Fire in a Crowded Theater

This, I predict, will be an unpopular post. Few events in recent memory have brought such universal calls of immediate condemnation as Wednesday’s massacre of cartoonists and staff from the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris. As a pacifist, I join…

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Password Protection and Self-Defeating Security

This country has a bit of a problem with a false sense of security. So-called revelations have been abounding this week over the extent and nature of some specific acts of torture enacted by the CIA during the Bush administration…

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My Public Ballot, 2014 Louisiana Run-Off Edition

This is probably the most inconsequential election I’ve ever taken part in, especially given that my primary act was to abstain from the headline race because (a) it literally forced me to vote for a Democrat or a Republican and…

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Cop Immunity

When I was in high school, I devised a thought experiment that I discussed extensively with my friends. It was called “Cop Immunity”. My question was whether someone would take the deal of having total immunity to all interactions of…

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Why No One is Voting

Turns out my Facebook feed is the exception. No one is voting in the United States. According to the New York Times, the elections earlier this month set a 72-year low for voter turnout, with 36.3% voting. (For context, Catalonia’s…

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What am I Missing?

The graphic above is going to be most of what this post is about. So go ahead and peruse that. This is my best guess at the five things that Democrats, liberals, and the other people who mostly comprise the…

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Fear in the Box

Maybe election day is just a little too soon after Halloween. We’ve discussed American fear, its prevalence and perniciousness, quite recently. We are afraid of terrorists, even though what they are supposed to wield as a most scary object is,…

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Misdirection

All anyone in the media can talk about anymore is ebola. Unless it’s ISIS. Or maybe, on slow days for ISIS and ebola, pretty white women going missing from college campuses. Never mind that far more people die from frat…

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