The Righteous Inefficiency of Occupy Wall Street

The live stream of the Wall Street occupation in NYC’s Zuccotti Park is a great glimpse into what happens when a protest is called without a purpose. At 8 pm, the group gathered into a “General Assembly” to decide a …

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Thoreau’s Fishing Philosophy

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A quote attributed to Henry David Thoreau suggests that when people fish, they are not really looking for fish. What does this mean?

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Particular Instructive Revelations

Clifford Geertz writes in The Interpretation of Cultures that, “It may be in the cultural particularities of people – in their oddities – that some of the most instructive revelations of what it is to be generically human are to …

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How To Make Tofu Yummy Instead Of Disgusting

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No one wants to sit down at the dinner table with a saint, or even worse, a guru. People want to share pleasure as they eat. If vegetarian food can’t elicit eager hunger, it won’t matter how ethically made it is.

Posted in Ethics, Irregular Ideas | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Senior And Disabled African-Americans Will Riot Without Social Security?!?

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The man at the picnic table was suggesting that old people, children, widows, and people in wheelchairs would come together to commit acts of mass violence in the streets, because they didn’t get a single round of Social Security checks on time. Can anyone explain to me how such a riot would work?

Posted in Economy, Irregular Ideas | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Do you know any liberals who promote postponing literacy?

In his 194th Way to Drive a Liberal Crazy, conservative self-styled gadfly James Delingpole accuses liberals of being against reading: 194. Teach your kids to read at a young age using the “synthetic phonics” method. This annoys liberal teachers on …

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If you’ve done nothing wrong, why aren’t you changing your clothes in public?

At Left is Not a Four Letter Word, Damen reacts against that old line, “If you’ve done nothing wrong, you’ve got nothing to hide”: This is a phrase that has irritated the holy shit out of me for a very, …

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Vampire Slayers Against Michele Bachmann

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Think of it, now. Can you recall ever having seen Michele Bachmann appear in front of a mirror? It’s time that those Americans who suspect the terrible truth speak the unspeakable aloud: Michele Bachmann may be a vampire.

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What Makes Women’s Clothes At Macy’s Tribal?

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Tribal Revival is a cultural reaction of brief peaks of individualism amid a broader cultural surge that is almost completely mass produced. You can’t buy that at Macy’s.

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Krampus Challenges Santorum To Get Tough For The Next Generation

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If America’s youth get unruly, Krampus will throw the wicked among them into icy rivers until they drown, with their spirits descending to Hell where they will suffer eternal torment for their disobedience. Is Rick Santorum ready to do that?

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The More You Learn to Do, the Less You Feel You Know How to Do

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This morning, I was struck by a figure from an article by Roberta Spalter-Roth, Mary Scheuer Senter, Pamela Stone, and Michael Wood. Their Figure 2 shares results from a survey of graduates from BA, MA and PhD programs in sociology; …

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How to Exasperate a Liberal #111: Whine about “Political Correctness”

We receive a fair amount of correspondence at Irregular Times, and one of our most frequent correspondents is Tony Caputo. On May 20, Caputo writes: “Political Correctness” If you ask me, “Political Correctness” is the Lying Liberal Democrats and Lying …

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Moving Plants Without Wisdom

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By definition, plants aren’t supposed to move very well, if at all. So, what does a botanical kinetics lotion do? Make you feel woody and creaky?

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Information Explosion: Expired, Resurrected

Prof. Latanya Sweeney of Carnegie Mellon University has written a chapter for the book Confidentiality, Disclosure, and Data Access entitled “Information Explosion”, in which she characterizes the amount of information made available on people and the increase in the amount …

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Does James Delingpole Read Himself?

Conservative author James Delingpole’s 79th out of 365 Ways to Drive a Liberal Crazy is to point out how annoyingly and inappropriately judgmental liberals are: #79: Quote P. J. O’Rourke: “The principal feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly …

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Gasoline’s Virtual Reality

Do you remember how much we wanted relief from the Deepwater Horizon disaster? It was a like a nightmare, except we had been woken up, after generations of drifting off to sleep. We had a choice of the kind of relief we would seek – we could remain awake, and attempt to shake off the nightmare of our oily virtual reality, getting our groggy limbs to move again. The alternative was that we could heal the rift in our virtual reality, so that we could re-enter our collective state of fantasy.

Posted in Economy, Environment, Irregular Ideas | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Krampus Dances Through Wisconsin Worker Protests

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Krampus has yet to define his presidential campaign platform. Yet, with his involvement in the Wisconsin protests, we can see that Krampus is opposed to the effort to do away with workers’ right to collective bargaining.

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Conspiracy Theory Friday Meme

How do these facts fit together?

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