Have you heard this before?
Mano Singham
Just another Freethought Blogs site
When wind power is spoken of in the US, it is as a source of unreliable auxiliary power that supplies a small fraction of the total energy needs. Hence I had always viewed it as a fringe source of power that did not have the long term potential of solar power as an alternative to fossil fuels. [Read more…]
Frank Schaeffer is a Methodist minister. In 2007, his gay son asked him to officiate at his wedding and he did so, even though the Methodist Church does not approve of same sex marriage. It turns out that three of the pastor’s four children are gay and that the son who got married had earlier contemplated suicide because of the difficulties of being gay in a small rural conservative town in Pennsylvania. [Read more…]
The revelations about the scale of NSA snooping on everyone’s information and communications and storing that information to be used against you has spawned interest in how to combat it. [Read more…]
There are eccentric people everywhere. The thing about small towns is that such people are much more likely to stand out and actually have an impact. The people behind The Colbert Report seems to have the knack for finding such people and getting them to agree to be on TV. [Read more…]
The outline of the new Omidyar-Greenwald media venture is taking shape. New York University journalism professor Jay Rosen is the latest to sign up and he gives some information about it, including the people who have joined so far. It is a good list. I am familiar with most of the names and the ones that are unfamiliar such as Liliana Segura and Eric Bates have biographies that look promising. [Read more…]
Matt Taibbi writes that coverage of the 2016 presidential election has already begun. He says that this is inevitable but what depresses him is the way it is covered. He explains how there has now evolved a standard lens through which all politicians are viewed and that results in a particular narrative form. He looks in particular at the way the senator Elizabeth Warren’s potential candidacy (which is not at all clear will happen but he favors if it does) is described. [Read more…]
I have written before of the weird fascination of the US media with covering the anniversaries of major events. I generally find them either utterly boring or they arouse a mild flashback, similar to hearing a song from one’s youth. This week is going to be one of the biggest nostalgia trips, since Friday marks the fiftieth anniversary of the killing of president Kennedy. [Read more…]
I grew up voraciously reading mystery novels, with Agatha Christie being my author of choice, with other mystery writers thrown in from time to time. She was a prolific writer and I suspect that I have read at least 90% of her output. Hence my ideas about the conventions of that genre have largely been shaped by her books. [Read more…]