Mad Men Season 5 Episode 7: At The Codfish Ball

 Joe Chiarenzelli is an editor at The Gadfly Press and wishes he was Don Draper.

                 Mandy Lafond is a soon-to-be graduate of St. Lawrence University, studying philosophy with a minor in Asian studies.  She’s currently writing a thesis on postmodernist film theory and Jean Baudrillard. In her spare time she likes philosophizing, playing with her pet rabbit and reading Wikipedia for fun.

The Atheist Revolution

 By

Sean Ewart

While I cannot remember the exact moment, I remember well the feeling I experienced when I first thought to myself: I am comfortable with the idea there is no god. The revelation that I could, after wrestling for years with the overwhelming evidence that my conception of a higher power was at best a fantasy, be at peace with the idea of a universe without god was an immense relief. No more cognitive dissonance. Gone were the days of attempting to reconcile the observable world with a book written by men who were unaware, even, of the Americas.

Clarifying Cosmetic Psychopharmacology Part 5

This is the third of a multiple part series exploring Cosmetic Psychopharmacology. It includes the text of Joe's thesis and will culminate in a reanalysis and break down of the piece. Read Part One Here  Part Two Here,.Part Three Here Part Four Here      

By
Joe Chiarenzelli

Curing Cognitive Dissonance: The Catholic Church Demands Obedience From Women Religious

By

Sean Ewart

Pope Benedict XVI

The clear disconnect between the Vatican, that ancient house of credulity with a remarkably bloody past, and its billion global lay members is, like the protestant reformation before it, telling of the future of religious dogma in general. Just look at the number of Catholic women in the United States using contraception. Only two percent of American Catholic women use “natural family planning,” the rest opting for means which are strictly forbidden by the Church. Many of these women claim to be “good Catholics” who are following their conscience. But if following your conscience makes you a good Catholic, than what is the Church for? What purpose does it serve?

Mad Men Season 5 Episode 6: Far Away Places

 Joe Chiarenzelli is an editor at The Gadfly Press and wishes he was Don Draper.

                 Mandy Lafond is a soon-to-be graduate of St. Lawrence University, studying philosophy with a minor in Asian studies.  She’s currently writing a thesis on postmodernist film theory and Jean Baudrillard. In her spare time she likes philosophizing, playing with her pet rabbit and reading Wikipedia for fun.

Q&A with Tom King, President of the NYS Rifle and Pistol Association, NRA Affiliate

Tom King, President of the NYS Rifle and Pistol Association, the National Rifle Association Affiliate in New York State

Speaking about Obama, Romney, Stand Your Ground Laws, Trayvon Martin, and Microstamping.

Interview by

Sean Ewart

Tom King

The Gadfly Press: You were at the National Rifle Association conference [held in St. Louis March 13 – 15], so just tell me a little bit about the national sentiment revolving around guns, gun ownership, and the protection of gun rights.

Tom King: Well there were 74,380 people that attended the annual NRA meeting in St. Louis. I don't think that there is a bigger annual meeting or show for a not-for-profit group in the United States. National sentiment is, if you look at the USA poll, if you look at any of the Zogby polls, a vast majority of the people in the United States support the individual ownership of guns.

The Animal in Man

 By

Sean Ewart

If a human being landed on an alien world, could the alien population have a reasonable expectation of how the human in question would behave? Would it be reasonable for them to assume that the human is a social creature? Is the human going to react violently when threatened? Will it be curious about its surroundings?

The answer to these questions are revealing, and, as I told a friend recently over a cheap beer at a cheap bar, are indicative of the real meaning of the term “free will.” We could almost ask, with some semblance of seriousness, whether the alien population would be safe to assume that the human would believe himself to be in possession of free will – unbounded potential for self determined action. And they could, I believe, assume this, all the while preparing for a known range of probable actions. They could, for instance, observe that the human is male, and take the proper precautions against what is likely to be a human prone to physical expressions of anger.

Am I doing it again?

By

Allie Lane

Yesterday, my size six jeans felt a little loose and I thought, “Am I doing it again?”

It started off, innocently enough, with nutrition. The head track coach had all us girls sitting on the grainy locker room floor on a drab afternoon in early March for his yearly lecture. Our bodies were the vehicles of our sport, he said. We had no balls or nets or sticks, only ourselves. Maximizing race potential was about the right fuel; he used the metaphor of gunking up a high performance engine with cheap gasoline to describe junk food. It was my junior year and I’d come off of my first successful indoor track season. More than anything I wanted the improvement to continue, to finally harness that potential all the coaching staff seemed sure I had, so when Coach V. talked about the “junk food junkies” I assumed he was talking to me. In retrospect it was probably directed at those girls—mostly those freshmen who looked like they were made out of matchsticks—who hated school lunch and opted for pop tarts of pizza pretzels from the school store, not me who packed a parent approved lunchbox and would sneak a couple store bought cookies before dinner or eat cheezits while I played Risk with my brother and his friends on the weekends. That’s it, I thought, those foods are reasons I haven’t had a breakthrough race yet.

