More reasons to love Scandinavia.

Today, Norway opened the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which is meant as a back-up biodiversity trust to restore the world’s agricultural heritage – aka OUR FOOD – in case of nuclear war, climate change, or other planet-scale catastrophe.
Svalbard Global Seed Vault, just 620 miles from the North Pole, is designed to house as many [...]

McCain v. Obama?

What would the media do? I find it plausible that the media have separate biases towards Barack Obama and John McCain. And not only the Mainstream Media, but much of the blogosphere media as well. There’s actually structural similarity, in that almost anything Obama does is wrapped up in the narrative of his “charisma,” while [...]

Delta-Northwestern merger.

I know that the main issue right now in the Delta-Northwestern negotiations is how to integrate pilot seniority, but I do wonder about the integration of the two cultures. I say this because, as a Lutheran and Emory student, I know the two companies’ headquarter cities pretty well, and have some sense the local cultures [...]

Foucault conference presentation.

I’ve been accepted to present at the 5th Annual Social Theory Forum at UMass Boston! The theme is “A Foucault for the 21st Century: Governmentality, Biopolitics, and Discipline in the New Millennium.”
Foucault is best remembered for his historical inquiries into the origins of
“disciplinary” society in a period extending from the 16th to the 19th
centuries. Today, [...]

SCOTUS: Further Alito swing?

Today the US Supreme Court heard arguments in a case under one of the nation’s oldest civil rights laws, Section 1981. Originally passed in 1866, the statute holds that “all persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right in every State and Territory to make and enforce contracts, to sue, [...]

Discovering the Capitol Steps.

This group is hilarious! They have parodies of everything in the campaign. Be sure to catch the ditty on McCain (to the tune of “The Rain in Spain”) and “Knock Three Times” à la Larry Craig. I surely needed this comic relief!

Mind-altering quotes.

From a masked philosopher:
“In whatever is given to us as universal, necessary, obligatory, what place is occupied by whatever is singular, contingent, and the product of arbitrary constraints? The point, in brief, is to transform the critique conducted in the form of necessary limitation into a practical critique that takes the form of a possible [...]

The Joy of Christian Sex Toys.

I assume that headline got your attention as well. Book22.com focuses on providing intimacy enhancement materials for Christian couples. The owners are guided by prayer to decide what products to offer. God has apparently made clear that dildos would be a stumbling-block to Christian couples. On the other hand, they have a policy of not [...]

Building a prison-industrial complex from scratch.

Today’s Weekend Edition (NPR) noted how the US is going about reconstructing the Iraqi “criminal justice” system, including complexes where judges can live, trials can be held, and prisoners detained indefinitely – one-stop justice convenience. Halfway through the story, though, and we hear US reconstruction officials noting that the real problem is that there just [...]

New venture.

For about a year and a half, I kept a blog on Blogger, but life became too busy to keep up. But I’ve decided to make another attempt at blogging, since there’s too much going on in social-political life not to comment. Here’s to a sustainable practice!