I was just sitting and mindlessly watching television, and a commercial for a health insurance company came on. It showed adults walking around the streets of a city dressed in costumes – astronaut, doctor, ballerina. The tagline of the commercial was a variation of “Be YOU. Be what you want to be.” It occurred to… Continue reading
In my last post, I talked about how I had been living without television for months. Well, it’s back now, and aside from a few guilty pleasures such as “Hoarders” and “Pawn Stars,” it hasn’t made much of a difference. However, I do think that my months without television caused a bit of culture shock… Continue reading
I canceled my cable TV in July 2009. Since then, my only access to television has been at the gym or at other people’s houses. Now that I am getting close to finishing my dissertation, I am thinking about getting TV again. In some ways I have missed it; there are shows I like that… Continue reading
There is a lot of funny stuff out there on the interwebs. Lots of the funny seems totally harmless, like ICanHazCheezburger, for example. How can anybody possibly be offended by funny pictures of cats? No one, I say. There is plenty more G-rated, totally inoffensive humor on the web where that came from. But then,… Continue reading
The American Heritage Dictionary defines socialism as: Any of various theories or systems of social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy. The same dictionary defines fascism as: A system of government marked by centralization of authority… Continue reading
In simple societies with small, easily manageable populations (like hunter-gatherer groups or those that practice simple horticulture and animal husbandry), social control is a relatively simple thing to maintain. There are no written laws, no formal judiciary, and no law enforcement bureaucracy. Instead, there is gossip, shame, fear of the supernatural (e.g. gods, spirits, dead… Continue reading