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Entertainment > Album Reviews Album reviews: Untrue, by Burial: 1 of 1
Maybe for lack of exposure to some of the new generation of music, I've had some difficulty listening to any new releases from the first song to the last. This can partly be explained, I think, by the transition from physical albums to digital downloads. Last I knew (for all I knew), Radiohead was the only band creating albu... More..
Politics, News & Issues > US Economy Why are there so many people living below the poverty line in America: 5 of 9
U.S. poverty is caused by an interplay of economic, psychological, and cultural factors that are too complex to reduce to a hypothesis. Most firmly-held beliefs about the causes and nature of poverty can be assessed as pop psychology, and more nuanced approaches in social science can't produce a satisfying explanation. The p... More..
Entertainment > Movie Reviews Movie reviews: The Shining: 8 of 14
Like Stanley Kubrick? Like Stephen King? Then you'll most likely enjoy "The Shining," Kubrick's 1980 adaptation of King's classic haunted hotel novel. And even if you were bored by "2001: A Space Odyssey" and never much liked "Carrie," you still might think about checking this one out, just to revisit Jack Nicholson's heyday... More..
Politics, News & Issues > Political & Economic Theory The politics of gun control: 4 of 7
Inasmuch as the arguments from both right and left make sense, this is a difficult issue to take a side on. The political right argues that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear arms, while the political left argues that "arms" as we know them today are very different from what the Founding Fathers had i... More..
Politics, News & Issues > Politics, News & Issues (Other) Do people tend to base election votes more on emotion or reason?: 12 of 20
Political Science 101 tells us that a majority of people vote along party lines: Republicans usually vote Republican, and Democrats usually vote Democrat. We also know that people vote their economic interests: wealthy people vote Republican, and average people vote Democrat. Statistics tell us that Jews, blacks, and women a... More..
Politics, News & Issues > Political & Economic Theory What can individuals do about the evils of globalization?: 3 of 5
Globalization does not create a zero-sum struggle between nations, as observed by many free-market economists. In most countries that have opted to open up their economies, starvation-level poverty has decreased, employment has risen, and tougher competition has driven markets forward, towards greater entrepreneurship and in... More..
Politics, News & Issues > US Economy Which is the most powerful job in the world?: 3 of 5
First, a little background on the topic at hand. Homo sapiens concern themselves with power on an instinctive level: our evolutionary predecessors learned that the strongest survive to successfully pass on their genes, so seeking power is one of those things we do to pass the time, even if survival and procreation are relati... More..
Politics, News & Issues > US Economy Should the US adopt the Flat Tax Amendment?: 8 of 12
Here's a fun experiment: open two browser windows. In the first browser, look at 'Countries that have flat tax systems' in the 'flat tax' entry for Wikipedia. In the second browser, look at the 'Epidemiology' portion of the 'suicide' entry for Wikipedia. Compare Wikipedia's maps for countries that have flat tax and countries... More..
Society & Lifestyle > Social Values & Norms The erosion of moral values also erodes the strength of our society: 4 of 6
To answer this question, we need to first define what is moral. In adjective form, "moral" is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "concerned with the principles of right and wrong behaviour and the goodness or badness of human character, conforming to accepted standards of behaviour, [and/or] psychological rather tha... More..
Politics, News & Issues > Presidential Elections 2008 The flaws to be found in Ron Paul's policies: 2 of 3
Any attentive student of history will quickly realize that history is nothing more than a narrative describing an ongoing conflict between the haves and the have-nots. From our earliest civilizations to the present, the human story concerns the material wealth and physical and psychological well-being of individuals comprisi... More..