Science: It Works

In light of the fact that the past week or four have been politically asinine, I thought it would be nice to take a detour from our usual musings on politics, economics, and whatnot. I’ve chosen instead to focus my attention today on a topic that has never once let me down like ridiculous budget deals and underwhelming elections so frequently do, and that topic is science. In just a few short weeks, we’ve had announcements of mind blowingly important discoveries ranging from water on Mars to an almost unbelievable cure all for viruses that doesn’t seem to be possible. With this much progress taking place it’s hard to believe that these magnificent scientific developments aren’t on the front page of all of the important blogs and newspapers.

I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire: Part 1

It is not uncommon to hear Americans complain about the United Nations (UN) and the participation of the U.S within it. These critics, very often, simply don’t get it.  They don’t understand the reasons why the UN was created and what the goals of the institution are, and it is vital to understand those reasons in order to understand the United Nations.  

Al-Qaeda 2.0

Unlike most of the country, it was a fairly warm day in the state where I’m from on September 11, 2001. I was fourteen years old and about a month into my freshman year of high school. My grandfather’s 60^th birthday was approaching that October and we were planning to fly the whole family out to San Antonio, but my grandma is terrified of flying. I, being the aviation and space nerd that I am, had been trying to convince my grandma for weeks that flying is perfectly safe, even more so than driving, I had graphs and everything! I hated the sound and the incredibly rude awakening of traditional alarm clocks, so I had recently set my TV in my bedroom to wake me up at a certain time, and had it set to the Today Show because it was usually pretty upbeat.

Twenty-Five Reasons Why I’m Not in the Tea Party

1.     I enjoy roads.

2.     I know how to read and write because a public school taught me.

3.     I can spell.

4.     I want the government to inspect my food so it doesn’t kill me, make me sick, or turn me into a zombie.

5.     When I’m old, I’d like to be able to afford to go to the doctor, and I want other elderly people to be able to do the same.

Live Together, or Die Alone

Thomas Jefferson said, “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” While this may have been the case when Mr. Jefferson originally spoke these words, it is no longer the case that those are our only two options. Perhaps a more modern way of looking at it is that our government is the people, & it's time to stop being afraid of each other. The partisan divide has grown so wide in the United States that it’s easy to forget that we’re all supposed to be on the same team, and all supposed to be working together. I would even go so far as to say that the reason that our economic recovery has been so unbearably sluggish isn’t the failure of one policy initiative or another, it’s the failure of us to come together to fix the problem. The American people are too busy trying to secure their own advantage by any means necessary to even notice that doing so is only dragging them even further down.

Master Opinion Blaster Episode II: Attack of the Drones

            Ladies and gentleman, welcome to part two of “Master Opinion Blaster,” the Liberal Mob chronicle of News Corp. Last week, we took a look at what exactly news is, and how News Corp’s and Fox News’ names are based entirely on deception. I laid out exactly how Fox and News Corp are particularly devoted to misleading their viewers, and quite frequently avoiding facts while “reporting the news.” Now, while this is a massive problem, perhaps the real problem isn’t that News Corp constantly misrepresents information (after all, who cares if crazy people make stuff up and scream it in the corner); it’s just how far they can scream their craziness. I imagine News Corp as being that same crazy person, only instead of screaming into a corner, they have a massive network of television channels, newspapers, and websites and have somehow managed to learn how to spell.

Musings on Regime Change

In light of the recent recognition of the Libyan transitional government by the United States and others, we are presented with an excellent opportunity to reflect on the Arab Spring and United States policy towards the Middle East-Northern Africa region. The last six months have seen perhaps the most widespread and significant political change in the entire Middle East-Northern Africa region since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. The world has seen successful, non-violent democratic movements take hold in Egypt and Tunisia, popular uprisings in Libya and Syria, and protests of various sorts all across the region from Algeria to Bahrain to even Jordan.

Master Opinion Blaster

I realize that I started yesterday's space post with a quote, so today I'm gonna one up me and start with two. From the same person!


Quote 1: "Our job is only to hold up the mirror - to tell and show the public what has happened."


Quote 2: "Objective journalism and an opinion column are about as similar as the Bible and Playboy magazine."


-Walter Cronkite

Martian Faces and Space Arks: Why We Need to Invest in Space Exploration

“That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” These iconic words take us back to a time when America did big things. Big things that didn't entail a family size bucket from a chicken restaurant. While it’s incredibly likely that we only did those things because we were in a race against the Soviet menace, the fact remains that we did them. And while that was a frightening time in both American, and world history, it was also a time of hope that the future would be better than today. With the end of the space shuttle era (Yahoo! News), I fear that the dream of the space age is gone, and with it the hope for the future of mankind. Now, I don’t mean to be a fear monger, after all I’m not a politician, but I believe that one of the most important things that we can be doing with our tax money (and yes we should pay taxes) is to invest in the future of the USA, and Humanity as a whole, by financing human space flight and space exploration.

Bullsh*t Sandwiches and Emperor Palpatine

Senator Mitch McConnell, today, said that there is no possibility of solving the nation’s spending and debt problem, “as long as this president is in the Oval Office.” At the same time he proposed to give the president emergency powers to deal with the matter which would, as David Weigel noted today on Twitter, effectively render President Obama the real life Emperor Palpatine. This news came on the same day that the president awarded the Medal of Honor to Sergeant First Class Leroy Petry (the Boston Globe) for his gallantry and commitment to our nation and his brothers, with no concern for his own well-being.