The difference between mainstream public opinion and the “mainstream media”

Here are the major differences, set forth by Harvey Wasserman of Free Press: As we stumble toward another presidential election, it’s never been more clear that our political process is being warped by a corporate stranglehold on the free flow of information. Amidst a virtual blackout of coverage of a…

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Where are the wild Tigers? The danger of our obliviousness to incrementalism.

In the February 2008 edition of Natural History Magazine (article not available online), you can learn where tigers still live in the wild.  At the beginning of the 20th century, there were 100,000 tigers living in the wild.  Today, there are only 5000 in the wild. tiger2 Tigers now inhabit only 7% of their original territory, which has shrunk by 41% in the past 10 years.  Those relatively few tigers that remain in the wild hunt wild cattle, deer and pigs in isolated pockets of forested land in India, Sumatra, Eastern Russia in southern China.  Tigers are hunted illegally for pelts and for tiger parts that are used in medicines (such as tiger penis soups).


But did you know how many tigers live in United States?  7,000 to 15,000 tigers live

in private roadside zoos, circuses, sanctuaries, farms and backyards in the US.  Owners are often deluded into thinking that they contain the creatures, treating them like house cats, perhaps attracted by the challenge.  Yet even house cats, which

have been domesticated for thousands of years will reach out and swat their human companions.  What happens when a six month old sixty-pound beast with claws and slicing incisors takes a swipe?

Are these privately owned tigers allowed to run in large open areas and kept in good health?  Not likely.  Many tigers are kept in cages much too small for them and they are “fed insufficient or inappropriate food, such as canned dog food.”

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The Natural History article indicates that tigers …

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Americans consume too much and that is going to change dramatically.

Jared Diamond is a professor of geography at the University of California, Los Angeles, as well as the author of  “Guns, Germs and Steel” and "Collapse."  In an op-ed piece in the January 2, 2008 NYT, he reports that American rates of resource consumption are horribly out of wack with the…

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“No Impact Man” seeks a practical and sustainable lifestyle

I ran across a site I'm really enjoying, No Impact Man.  Who is "No Impact Man"?  He is a fellow who got tired of only talking about living an ecologically responsible lifestyle: I am no eco-expert. I am just a liberal schlub who got sick of not putting my money…

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