A nation of addicts

imagesThe 21st century cupcake is a thing of wonder: a modest base of sponge groaning under an indulgently thick layer of frosted sugar or buttercream.

Now Salon.com asserts that “It’s made to look like a miniature children’s birthday cake – and, indeed, birthdays are the perfect excuse to scurry down to the local boutique bakery for a big box of them. The retro charm of cupcakes helps suppress any anxieties you might have about sugar and fat. Your mother made them! Or so the advertising suggests. Perhaps your own mother didn’t actually bake cupcakes, but the cutesy pastel-colored icing implies that one bite will take you back to your childhood. This can’t possibly be junk food, can it?

“Now let’s consider another ubiquitous presence in modern life: The iPhone, which started out as a self-conscious statement of coolness but which, thanks to Apple’s marketing genius, has now become as commonplace as a set of car keys. Millions of people own iPhones, making use of hundreds of thousands of apps, whose functions range from GPS-assisted mapping to compulsively time-wasting computer games. Your iPhone does everything you could require of a mobile phone and more, so you really don’t need the upgraded model that Apple has just released … do you? Continue reading “A nation of addicts”

A boom market for assault rifles

imgres-1Now that the post-Newtown nation has suddenly woken up to the breakout popularity of the AR-15, a host of questions are being asked, especially about who is buying these rifles, and why. Why would normal, law-abiding Americans want to own a deadly weapon that was clearly designed for military use?

These somewhat unsettling questions are taken up in Danger Room: “Why are existing AR-15 owners buying as many of these rifles as they can get their hands on? Are these people Doomsday preppers? Militia types, arming for a second American Civil War? Or are they young military fantasists whose minds have been warped by way too much Call of Duty?

“In the wake of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, the AR-15 has gone from the most popular rifle in America to the most scrutinized and, in some quarters, vilified. Also known in its fully automatic, military incarnation as the M16, the rifle was racking up record sales in the years before Sandy Hook, but now, in the midst of a renewed effort to ban this weapon and others like it from civilian hands, the AR-15 market has gone nuclear, with some gun outlets rumored to have done three years’ worth of sales in the three weeks after Newtown.

“Preppers, militia types, and SEAL Team 6 wannabes are certainly represented in the AR-15′s customer base. But fringe groups don’t adequately explain the roughly 5 million “black rifles” (as fans of the gun tend to call it) that are now in the hands of the public. No, the real secret to the AR-15′s incredible success is that this rifle is the “personal computer” of the gun world.

“In the past two decades, the AR-15 has evolved into an open, modular gun platform that’s infinitely hackable and accessorizable. With only a few simple tools and no gunsmithing expertise, an AR-15 can be heavily modified, or even assembled from scratch, from widely available parts to suit the fancy and fantasy of each individual user. In this respect, the AR-15 is the world’s first “maker” gun, and this is why its appeal extends well beyond the military enthusiasts that many anti-gun types presume make up its core demographic.”

 

Full story at: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2013/02/ar-15/

Americans divided about corporations and government

Once again our friends at Gallup have confirmed that the U.S. population really can’t make up its mind. This time the popular polling organization reports that about equal numbers of people think that corporations and government are okay, with opinion dividing predictably along party lines. As Gallup states:

tragic-1-city-skyscrapers “Americans continue to be worried about the effects of big companies and big government, with 35% saying they are very or somewhat satisfied with the size and influence of major corporations, and 36% saying they are very or somewhat satisfied with the size and power of the federal government. Both of these levels of satisfaction are up slightly from the last two years, but significantly below satisfaction levels recorded in the early years of the last decade, when satisfaction with government was generally higher than satisfaction with major corporations.

“These findings are from Gallup’s Jan. 7-10, 2013, Mood of the Nation survey. Continue reading “Americans divided about corporations and government”

Better life for the kids? Who knows?

American polling is a funny business, especially at a time when that nation seems unable to make up its mind on just about anything.

Today the Gallup organization reported that Americans have no idea whether their children will be better off in the future or not. According to Gallup,

“Americans are evenly divided about whether it is likely (49%) or unlikely (50%) that the next generation of youth in the country will have a better life than their parents. That is a slightly more positive assessment than in early 2011, when the slight majority, 55%, thought it was unlikely the next generation would achieve this goal.imgres

“Still, views today remain depressed compared with 2008 Continue reading “Better life for the kids? Who knows?”

Intelligence community tries to predict what’s next

Spying is all about predictions: about knowing what someone else can or will do next, about thinking how to win.

At least that is how governments tend to think about spying. In this context it makes sense that the Obama administration would spend some time prognosticating. Turns out they spend billions to satisfy their curiosity, as the U.S. and many other countries have done for decades. Asia Times carries a story today about this curious and expensive enterprise, which begins with the paragraphs below:

“Think of it as a simple formula: if you’ve been hired (and paid handsomely) to protect what is, you’re going to be congenitally ill-equipped to imagine what might be.imgresAnd yet the urge not just to know the contours of the future but to plant the Stars and Stripes in that future has had the US Intelligence Community (IC) in its grip since the mid-1990s.

“That was the moment when it first occurred to some in Washington that US power might be capable of controlling just about everything worth the bother globally for, if not an eternity, then long enough to make the future American property. Continue reading “Intelligence community tries to predict what’s next”

U.S. claims “enormous” reductions in carbon emissions

At today’s United Nations Climate Change meeting in Doha, Qatar, American officials asserted the U.S. had made “enormous” advances that much of the world didn’t know about. As reported in The Guardian, American progress in climate change has resulted in part by the carbon reductions from its investments in the controversial practice of “fracking” for shale gas. As reported by Fiona Harvey,

“The claim came as nearly 200 governments gathered in Doha, Qatar, for two weeks of talks aimed at forging an agreement on the climate. Governments have until 2015 to draw up a binding treaty, the first since the 1997 Kyoto protocol, to cut greenhouse gas emissions and avoid dangerous global warming. Continue reading “U.S. claims “enormous” reductions in carbon emissions”

One Nation: Divided or United?

“We live in an era of democratic contradiction. As the Cold War recedes into history and the apparent triumph of liberal democracy spreads around the globethe domestic state of democracy within the United States remains in jeopardy,” writes David Trend in A Culture Divided: America’s Struggle for Unity. Echoing sentiments expressed in last night’s acceptance speech by Barak Obama, an excerpt from A Culture Divided follows below:

Rather than a nation where citizens feel empowered in their common governance, the U.S. has become a land of where growing numbers of citizens feel alienated from the democratic process. Voter turnout for the 2012 U.S. presidential election was nearly 20 percent less than in 2008. Massive anti-incumbency Continue reading “One Nation: Divided or United?”