A friend of mine, a teacher at a special-needs school, and her roommate are taking a stab at illiteracy by organizing a program to collect 15,000 books for a school in the Ethiopian village or Kersa Ilala. They've found someone to pay the shipping, but need a lot of books. I get the impression that...
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Today, video showing the gruesomely beheading of an American was posted on an al-Quaeda-linked website. The nominal justification for the murder was the abuses of prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison. Once again, terrorists have ceded the moral high ground by committing acts even worse than those they criticize other for.

The pathetic nature of...
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Yesterday, Israel assassinated one of the top leaders of Hamas. Hamas has promised to retaliate. If they do, Israel will probably retaliate. Then Hamas will retaliate, etc. ad nauseum. While I can't say that I think Israel has handled the situation with the Palestinians as well as they could have, the indiscriminate killing killings perpetrated...
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The current state of pornography on the internet

There is no reliable way for a website to be sure that they are not delivering content to someone to whom it is illegal to send it. Simply saying "you must be over 18 to access this site" is in no way a form of control lik...
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TV producers love to "push the envelope", and as a result, the moral quality of television programming has gone way down in my lifetime. There's not much outside of the News Hour with Jim Lehrer that isn't offensive these days. The "Hootergate" incident during the Super Bowl, if it was intentional (which wouldn't surprise the...
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I read an article today, 'Killer Culture': A call to the churches, that talked about the corporate influence of the media in our culture. It's ironic that a lot of the people who are so vocal in their condemnation of corporate influence in politics (which I'm not condoning--just making a point) have been totally snowed...
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I had another idea for a TV show, inspired by the fact that people who do dumb things (think Monica Lewinsky, for example) end up benefiting from the publicity the stupidity garners. "Milosevic in the Morning" would a morning talk show hosted by Slobodan Milosevic. He would discuss world news with other deposed tyrants, demonstrate...
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Watching King of the Jungle tonight, I had an arc for a reality show that audiences would love. The show would start with, for example, fifteen competitors and fourteen judges. At the end of each show, the judges would kick somebody off. After each show, the audience would go online to vote one of the...
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Joe Lieberman is talking on TV today about taxes, among other things. One comment he made, which always really bugs me was something about taking back the tax break that was given to the richest people. I suspect that we'll hear a lot of democrats slamming Bush for giving a tax break to the people...
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I was thinking about the phrase "Don't knock it till you try it", and how it doesn't apply in some situations. For example, Willy is doing drugs, and Joe tells him he's stupid to do so. Willy says "don't knock it till you try it." Yeah, obviously Willy's an idiot, but he may not think...
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