Thought Distillery

Today I started reading The Age of American Unreason by Susan Jacoby. Toward the end of the first chapter, I was struck by her quote of Bill Moyers, a journalist whom I hold in the highest regard. Jacoby uses Moyers to back her argument that a disturbing trend of anti-rationalism, partially fueled by religious fundamentalism, [...]

In an article discussing the dismall results of 11 state ballot initiatives to ban same sex marriage, I found the following quote of a quote to be quote-worthy:
Foreman said the outcome showed it is “profoundly wrong to put basic human rights up for a popular vote.” More than 200 years after the drafting of the [...]

In a prevous entry, I mentioned starting on the book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. After looking at fast food employment practices (no skills + low wages + high turnover = disposable employees), Mr. Schlosser then turned to the companies supplying the fast food restaurants. I guess it wasn’t surprising to learn that [...]

Sunday night, 10:20pm, I walk about downtown Corvallis along the riverfront. The air is still and cool with a light lingering mist. I relish each deep breath of timelessness. Not a single person is to be seen or heard. My light footsteps tap quietly on the wet sidewalk. Crickets chirp, the river flows… and yet [...]

After waiting in line for about a month at the library, I finally got my hands on “Fast Food Nation”. I’m about 3 chapters in and so far the history, background, and pop-culture defining elements of the fast food phenomenon has definitely been fascinating. However, the underlying business practices and social repercussions discussed thus far [...]

Today as I strolled through the grocery isles I couldn’t help but get pummeled right and left with all the whiz-bang new products proclaiming their “low-carb” healthfulness. Yeah its annoying, but I’m used to walking by whatever happens to be the latest fad anyway. However, as I turned down the candy isle to scope out [...]

In my perfect world, communication would be instant and effortless. Though we are approaching instant communication via some mediums, there is still quite a bit of effort to make it happen. In the case of Instant Messaging for example, look at all the complex infrastructure that has been developed over the last decade just to [...]