The Problem with… Peter Singer

I totally missed this article when it was published in the NYT magazine over a month ago. If you did, too, I suggest you read it now. You can scan it, as it is fairly repetitive. Just as Michael Pollan picked apart Singer’s ideas about animals and food for being so abstract as to disconnect [...]

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Could “The Island” Be One Of The Worst Movies Ever?

I’m wondering if there are many candidates that can top Michael Bay’s “The Island”—not only for gratuitous stupidity and violence, but also for having no redeeming ‘laughable’ moments–i.e., as in being so bad that it’s actually good. I knew within a few minutes that it was going to be bad, but I was in the [...]

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More on the Problem With…Equality

So I have this feeling I’m just being really obtuse when it comes to ‘getting’ this phrase: “all men are created equal”. It seems nearly everywhere it is used as justification for equal rights. See this excerpt from Wikipedia:
President Abraham Lincoln relied on the Declaration of Independence when making the case that slavery went [...]

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The Problem With… Golf

I like doing these “The Problem With..” posts. I’m such a hyper-critical person, it is almost too easy. In fact, I was considering doing a whole blog of just ‘problem with…’ posts. But that might get to be a bit much. Still, though you may think I’m a bit obtuse when it comes to the [...]

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The Problem with… The Declaration of Independence

First of all, and with haste, let’s trash this notion that the Declaration itself is any kind of sacred work. It is the work of men. Intelligent, thoughtful, powerful men. It may be the case, as a teacher of mine says of many historical texts, that it contains more and deeper truths than the writers [...]

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What “Post-Abortion Syndrome” has to do with Factory Farming

Yes, I know, that seems like a stretch. I will try to finish the post tomorrow, but you can imagine it’s quite an argument. Maybe read over the Foer posts and the Pollan stuff for a little background on food and animals, etc. I can only hope that with sufficient philosophical, ecological, and anthropological grounding, [...]

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McLibel, Fast Food Nation, and Fighting the Man

Saw the documentary McLibel a few weeks ago, which was equal parts inspiring and depressing. Inspiring because two people (a unemployed former postman and a gardener), with no money and almost no legal aid, took on McDonald’s in a court of law and, for all intents and purposes, won. Depressing because after the ruling, it [...]

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The Flying Spaghetti Monster Was Responsible For 9/11. Really.

On NPR today I heard Dinesh D’Souza speak about the war in Iraq. He didn’t say anything too provocative or outrageous, though I thought he was mostly wrong and showed a startlingly superficial understanding of both history and current events. But then, when the broadcast was over, I was shocked (shocked — really) to hear [...]

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Read the NYT article about “Post-Abortion Syndrome”, Please

I am going to post something rather long about this article in the near future. But though it is a long piece to read online if you don’t have access to the NYT Magazine, I think it is well worth reading for several reasons, as it offers as much insight into religious fundamentalism as it [...]

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Sometimes the Quote of the Day Can Make Your Day

The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.
- Frank Zappa
Thank you, Frank. We miss you.

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