From the Los Angeles Times piece Black viewers are divided on film’s ‘Precious’-ness by Erin Aubry Kaplan. Verdicts about high-pitched movies from black viewers and public figures are usually swift and decisive — “Do the Right Thing,” “The Color Purple,” and the recent Robert Downey Jr. performance in “Tropic Thunder” come to mind. But that’s [...] [Posted: 30 Nov 2009]
Two kinds of eggplant, neither genetically modified. Photo by istorija In India, where food production depends on the vagaries of the weather, GM foods are a hot button for not just debate over bio-safety but also the power of multinationals to influence food choices. The GM eggplant strain has been developed by American agrichemical giant [...] [Posted: 30 Nov 2009]
Perhaps just as important, the pro-life movement got very shrewd about its politics, realizing that it had a highly conflicted electorate on its hands. As William Saletan shows with depressing cogency in Bearing Right: How Conservatives Won the Abortion War, the pro-choice movement was never going to win its case on the basis of women’s [...] [Posted: 30 Nov 2009]
From The Christian Progressive Liberal piece The Gift of Good Mental Health on Jack & Jill Politics: We value good physical health, but somehow, many of us believe we don’t deserve good mental health as well. That we deserve to live life to the fullest without dealing with soul-destroying depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorders, personality disorders, [...] [Posted: 30 Nov 2009]
It’s likely that you have a passion that has expenses (like travel or reading) or, at the very least, you would like to put away some money for a rainy day. One simple trick I use to avoid acquiring things is compare the cost of the particular thing in question, to the expenses of my [...] [Posted: 30 Nov 2009]
This is how empires decline. It begins with a debt explosion. It ends with an inexorable reduction in the resources available for the Army, Navy, and Air Force. Which is why voters are right to worry about America’s debt crisis. According to a recent Rasmussen report, 42 percent of Americans now say that cutting the [...] [Posted: 30 Nov 2009]
My folks don’t have actual crates, but they do have a pretty dope collection of 1970s vinyl albums. I got into a couple of Parliament albums my dad owned. And I just about wore out my dad’s copy of James Brown’s “Hot Pants.” Beyond that, however, I never appreciated these records growing up. As an [...] [Posted: 29 Nov 2009]
A less polite me would say “Really, Thom Friedman? Just STFU because your latest column is the biggest load of BS on the internet this week.” So thank you Glenn Greenwald for taking Friedman to task: In a very rare moment of candor for this rank war-loving propagandist, he announced very clearly the real purpose [...] [Posted: 29 Nov 2009]
And what’s that? Being willfully ignorant? Inarticulate? Poorly informed and not all that well-read? These folks are about to make me start believing in a deity, because after witnessing the rank stupidity on full view in this video, I don’t know what else to do. [Posted: 26 Nov 2009]
But the knee jerk reaction of blaming Islam and Muslims, in general, or looking for delusional links to “al Qaeda,” for the horrific murders at Fort Hood points to something far more fundamental, overdue, and urgent — namely something of a psychological barrier for Americans to accept the Islamic component of their own society, culture, [...] [Posted: 26 Nov 2009]