The U.S. is strongly opposed to torture, right?

Wrong

Ebay and toy trends

Hot Toys

Today's required reading:

Childhood Toys

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Geeks!

The Reinvention of Star Trek: From Cerebral Cult Phenomenon to Mass Culture T&A
Star Trek, Inc.

Is She Skater Punk or Not: The Debate Surrounding Avril Lavigne

The anti-Britney
Avril the Annoyance

Parents come to the rescue of college students!

Complaining Parents

Hollywood and Post 9/11 Propaganda

As I understand the concept, propaganda is a campaign of mass persuasion by which ideas, facts, or allegations are spread deliberately to further or oppose a cause.

Quiet Censorship in Hollywood

ABC's The Bachelor: Young women embrace post-feminist patriarchy.

The Return of SPAM!

Looks like Marvel Comics is delving into some new territory. This will definitely be added to my monthly comic list.

The New Rawhide Kid

Wraiths and Race

Happy Thanksgiving!

The Bush Administration, in association with the other Bush administration, presents:

Clone of the Attack!

Very scary:

Youth Fail Geography

If done well, this could be a great series. If not done well, we could have another Star Wars Christmas Special or The Ewoks on our hands--I feel a great disturbance in the Force.

Clone Wars Animated Series

Interview with controversial filmmaker Michael Moore:

Moore

French brothers dupe peer-reviewed journal:

Duped

Harry Potter: Pampered Jock, Patsy, Fraud!

HP

At least someone acknowledges the frustrations of adjunct faculty:

Adjunct

Great New Yorker article about the Bond franchise.

Bond. James Bond.

From favorite to least favorite, here's how I rank the actors who have played Bond: Connery, Brosnan, Dalton, Lazenby, Moore.

During Communication and Popular Culture I lectured on cultural representations (archetypes, stereotypes, countertypes). I don't think I've seen a better example of a racist cultural representation:

Vato Loco

The public controversy concerning the Separation of Church and State continues:

Ten Commandments Trial

Roy Moore, the chief justice of Alabama's Supreme Court, feels it's appropriate to display the Ten Commandments in a state building? Better yet, the chief justice also makes the argument that the Ten Commandments function as the moral foundation of American law. Chief Justice Moore, there's a certain federal document which serves as the foundation for American law. It's called the Constitution. I'm sure you encountered this document during law school. Erecting a monument to a particular piece of religious doctrine borders dangerously close to State sponsored religion.

Do we really need to conduct medical studies to determine the cause of U.S. American obesity? The following story says it all.

Fried Twinkies

A new study of religious affiliation in the U.S. suggests some interesting trends.

Religious Landscape

The 2002 Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Jimmy Carter. While his presidency will go down as mediocre, at best, his accomplishments over the last twenty years have been remarkable.

Peace Prize
Committee Honors Carter, Disses Bush

As of this morning, the DC sniper has killed eight and wounded two others. It's time to find a scapegoat! I know, let's blame tarot cards and violent video games.

Sniper & Popular Culture

Tarot cards and video games? How about placing the blame where it belongs: guns. Please don't feed me any of that, "Guns don't kill people, people kill people." How about this: I'll hand a person a deck of tarot cards and see what kind of damage they can do. Look out, he's throwing the Ten of Pentacles! Better yet, how about an Xbox or Playstation2? Why don't I hear about anyone bludgeoned to death by an Xbox? Guns have one purpose: to inflict damage on living beings. If people need an answer, they need look no further than guns.

A few days ago, President Bush decried Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapon on the Kurdish people of northern Iraq. Only a monster like Saddam would use chemical weapons on his own people, right? Guess again. Recently declassified documents reveal that the U.S. military used "bioweapons" on unsuspecting U.S. Troops.

Bioweapons

Advertising Among Friends

An interesting new poll regarding military action and Iraq

Poll

Joss Whedon's new sci-fi TV show is one of the few programs, along with Buffy and Smallville, that I watch regularly.

Firefly Review

The U. S. Constitution guarantees the right to express dissenting opinions, right? Not without consequences. As several activists have discovered, people in our federal government consider dissenters and terrorists an equal threat to national security.

No-Fly Blacklist

Check out the interesting article contrasting science fiction with science fact.

Attack of the Mutant Myth-Killers

The New Feminine Cool

Finally, journalists are beginning to question the "cost" of a war with Iraq. Why haven't we been discussing this issue from the beginning?

Economic Cost
Potential Casualties

Did I read that correctly? 2,000-50,000 civilian casualties?! And people wonder why I'm so opposed to war. However, as the following journalist points out, I'm not supposed to worry about the reasons behind a war with Iraq. I need to leave foreign policy decisions to those in the White House.

Ours is Not to Reason

The only people who aren't capable of reason are those sitting in the White House.

Required reading:

Free Speech 101

The Rise of the American Empire

A "regime change" in Iraq was discussed before President Bush, Jr came to power? Now does that really surprise anyone?

Required reading:

Regime Change
Rebuilding America's Defenses
Bush's Bold Gambit
Costs of Imperial Adventurism

Through the careful analysis of a rhetor's lifework, it is sometimes possible to discover a "rhetorical imprint"--a constant, underlying pattern of distinctive verbal characteristics that supports the content of numerous speeches and articles in different contexts. A rhetorical imprint is archetypal in the sense that it is the basic model for the whole rhetorical production of an individual. It is an indelible stamp that manifests itself, to some degree, in each piece of work a person creates.

Carl Burgchardt