Nile Stanton In a thought-provoking article by Dominic Johnson, Richard Wrangham, and Stephen Rosen of Harvard, the authors observe that “Human decision-making has been shown to violate rational choice theory in a variety of contexts….” “[S]ome of the most intriguing and important examples concern how people perceive and react to risk. Most notably, people appear…
Intro by Stuart Lyle It is not hard to spot creeping authoritarianism in the US. The Snowden document cache makes clear that the government has a voracious appetite for data, our data: the digital traces we leave whenever we are online. It is no longer an unsubstantiated suspicion. The UN has documented and ranked the…
W.J. Astore A century ago, the USA was a dynamic, forward-looking, freedom-espousing country that was focused on science and technology and its practical applications, as represented by Thomas Edison and Henry Ford. We were about to reelect a president, Woodrow Wilson, precisely because he had kept the country out of World War I. With the exception of…
b. traven I look at the “The Contrary Perspective” as a community of citizens interested in challenging the accepted views of our society, a community interested in seeking different or contrary views. But what if what you see (or think you saw) is so out of your experience of the physical and social world you…
W.J. Astore A reader wrote to me this morning about Donald Trump and American fascism. Is Trump, with his anti-immigrant posturing and his generally bombastic demeanor, tapping into a “fascist spring” in America? The question seems unduly alarming as well as absurd. But let’s pause for a moment. I recently saw on TV the results…
W.J. Astore During the Roman Empire, chariot races and gladiatorial games served to entertain the people. The U.S. empire’s equivalent, of course, is NASCAR and the NFL. Serve up some bread to go with the circuses and you have a surefire way to keep most people satisfied and distracted. That’s true enough, but let’s dig…
Eric Frith (This article originally appeared at Tropics of Meta and is used with the kind permission of the author.) The Greek sovereign debt crisis reached a climax early this week when, in an impromptu popular referendum, Greeks overwhelmingly rejected the terms of the bailout package offered by Eurozone leaders and the troika (the European…
W.J. Astore “Whoever controls the media, controls the mind,” Jim Morrison said, and this is certainly true in America. Consider the lead stories over the July 4th weekend. The first was the threat of terror attacks against America. We were told that law enforcement officials were “in no mood for a national party” — that the…
W.J. Astore Many people associate the Confederate flag (the “stars and bars”) with the South and the U.S. Civil War (Whoops — I mean “The War of Northern Aggression”). For some people, it’s been a more or less vague expression of Southern heritage, or a symbol of rebellion, a sort of redneck “good ol’ boy”…
W.J. Astore The American people are being kept divided, distracted, and downtrodden. Divisions are usually based on race and class. Racial tensions and discrimination exist, of course, but they are also exploited to divide people. Just look at the current debate on the Confederate flag flying in Charleston, South Carolina, with Republican presidential candidates refusing…
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