Coverage of the Beijing Olympics has a strangely ambivalent feel. On one hand, the media is busy drawing attention to China’s massive pollution problems, human rights violations, and architectural coverups of Beijing’s endearing everyday shabbiness. But the corporations that bring us all these messages, via the corporate-owned news media, are also furiously serving […]

A further thought on this discussion, before leaving town for a few days… on the question of what a greener, less war-framed and more honest future could be like:
When I was a kid, some of us would sometimes amuse ourselves on the playground by shutting our eyes and trying to walk straight. As for […]

On the orders of Gov. Paterson, New York State has a new policy: Any time a soldier from New York, or even serving with a New York-based unit, is killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, flags on state government buildings will be lowered to half-staff. This practice began last week to honor soldiers from […]

Poor William James Howard Kunstler. The way things are going, he’ll soon be out of business as America’s sole fiery Jeremiah of the peak oil apocalypse. This piece (hat tip to Sean) is a good read: Wake Up, America. We’re Driving Toward Disaster.
Kunstler stresses a need for honesty. Here are […]

Famous Architect Rem Koolhaas is disappointed with American cities:
“Don’t tell anyone… but the 20th-century city is over. It has nothing new to teach us anymore. Our job is simply to maintain it.”
I live in Old America — the Northeast, the Rust Belt — and in decades to come, the rest of America will also […]

The Department of H—— Security has agreed to let New York issue enhanced drivers’ licenses to New Yorkers who wish to cross the Canadian border without fear of their government not letting them back in. Plus, it gets you into Mexico and Bermuda. (I don’t know what this means for occasional visitor […]

Cookin’ in the ‘Cuse is celebrating a birthday. Happy bloggiversary to Syracuse’s leading food blog! Jennifer also posts about her busy schedule and quotes E.B. White:
If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the […]

U.S. Representative Peter King of Long Island is pushing a new meme: Native Americans in Upstate New York are in cahoots with radical Islamic terrorists and are using untaxed smuggled cigarettes to fund their plots. As reported in the Buffalo News, the evidence for this conclusion from King’s House H#^$&*#land Security Committee “study” […]

This is the best commentary I’ve read on the whole “small town America” brouhaha lately…
…Struggling towns are props, not issues. One side rushes to drape themselves in flags, guns and the kind of Norman Rockwell hagiography that is far removed from the 2008 reality of meth labs and foreclosure frontiers. The other side says religion […]

Includes a discussion about New York State’s prison system.