Last night, I attended a presentation looking at trends in world population since biologist Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb in 1968, a best-selling
The case for closing our overseas military bases
The most popular post, over the years, on Occasional Planet is: “Military Mystery: how many bases does the US have, anyway?” American University anthropology
Why journalists engage in so many false equivalencies
For some time, we have been examining why Republicans look at things so differently from Democrats. Much has been written about the Republican brain
Screw the poor: Not expanding Medicaid cost red states $2 billion in 2015
Squandering $2 billion dollars in essentially free money is not what anyone would call “fiscal conservatism.” But that’s exactly what the phony fiscal conservatives
Noam Chomsky: On capitalism and why electing Bernie isn’t enough
In a recent interview in Jacobin, linguist, philosopher, and political activist Noam Chomsky gave an interesting answer to a question about the American capitalist system. He basically said
“Fallout” [the game] and fallout [the nuclear reality]
“If I had foreseen Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I would have torn up my formula in 1905.” –Albert Einstein. Next month, “Fallout 4,” a highly-anticipated
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs vs. the Republican pyramid of political values
You may have heard of Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs. He cites five levels of growth, beginning with what a newborn infant needs
America’s “Brag-osphere” and “Beg-osphere”
The lack of a comprehensive, government-provided safety net in America means that non-profits have to resort to bragging and begging to provide many basic
Bernie vs. Hillary
We’ve all heard plenty from the TV pundits about what happened at the first Democratic primary debate in October 2015. For what it’s worth,
The sexual politics of meat
According to Carol Adams, the author of The Sexual Politics of Meat, “Meat is a symbol for patriarchal control.” Meat has been historically associated