Proud and Atheist

By

Brittany EG

http://foreverliberal.tumblr.com/

People feel pressured to be religious. When they question God, His "plan", or the Bible, they are told that they are ungodly, impious, and wrong.

Living in Texas, I am bombarded by religion wherever I go. It is not uncommon to see bedazzled crosses hanging in shop windows with jewelry adorned with engraved scripture underneath.

What really happened that day

By

Joe Chiarenzelli

http://themediansib.com/category/thats-my-life/photography/

If there is one defining moment in my schooling, not specifically formal schooling, but schooling in life, it would have to be in my first year at Clarkson University. I had graduated a naïve junior from high school, a year before my peers, and entered into college a year early. Before going to Clarkson I had never touched a drop of booze, a puff of smoke, or, more importantly, a hit of acid. Some may find my quick descent into the debauchery of something akin to Thompson’s Gonzo alarming, but I had always had the Gonzo in me, and I only need a push in the right direction to send me into pyschedelia. 

The Art of Synthesis

The purpose of journalism

By

Sean Ewart

It is incredible how much harder synthesizing a cohesive narrative covering the events of reporting is than actually reporting. Beginning an article about another self-aggrandizing political event is about as easy as reading a press release; as if the political circus that we cover has gone to great lengths to be “press presentable.” Each event is handed to us as an entity unto itself and entirely removed from all else that is. Senator so-and-so's newest bill is toted out as the defining moment of whatever cause the Senator happens to be championing for that luncheon. Indeed the nature of the news seems to be mostly a regurgitation of rehearsed and fine tuned rhetorical devices designed for the world which observes via catch-phrases and slogans. Synthesizing just doesn't appear in my job description.

A Failure to Occupy

By

Sean Ewart

The rhetorically retrograde movement known collectively as “Occupy” has failed. Now an unorganized and disconnected system of cells across the United States, it has succumbed both to inclement weather and to the ineptitude of the multitude. What is remarkable, and indeed shameful, is its staying power; as if the Left is so desperate for a movement that it will cling to whatever rag-tag collection of trust-funded college students and schizophrenic anarcho-socialists that come its way. After the so-called “Day of Rage” on September 17, 2011, parks from New York to L.A. were held hostage to press a message which was not just lacking in definition, but somehow self-righteously emboldened by that fact. It should be clear, however, that the failure to Occupy is not a failure of the Left, but the defeat of the degenerate refuse of the Left – that mass of philosophical filth which views fighting for internet freedom in the same light as freeing the slaves. We can do better.

Monied Interests

Why the Democratic and Republican Parties are Obsolete 

By

Jacob Sherretts

The current party system in the United States is an insult to the idea of democracy. Voting with the Democratic or Republican parties only gives the illusion of choice. Your true interests and desires held when voting for a candidate is seldom ever met. In the current political landscape, politicians are extremely polarized. While their disagreements do reflect conflict between constituent factions within the United States, the true interests of those constituents are not being met. It should also be noted that the political differences between these factions may not be as large as they are perceived. The current political system must be changed in order to obtain candidate choices that will accurately reflect the interests of the voters.

A Libertarian on Linux

By

Chris Hall

So be it. I dumped Steve Jobs from my computer. I have used Apple computers since elementary school, and have owned the same crusty black MacBook for the last four years. Today, I erased the partitions on “Macintosh HD,” reformatted them for the MBR partition table, and installed Linux Mint onto all 160 GB of the cranky old disk. My computer now displays all directories in the root file-system, runs faster and cleaner than it ever has, and is ready to install the 50,000+ software packages that are available specifically for this version of Linux. Why do I care so much about the operating on my computer? Am I just a victim of upgrade fever? Nay. I am not revolting against the brilliant manifestations Apple computer has brought to humble UNIX code (as Linux and Mac-OS X share the same UNIX foundation), I am revolting against what is outside the binary.

Adapting to Climate Change

Solving the Environmental Prisoner's Dilemma

By

Sean Ewart

The question of what is or is not natural to humanity is, bluntly, ridiculous. Are we not in our natural environment? Even synthetics are, by necessity, made up of components which we find in nature. To say, as it has often been posited, that it is unnatural for humans to live in cities or drive cars is purely fallacious. Do beavers cease to exist in their natural environment the moment they fell a tree or change the course of a river? Is that not the nature of beavers? The logic is explicit. Yet, unlike beavers, humanity is capable of a more profound impact on the environment. We not only down trees, we demolish forests; we not only stop up streams, we carve canals through continents. Humans are special, perhaps uniquely so, in our scale of operation. We are clearly the first species on planet Earth capable of destroying her – and as the cliché goes: with great power, comes great responsibility.

The Technological Singularity and Ray Kurzweil

Can Technology Ameliorate Environmental Damage?

By

Joe Chiarenzelli

Introduction

Political science is inherently a multivalent field and, as such, requires a great degree of care to analyze and promote the correct way to go about things. In a human society there are intrinsically more interactions than the number of people present in the system and, because of this, as societies get larger they become more and more complex.¹