the faces that are not bases We gave him the White House based on the same cred fixing war on drugs ameicans think afghanistan people are illiterate i Americans geography afghanistan is australia americans have problems with geography Do Americans have terrible map skills geagraphy problem for americans half of americans can't find themselves on a map the difference between sunni and shan hai Image Search beating corruption 5 influential REPUBLICANS Image Search Image Search courtesy of the red white and blue articles Image Search Image Search

Decide Based On Credentials... Not Faces Back in February 2007, USA Today/Gallup asked Americans the following question: "Between now and the 2008 political conventions, there will be discussion about the qualifications of presidential candidates -- their education, age, religion... ( added 1 year 151 days ago.)

The Supreme Court has “legacies?” I saw an article today in USA Today suggesting that the legacy of Sandra Day O'Connor, America's first female Supreme Court justice, has been fading since she retired in January 2006 (after a tenure of over two decades). The article mentions... ( added 1 year 163 days ago.)

Howard Dean: A Window into Obama's Future It's common for a Presidential nominee to replace the chair of his party with one of his own people. Although Barack Obama's recent decision to keep Howard Dean as the DNC chair was minor news at best, I think it's much more important than the... ( added 1 year 168 days ago.)

Why do we care? There are plenty of social issues that are important in politics these days. Everybody seems to be highly concerned with what everybody else is doing. With these issues, I like to ask myself "is it really worth the effort to oppose an issue... ( added 1 year 169 days ago.)

Fixing Mistakes: The Failing War on Drugs "Fixing Mistakes" will be a new series where I talk about how our society can learn from its mistakes and correct its own problems... but we can only do it if we're willing to think outside the box. We have spent countless amounts of money... ( added 1 year 169 days ago.)

Encouraging Isolationism: Americans and Geography Plenty of us have heard that over 60% of Americans aged 18-24 couldn't find Iraq on a map of the Middle East (yes, a map of the Middle East not even a map of the world) in a 2006 survey (that's three years after the start of the war). I just... ( added 1 year 172 days ago.)

English Around the World I read a great article today in which a bunch of experts gather together to talk about what globalization will do to world languages . Here are some excerpts, in case you don't want to read the whole thing. Of course, my comments are at the... ( added 1 year 175 days ago.)

Nominal Breakthroughs: Beating corruption This is the first post in the "Nominal Breakthroughs" series, which will talk about news that is farcically touted as groundbreaking. The fight against political corruption is one of the most important tasks confronting many of... ( added 1 year 191 days ago.)

Digital Dogtags 2: Yes, bartender, I’m 21 You can count on the Japanese to top the British GPS-based radio show that I wrote about in the first installment of "Digital Dogtags". The Tokyo-based Fujitaka Company is seeking approval for a new system which will determine a person's age... ( added 1 year 191 days ago.)

And the Most Influential Republican Is... Not Bush or McCain (not by a longshot), but Rush Limbaugh. Recently, 235 right-leaning bloggers voted on the 25 most influential conservatives in US politics. The rankings are interesting: #25) Mark Levin: 6 votes #21) Hugh Hewitt: 7 #21)... ( added 1 year 195 days ago.)

Worst job in the world: Al-Qaeda leader Many of my friends are young/uneducated enough so that they still work (miserably) at fast food restaurants or other low-paying unrewarding locations. But today, after reading that yet another top-ranking al Qaeda official has been arrested... ( added 1 year 196 days ago.)

Examining Causality: Why Are Conservatives Happier Than Liberals? I recently read (in The Economist ) about a study showing that over the course of the last 30 years, conservatives have consistently claimed to be "very happy" more often than liberals. Many people try to use this data to say that conservatism... ( added 1 year 203 days ago.)

How NOT to treat your enemies Today, Israeli forces attacked a Hamas leader's house and killed his 14-year old daughter, among other civilians. This is a few days after Hamas offered Israel a 6-month cease-fire, which Israel is planning on rejecting because they... ( added 1 year 204 days ago.)

On the Brink of a Malthusian Catastrophe About 200 years ago, the mathematician Thomas Robert Malthus famously wrote an equation predicting that the human population would soon reach the planet's ecological carrying capacity, causing many of us to die off because of the lack of food and... ( added 1 year 204 days ago.)

4 Ways To Foster Scientific Innovation Yesterday, I wrote about how we're incentivizing scientists to stop innovating. In that post, I promised to suggest some solutions today. Here are some things we can do to foster increased scientific innovation: We should require... ( added 1 year 204 days ago.)

The American Dream The spirit of the American Dream is dying and I think we should save it maybe even try to spread it around the world (read the first paragraph of this article if you don't know what the American Dream is). The traditional American success... ( added 1 year 208 days ago.)

Bittergate: Taking Politics Out of Context For those of you who haven't been following the US election, Obama recently said the following ( click here for the full transcript); some are calling it "Bittergate": The truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we... ( added 1 year 208 days ago.)

Parsing a Country Song - “Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue” #1 I often hear country music songs that try to convince people to support certain political issues without actually presenting any real evidence. Their purpose is just to appeal to your emotions. Today I present the first two stanzas from Toby... ( added 1 year 208 days ago.)

Extremism is not limited to Islam I came across an interesting article today; you should check it out before you read this post. People often tell me that Muslims deserve the treatment they get because we tend to produce more extremists than other religions. Let's... ( added 1 year 208 days ago.)

Diseases Can't Go On Strike; Why Can Doctors? Anybody familiar with the US medical system would completely support New Zealand's junior doctors in their oncoming strike . After all, American resident physicians (our counterpart to the Australian "junior doctor") are overworked (recently, the... ( added 1 year 208 days ago.)

Immigration - the Key To Economic Success? Which comes first in a country: the immigrants or the economic success? It's like the chicken-and-egg paradox. If there was no promise of success, then immigrants wouldn't come; meanwhile, if there were no immigrants, there wouldn't be... ( added 1 year 208 days ago.)