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Category Archives: Addenda
The War on Black People
For anyone who missed Michelle Alexander’s appearance on Fresh Air on Martin Luther King Day, I cannot recommend it highly enough. Read the transcript, or better yet, buy her book, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of … Continue reading
Posted in Addenda, Discussion
Tagged black people, food stamps, for-profit prisons, Jim Crow, Newt Gingrich, race, racism, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, social issues, voter ID laws, war on drugs, white people
The Occupy Movement Speaks
Not just all across the nation, but all around the globe, untold thousands of people came together today to speak out against the corrupt system that benefits the wealthiest 1% (or less) at the expense of the masses. Their message … Continue reading
Posted in Addenda, Discussion
Tagged #occupy, #OWS, 99%, current events, democracy, free speech, media, neo-feudalism, Occupy Together, Occupy Wall Street, protest
Not Enough: The Failures of International Peacekeeping
International peacekeeping in the twenty-first century seems to follow two models: the reactive model, which uses the courts and often takes decades to bring a handful perpetrators to justice; and the for-profit model, which is concerned with protecting the strategic … Continue reading
Posted in Addenda, Discussion
Tagged international law
Protesters Oust Dictator
The overthrow of Egypt’s Hosny Mubarak is one of the most important political events of the decade so far. I’ll grant that it only happened because the military sided with the protesters; but the military would not have taken sides … Continue reading
Posted in Addenda, Discussion
Tagged current events
Government Secrecy vs. the Free Flow of Information
In the book, I wrote at length about the problem of government secrecy. Secrecy is a problem because a government ceases to be representative when its people do not have access to information about what the government is doing. Elections … Continue reading
Posted in Addenda, Discussion
Tagged politics
Media Bias, Continued
In an earlier post I set forth a detailed argument that NPR’s coverage of the news is badly affected by its blatant conservative bias. A few weeks after I wrote that post, NPR fired one of its senior political analysts … Continue reading
Posted in Addenda, Discussion
Tagged media bias
Anarchy in the USA!
All my life, I have had friends, housemates, and in-laws who profess to be anarchists or Libertarians. In the past year and a half, anti-Obama sentiment has taken the form of frequent calls for small government, less government, or even … Continue reading
Posted in Addenda, Discussion
Tagged anarchy, feudalism, libertarianism, politics, protest, rule of law, taxes, Tea Party
The Human-Neanderthal Link
In the book, I considered the history of the human relationship with our Neanderthal siblings for most of three pages. I concluded in Section 2.2: Competition that humans must have exterminated the Neanderthal in a prehistoric conflict that lasted for … Continue reading
Posted in Addenda, Discussion
Tagged gene flow, human, interbreeding, Neandertal, Neanderthal, science
Congress Grows a Pair
[Update: As it turned out, my title for this piece was premature. The measure discussed below made it out of committee, but was not enacted as a formal resolution.] In a long-overdue move, today a Congressional panel approved a measure … Continue reading
Posted in Addenda, Discussion
Tagged Armenia, atrocities, Congress, crimes against humanity, genocide, Hillary Clinton, international law, Turkey, war crimes
Amended: Why the Vaccine Debate is a Legitimate Debate
[UPDATE: Please note that I have conceded this point, and no longer back the arguments I made below. I wrote this post several years ago, in 2009, based on the information that was available to me at the time. In … Continue reading
Posted in Addenda, Discussion
Tagged ADHD, autism, childhood immunizations, neurological damage, pharmaceuticals, science, studies, vaccinations, vaccines