Category: Current Affairs
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The Onion on Voting, Puppetry and Illusions
A week ago, The Onion produced a hilarious – not to be confused with Hillaryous – satirical look at the upcoming "election", from the shadowy perspective of reports of Diebold voting machine hacks in Florida a month ago … or perhaps demonstrations of Diebold voting machine hackability a year ago … or perhaps questionable results…
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Unconcerned About Privacy: The Pew Internet Report on Digital Footprints
The recent report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project on "Digital Footprints: Online identity management and search in the age of transparency" presents some interesting statistics and analysis regarding people’s awareness and use of digital information about themselves and others on the Internet (their "digital footprints"). The most interesting result, to me, was…
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Blessed Unrest: Environmental and Social Justice for All … or Bust!
In his latest book (and video), environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist, and author Paul Hawken achieves a remarkable balance between breadth and depth in arguing that in order to restore environmental and social balance on this earth, we must strive for both, or we will achieve neither. Noting that "we are nature", and thus however we treat…
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Absolution Power Corrupts Absolutely
I was listening to a story on CounterSpin where David Cole, Georgetown law professor and author of an article in Salon on “Bush’s torture ban is full of loopholes”, was talking about the executive order recently signed by U.S. President George W. Bush. Cole noted that one of the less noticed provisions of the document…
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Microsoft: The Republican Party of the Technology World?
My children sometimes ask me to explain the difference between Republicans and Democrats (especially during election season). While I admit that sometimes I can’t tell the difference myself, I generally simplify by saying that Republicans trust business to do the right thing, but don’t trust individuals to do the right thing, while Democrats don’t trust…
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The Beginning of the End of America
Keith Olbermann is my hero. In a scathing commentary on George W. Bush’s recent signing of the Military Commissions Act, Keith takes the president to task, comparing him and this act to earlier presidents and similar actions that gave them the authority to ignore and abuse the constitutional rights of our citizens: John Adams’ Alien…
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1984, Big Brotherhood, Hierarchies, Power and the American Way
I just finished re-reading 1984 (the Centennial Edition), by George Orwell, and as he himself says The best books are those that tell you what you already know. 1984 depicts a dystopian future wherein three superstates — Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia — are engaged perpetual warfare, which is used to maintain the poverty and ignorance…
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No One Can Terrorize Us Without Our Consent
As we approach the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, some politicians and members of the media are promoting and perpetuating terror, consciously or unconsiously. I’m reminded of a famous quote from the former First Lady of the United States, Eleanor Roosevelt: No one can make you feel inferior without your consent. I would…
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Influence in Digg Nation: Democracy, Meritocracy or Aristocracy?
There appears to be rising indignation in Digg nation over the perception that some users have undue influence in the ranking of articles posted in this popular "user driven social content website" (cf. articles at InformationWeek, Wired Blog, and Wikipedia, the last of which also notes that "diggnation" was one of the names originally considered…