do a bit of anthropology.

Now for the tour. Here are the magazines of Wal-Mart from left to right):

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The first thing you might notice is that the literature is categorized a bit differently than it is in a public library.  For instance, the Dewey Decimal System uses the following major categories:

000 Generalities
100 Philosophy & psychology
200 Religion
300 Social sciences
400 Language
500 Natural sciences & mathematics
600 Technology (Applied sciences)
700 The arts
800 Literature & rhetoric
900 Geography & history

It’s a bit different at Wal-Mart, where you’ll find these categories:

  • Automotive
  • Fashion
  • Teen
  • Entertainment
  • Woman
  • Information
  • Sports
  • Men’s
  • Home/Garden
  • Puzzles & Games
  • Computers

There doesn’t seem to be any overlap at all.  Perhaps the Dewey system can be revamped to take advantage of this cutting edge Wal-Mart catergorization.  I realize, now, that these Wal-Mart topic labels are not literal and exact.  For instance, the fact that one section is called “Information” doesn’t mean that there is …

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FCC patrolling our airwaves to protect us from dirty words

MSNBC has just reported that the FCC is working long hours to protect us from harmful language, i.e., language that “depicts or describes sexual or excretory activities or organs in a patently offensive manner.”

In its continuing crackdown on on-air profanity, the FCC has requested numerous tapes from broadcasters that might include vulgar remarks from unruly spectators, coaches and athletes at live sporting events, industry sources said.

Tapes requested by the commission include live broadcasts of football games and NASCAR races where the participants or the crowds let loose with an expletive. While commission officials refused to talk about its requests, one broadcast company executive said the commission had asked for 30 tapes of live sports and news programs.

As explained by MSNBC, the Commission is cracking down on variations of the words “f***” and “s***” even if the words are uttered accidentally.

I’m really glad that our government is keeping TV safe.   This sort of detail work is likely quite expensive, but I’m sure they’ve thought this all though to make sure that there is nothing better to do with all of that money.  There’s no telling what harm could happen if one is exposed to a dangerous word.  I didn’t see Janet Jackson’s nipple, but had I seen it, I might have missed several days of work trying to recover. 

Or so I thought.  Because this is such an important matter, I decided to subject myself to an experiment.I turned off the phone, went to a quiet room …

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A billion people can’t all be wrong, can they?

According to the Associated press, Tobacco alone is predicted to kill a billion people this century, 10 times the toll it took in the 20th century, if current trends hold. This humongous number begs for a morbid illustration.  If you lined up the dead bodies of one billion dead smokers end to…

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Suburban Dissatisfacton Revisited

Earlier, I wrote about the tendency of suburbanites to feel they have limited options, and how such a life can seem unfulfilling or failed. At the time, I inspected the personal shortcomings that have a hand in this, as well as the human predisposition to discontentment. But it appears that yet another factor contributes to the often portrayed suburban dread: the structure of the suburbs themselves.

Prior to the Second World War, most suburbs had what architects and city planners call a “traditional” or “mixed-use” structure. Towns of this type have closely arranged, small city blocks intermittent with other amenities such as shops, restaurants, churches, and public buildings such as schools and post offices. To get a better idea of a town of this type, picture the typical conception of a small New England village or city. This traditional structure made pedestrian activity both easy and inviting, claims Andres Duany, one of the authors of Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream.

In the 1950’s and beyond, building codes began to prevent such a seamless blend of commerce, public activity, and personal residence from organizing. Most American towns now have much more rigid building codes the divide all the realms of society into isolated sections: a housing district, a shopping center-like area, and government buildings shoved somewhere else. Duany describes the trend this way:

“It’s an architectural version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Our neighborhoods are being replaced by soulless

…

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What Jesus said about homosexuality: Nothing.

This, according to Dr. Bob Edgar, who was interviewed by CBS News.  Edgar is General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, which represents about 50 million Christians in America — the majority of them mainline Protestants. "Jesus never said one word about homosexuality, never said one word about civil…

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