In Praise of Folly

The Supreme Court has again decided a case in favor of corporate interests, this time by ruling that the California law that sought to limit...

I originally thought that the IMF chief had simply chased a maid down the hall -- now that I know more I want to apologize for this complete...

I am going to start considering an issue of my own research here -- the relationship between knowledge and power. To start this series of en...

I was just reading an old article by Malcolm Gladwell about the successful marketing of Dockers in the 80s and 90s. The advertisers used a s...

Yesterday I took a break from work and watched The Green Hornet , a $120 million movie that may have been the worst superhero action film ev...

I have often wondered at the ongoing fascination with the Vampire. One could offer a simple analysis, that vampires inspire our dreams of im...

As someone who grew up in New Jersey and New York, the image of Donald Trump that immediately comes to mind is buffoon. Not only the silly h...

The President scored a major victory yesterday with the death of terrorist and Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. He received praise from most...

If the court decisions keep on at their current rate, one could imagine a time when the average citizen will be forced by law to tie the sho...

CNN, which has been making the call for "balance" an almost absurd raison d'etre of late, does have at least one pundit willin...

Accountability, on the surface, makes sense. If democracy is to function properly we need transparency and tools to ensure that the governme...

"Sustainability" is usually used as a word to describe preservation of the environment and to address the growing ecological crisi...

Theorists of popular culture have long spoken of fetishism, the process by which an object is mystified and emptied of its productive proces...

Among the reasons Republicans gave for the almost shutdown of the government was abortion. Or more specifically, they wanted to defund that ...

Last week, the Supreme Court heard a case about the constitutionality of an Arizona law known as the Citizens Clean Elections Act. Essential...

Rene Magritte reminded us almost a century ago that a painting is not a thing itself but a re-presentation of that thing. So the Mona Lisa s...

Republicans will unveil their 2012 budget proposal this week. Authored by Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, it is entitled "The Path...

While the Middle East continues to struggle to topple dictatorships and establish the roots of democracy ( TNR Article ), at home we continu...

The Washington Post reported a couple of weeks ago about a bipartisan group of Senators working behind the scenes to tackle the disaster tha...

Many scholars have been talking for years about the McDonaldization of the world, with U.S. "fast food"/consumer culture spreading...

The world stands in chaos today, from protestors across the Middle East, to renewed violence in Israel/Palestine (where a husband, wife and ...

Have you ever felt that photographs don't really capture the real you? Do you turn away whenever someone places you in the aim of their ...

Magnanimous Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has threatened to fire 1,500 public sector workers if the 14 Democratic State Senators who escap...

I am that odd sort of American who actually thinks about football as soccer, and the U.S. version as American football. Having long been a J...

The rube in the big city has long been a Hollywood staple , from Mr. Smith Goes to Town to Mr. Deeds to The Hudsucker Proxy . The protagoni...

In a post-Tuscon world ... little appears to have changed. In a Town Hall meeting in Georgia a few days ago, a participant stood up and aske...

Two events yesterday brought into acute focus the man/machine debate; at least for me. The first, reported widely, was the victory by IBM su...

Anderson Cooper has been getting lambasted by the media for days now, for the unforgivable sin of, gasp, calling a lie a lie. The lies, told...

I finally got around to seeing The Social Network last night and have to say that while it was a good movie, it wasn't anything earth sh...

In this blog, I often talk about conservative framing. One of their brilliant strategies was to relabel what had become expected government ...

Well, the Tea Party might be more than just a bunch of right-wing radical conspiracy theorists and racists after all. New Tea Party GOP cong...

A series of stories today show how crazy the country has gotten, and how crisis appears to bring out even more nut cases than America has al...

Wall Street darling and favorite of the commodified pseudo-ethnic chain movement Chipotle Mexican Grill is apparently in trouble as its hip ...

A few years ago, a documentary came out called The Revolution Will Not Be Televised ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Revolution_Will_Not_B...

The new year has started with a surge of populist democratic movements across the globe. In Tunisia, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was p...

This article provides interesting background on Ryan: http://www.thenation.com/blog/158010/paul-ryan-republicans-thinker?rel=emailNation . A...

Yesterday, I happened to catch most of the Republican response to the SOTU speech. One thing I found fascinating was the series of myths tha...

In preparation for the State of the Union address, Republicans showed up on the Sunday talk shows to warn that they seek cuts in all areas o...

News that astronomer signs are misaligned by as much as a month (due to "wobble" in the earth) has sent people into identity crise...