Globally Rational

You are browsing the archives of 2008 June.

//And the answer is Nelson Mandela.  Apparently, the US was against the anti-Apartheid movement because the South African white supremacists were our friends.  After it became apparent that South Africa’s racist philosophies were bad, the world came to accept Mandela as a hero… but we still never got around to taking Mandela off the US […]

Popularity: 24% [?]

//Back in February 2007, USA Today/Gallup asked Americans the following question:
“Between now and the 2008 political conventions, there will be discussion about the qualifications of presidential candidates — their education, age, religion, race, and so on. If your party nominated a […]

Popularity: 23% [?]

//We all complain about high gas prices… personally, I’m tired of seeing the complaints. Here’s why:

Prices aren’t determined by costs; they’re determined by supply and demand. Our demand for fuel is increasing (case in point: India/China) and the supply is decreasing. My only complaint is that the government wasn’t able to foster […]

Popularity: 35% [?]

//Paul Peterson wrote a great article on his blog a couple of days ago.  I won’t do him an injustice by just repeating the whole post here, so I’ll just link to it (click here) and give you an excerpt:
I mention all of this only because of the phrase “anti-christian propaganda”. Facts are not propaganda. […]

Popularity: 21% [?]

//As I’ve mentioned before, I really don’t mind sacrificing my privacy if it means that the government can keep better tabs on what everybody is doing (and use that information to catch criminals and terrorists).  It seems to me that people can get away with a lot of questionable acts with the excuse that it’s […]

Popularity: 21% [?]

//There’s a fact that I’ve always taken for granted; recently, I learned that it’s not common knowledge. It was always so obvious to me that I started to wonder why most people don’t know this.
Did you know that the Middle East is generally impressed with Western culture? People often think that the anti-American sentiment we […]

Popularity: 21% [?]

//Today’s LA Times has already started to speculate as to Tim Russert’s replacement after his tragic death yesterday. Their selections are all the obvious ones… it’s mostly just NBC’s top political men, like Chris Matthews and David Gregory.
With all due respect to Matthews and Gregory, I don’t think that either of them will ever […]

Popularity: 25% [?]

//Tim Russert, one of my favorite rational political inquisitors, died today at the age of 58. In his memory, I would like to devote today’s post only to his remembrance. I can’t say it any better than his colleagues at NBC, so I’ll just leave it up to them:
Popularity: 18% [?]Rate this: 3.2If […]

Popularity: 18% [?]

//So far, the American healthcare industry has been unnecessarily slow in joining the Information Age.  Although the excuse is usually the fact that they want to ensure safety and confidentiality of patient data, anybody who has ever worked in the industry knows that it’s far easier to misplace a paper file (thousands of which can […]

Popularity: 23% [?]

//I was browsing Fark.com today (as I often do) and noticed that they classified Pakistan’s recent increase in military spending in their “scary” category.  Personally, I don’t even see why that story was important enough to get noticed by Reuters, but apparently numbers scare people.
If you look at the actual story itself, you’ll see that […]

Popularity: 22% [?]