Globally Rational

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We hear politicians talk a lot about “a lady I met who couldn’t afford to pay for xxx” or “a man in Ohio who lost his job”.  I’ll accept that unemployment rates are a little bit higher than last year, but we can find stories like that at any time, even if the economy is […]

Popularity: 43% [?]

We hear a lot of propaganda aimed at convincing the American people that Arabs are evil, the war is justified, and America is the best thing that ever happened to the world. Some people believe it all, and some people (i.e. the people who are probably reading this) believe none of it… but did you […]

Popularity: 43% [?]

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: 41% [?]

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: 40% [?]

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: 41% [?]

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: 49% [?]

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: 40% [?]

I saw a YouTube video today regarding the war in Iraq (created by a Ron Paul supporter):

The Jed Report correctly describes this video as potentially “brutal” and “devastating” to John McCain.  What I think is interesting is that, despite the fact that this information has all been in the public domain for months, it doesn’t […]

Popularity: 41% [?]

I’ve always wondered why people stay in a city that they hate.  I’ve met plenty of people in Boston or St. Louis or Columbia (Missouri) who complain about the weather or the costs or the people.  Why not just move to whatever place fits your lifestyle best?
This was a major part of my decision to […]

Popularity: 43% [?]

Yesterday, I outlined the best possible sequence of events that could follow from Israel’s recent prisoner exchange with Hezbollah. The best-case scenario required some forward thinking from the educated part of the population, which would (hopefully) eventually start to promote tolerance. However, here is what will happen if even the educated people let […]

Popularity: 50% [?]