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Sustainable Democracy

Because we can, because we care

Actual Politics – A New Political HeavyweightSeptember 28

First, for full disclosure, I was alerted to this site by ReviewMe.  Regardless of that, Actual Politics is an excellent site.

The site primarily gets content from user submissions; from what I can gather they are particularly interested in freelance writers (aka real freelancers and bloggers that do more than journaling).  Like many sites that use this method for content the goal is to give writers exposure to a wider audience, and, in this case, directly pay for articles.  This puts them several cuts above other sites that try to generate free content from naive users.

But enough of how they get content, more about the actual content.

Actual Politics has material for every flavor of reader, from the radical to the reactionary.  However, they site owners do not tell you what political spectrum an article belongs to, they take much of the spin out by giving readers the ability to rate articles on three levels.

You rate spin, quality, and how much you agree.  This three way rating system looks great to me, by making the three values independent you can et interesting sets of ratings, like a liberal user labeling an article as highly conservative, high quality, but not agreeing with the points made.

The front page of the site also gives you good options to quickly sort through the articles.  You can view new content, most liberal, most objective, most conservative, and also a featured blog.

Response to “Rich” at A Parallax ViewAugust 19

This post is a response to “Rich” at A Parallax View written by one of my good friends.

If you haven’t read “Moral Politics” yet. Do so immediately. Well worth the time and some of the high level philosophy better covered by Lakoff’s much longer works.

The book discusses the language and metaphor used by each political party. The more interesting part is that it is written by a very liberal professor who has to talk quite a bit about why conservatives win when it comes to talking and gaining the confidence of people.

When McCain talks about being rich, he says:

I think that rich is — should be defined by a home, a good job and education and the ability to hand to our children a more prosperous and safer world than the one that we inherited.

This is a powerful metaphor. We get warm fuzzy images of families and good old fashioned values. Not only that, but every time any republican opens their mouth on this issue, a very similar set of words comes out. They have clearly defined what they want people to think about these topics.

The line from Obama that you quoted (from some other news source) is:

Obama added that those making more than $250,000 a year are in th

Today is for TrinityJuly 16

Today marks the 53rd Anniversary of the Trinity test. The very event that launched us into a new era of military destruction and civilian power. More than any previous military invention, this may have changed the direction of the world.

Even though it has been used only twice in war, it has shaped almost every facet of the world. The resulting arms race managed to level the Soviet Union as costs simply outpaced production. The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction has both lead to much hostility (enforced non-proliferation) and enduring peace between the super powers.

It may also be the only power source that we feel so ambivalent toward. We want cheap clean energy, yet we run from nuclear power and rail against it because of a single dramatic accident. There have been other accidents, but only Chernobyl did any sort of damage; which was cataclysmic. However, we flock to oil and coal despite the fact that a change in climate could be much more devastating (we run from solar on a cost basis).

 

The image above is Nagasaki at the moment of the blast. The pure destructive force of nuclear weapons will always be the enduring impression we have of this technology.

Good, bad, or indifferent. This is the day that marked our entrance into the Nuclear Age.

Leave of AbsenceJune 26

Yes, it has been awhile since I have posted anything new, especially anything new within the bounds of what this blog should represent.

Right now I am primarily working on Darkside Dreamland, my personal blog and soapbox for anything I want. I’ve been trying to get back to having that site as a place that actually does have regular posts that can save the wide variety of ideas that bounce through my head.

So please be patient here. I am trying to get back to writing about sustainable systems and ideas, but currently I have a few opinions and sets of information that conflict and make it rather hard to post without feeling a bit like I want to rant back at myself.

Cleaning Out UsersJune 9

Recently there have been a number of new user registrations. However, the vast majority are from addresses that are almost certainly bot generated. This being the case, it has been time to clean out the user list.

Any user that shows as having zero comments will be deleted by the end of the week.

So if you happen to be a real person, have registered as a user, and have not commented please either leave a message here or on any other post. Luckily, due to the magic of WP, you don’t have to register to comment. And most of you who do comment are, in fact, not registered. So I predict business will continue exactly as normal!