Politics and a Christian Worldview Can Mix

Summit Ministries’ Dr. Jeff Myers Dispels Myths About Christianity, Faith, Politics and Government

** Editor's note: This is part of a press release The Gadfly Press obtained and felt should be read by a larger audience. The Gadfly Press will attempt to follow up with Dr. Jeff Myers on the issues raised in this release. We DO NOT endorse the following manuscript; we are publishing it for its instructive and informative value.** 

Since 1962 Summit has been the quiet leader in preparing young adults to champion a Christian worldview. Christian leaders such as Dr. James Dobson and Josh McDowell have trusted Summit to help train their own children to think and act from a Christian worldview. Influencers like Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann, pro-life activist Lila Rose and author Joshua Harris are just a few of those who have attended Summit ’s training courses and have utilized their education to produce life-changing results across the U.S. Summit has produced books and worldview training materials that are widely used in Christian day schools, churches and by homeschool families. These resources include Noebel’s text Understanding the Times, which has become the best-selling worldview text of all time.

It’s been said that religion and politics are the two topics that should never be discussed in polite company. So what happens if we talk about religion and politics together? Summit Ministries President Dr. Jeff Myers says that is exactly what the rising generation of Christians – in its desire for practical ways to express faith – hopes we will do.

Mad Men Season 5 Episode 5: Signal 30

 Joe Chiarenzelli is an editor at The Gadfly Press and wishes he was Don Draper.

                 Mandy Lafond is a soon-to-be graduate of St. Lawrence University, studying philosophy with a minor in Asian studies.  She’s currently writing a thesis on postmodernist film theory and Jean Baudrillard. In her spare time she likes philosophizing, playing with her pet rabbit and reading Wikipedia for fun.

Ann Romney is Not an Economist

 By

Edgar S. Penn

Hillary Rosen, a CNN political contributor and Democratic strategist, unleashed a firestorm of ill-will after the following statement on Anderson Cooper 360:

What you have is Mitt Romney running around the country saying, well, you know, my wife tells me that what women really care about are economic issues, and when I listen to my wife, that's what I am hearing.  Guess what?  His wife has actually never worked a day in her life.

She's never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and how do we worry - and why we worry about their future.

Ann Romney immediately sprung into action and sent her first ever tweet (holy shit!):

I made a choice to stay home and raise five boys. Believe me, it was hard work.

Then the Obama campaign followed suit and distance itself from Rosen’s comment with Obama himself advising that a candidate’s wife is not a fair target.

Crossing the street: the politics of race, class, and hoodies

By

Sean Ewart

Trayvon Martin

We’ve gotten used to the refrain (often repeated by shrugging and half-apologetic white people), “when I see a black man, at night, wearing a hoodie, I cross the street.” It is nearly always said as a way to acknowledge that there is a race problem in America, that there is inequality, but that the person speaking is unable to fix the problem. I can think of no other word to describe this phenomenon, this lackluster approach to facing up to racism in America, than “bullshit!”  

What Golf Taught me About Being a Woman in America

By

Allie Lane

I have to admit, I never thought I would learn anything from watching golf. In fact, I’ve spent most of my life considering the time I’ve spent watching PGA events with my Dad as minutes and hours I’ll just never get back. This weekend, though, I learned something from golf, and it was nothing good. The Masters was on; the top men of the golf world were teeing off under the Georgia sun and everything was green. Panoramic shots of the verdant loveliness played behind the CBS Sports theme as it was announced that the 76^th Annual Masters was sponsored by IBM among other companies. This just washed over me. I’m an American kid who’s used to athletics being fused with big business.

Mad Men Season 5 Episode 4: Mystery Date

 Joe Chiarenzelli is an editor at The Gadfly Press and wishes he was Don Draper.

                 Mandy Lafond is a soon-to-be graduate of St. Lawrence University, studying philosophy with a minor in Asian studies.  She’s currently writing a thesis on postmodernist film theory and Jean Baudrillard. In her spare time she likes philosophizing, playing with her pet rabbit and reading Wikipedia for fun.

Iran and Israel: the historical tinderbox

By

Ruhi al-Ahmed

             

We hear so much about the Iranian-Israeli conflict yet there is barely any elucidation presented in the media. The struggle and obstacles born within both Israel and Iran are very intangible and abstruse. This controversial subject has roots deep into the past that must be elaborated upon. It also has cultural and religious contexts that should be magnified.

Clarifying Cosmetic Psychopharmacology Part 4

This is the third of a multiple part series exploring Cosmetic Psychopharmacology. It includes the text of Joe's thesis and will culminate in a reanalysis and break down of the piece. Read Part One Here  Part Two Here,.Part Three Here Part Five Here

By
Joe Chiarenzelli

Mad Men Season 5 Episode 3: Tea Leaves

 Joe Chiarenzelli is an editor at The Gadfly Press and wishes he was Don Draper.

 Mandy Lafond is a soon-to-be graduate of St. Lawrence University, studying philosophy with a minor in Asian studies.  She’s currently writing a thesis on postmodernist film theory and Jean Baudrillard. In her spare time she likes philosophizing, playing with her pet rabbit and reading Wikipedia for fun.

The Iron Heel of Obamacare

By

Sean Ewart

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law in 2010 by President Barack Obama, is the focus of a current Supreme Court case to be decided in June. Whether or not the law is upheld will depend on a variety of factors, not least among them the question of the individual mandate, and will be precedent setting whichever way the court swings. But let’s be clear about what exactly this behemoth of a law means for America. Far from providing “universal health care” – what all decent American’s hoped for – this law initiates an extreme acquisition of power by the federal government. It entirely re-frames the purpose of government from that institution which provides services to that which dictates market participation.