A Day in the Life of a Berkshare: How a Regional Currency Works by Bill McKibben - 0 views
Akaya Windwood: Life After Worry - 0 views
Nature: Introduction - 0 views
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Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes.
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This is the same argument that we have all been having for centuries. What is originality? Are we just reusing the same ideas as our forefathers? Honestly I think the society goes through these perpetual cycles of reuse, even as we progress. Its simply a part of human life. But perhaps that's why we need thinkers like the transcendentalists. To challenge our reliance on the ideas of the previous generation.
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He acts it as life, before he apprehends it as truth.
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But to a sound judgment, the most abstract truth is the most practical.
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For Obama, No Opportunity Too Big To Blow | Naomi Klein - 0 views
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Blown Opportunity #1: Stimulus Package. Blown Opportunity #3: Auto Bailouts. Blown Opportunity #3: Bank Bailouts. No President since FDR has been handed as many opportunities to transform the U.S. into something that doesn't threaten the stability of life on this planet. He has refused to use each and every one of them. Let's look at the big three.
Senator Levin: "Your Clients Lost. Goldman Profits" | Kris Broughton | Big Think - 0 views
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I was tooling around the internet for awhile yesterday, looking for a transcript of the Congressional hearings that featured Goldman Sachs executives and traders as the star witnesses, before I realized that nowhere in print was there any real sense of what had gone on. Congressional hearings may have been effective at some point in the past, but these days, the witnesses are usually far too polished and used to dissembling for hours at a time to be of any real value, and the senators and congressmen who are asking the questions are usually too polite to do more than ask questions of little or no value. Senator Carl Levin tried to deviate from that formula on Tuesday. He was harsh, unyielding and relentless. "Your clients lost. Goldman profits" rang out several times during his opening address. But Senator Levin didn't have enough of an understanding of the business to really pin back the ears of any of the witnesses, including Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sachs chairman. I couldn't figure out for the life of me why his staffers didn't line up a few disgruntled traders and insiders to give the senator a three or four day crash course on the business. His gambling analogies were something that might appeal to my grandmother, who puts gambling of any kind up there with the cardinal sins, but missed the mark when it came to characterizing Wall Street's shenanigans.
Monsanto's Harvest of Fear | Politics | Vanity Fair - 0 views
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Monsanto developed G.M. seeds that would resist its own herbicide, Roundup, offering farmers a convenient way to spray fields with weed killer without affecting crops. Monsanto then patented the seeds. For nearly all of its history the United States Patent and Trademark Office had refused to grant patents on seeds, viewing them as life-forms with too many variables to be patented.
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in 1980 the U.S. Supreme Court, in a five-to-four decision, turned seeds into widgets, laying the groundwork for a handful of corporations to begin taking control of the world’s food supply. In its decision, the court extended patent law to cover “a live human-made microorganism.”
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So far, the company has produced G.M. seeds for soybeans, corn, canola, and cotton. Many more products have been developed or are in the pipeline, including seeds for sugar beets and alfalfa.
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The New York Times Upfront | The news magazine for high school - 2 views
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He invited photographers into the White House to take candid photos of him and his family, helping to create the Kennedys' Hollywood-like mystique
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My question is answered. These candid photos of the perfect American family surely garnered him support. Did the attractiveness of his family help him? Most likely the people were just as intrigued by the image of upper class eastern life that the Kennedys presented, with it's fashion, athleticism, education, all resources which were starting to become increasingly valuable with the mass market.
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Kennedy's ads presented him as ready to lead during a time of great tension in the world, highlighted his commitment to create jobs and equal opportunities for all Americans, and questioned whether Nixon was exaggerating his experience.
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"Television is all about image, not substance,"
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John F. Kennedy and the Press - John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum - 0 views
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The public loved John F. Kennedy's press conferences, although some of his advisors worried about the risk of mistakes by the president and others thought the press showed insufficient respect for the dignity of his office
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He's making himself not only seem more relatable but more attainable as though we, ourselves, could become friends with the president. As if we were of his same class and he was speaking to us. Given the aspirational nature of late 50s/ early 60s society, it makes sense that this would be a greatly affective strategy. He was also making himself not only a public figure, but a celebrity. Seen on the screen nearly as often as Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart.
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65 million people
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Here is the example of celebrity and glamour. By presenting himself to the public on his own terms, he therebye marketed himself to them and chose how he would portray himself instead of the media. 18 million watched him on average which is an incredible number. He had some draw that pulled them in, a quintessential thing that made everyone relate to him. Hope? Idealism? Can you commercialize these? Can intangible ideas be marketed?
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even though we disapprove, there isn't any doubt that we could not
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Digital History - 0 views
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The Salem witch scare had complex social roots. It drew upon preexisting rivalries and disputes within the rapidly-growing Massachusetts port town: between urban and rural residents; between wealthier commercially-oriented merchants and subsistence-oriented farmers; and between Congregationalists and other religious denominations: Anglicans, Baptists, and Quakers.
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I think in many ways the red scare too was caused by a tension between the new glorified culture "Hollywood" and the old, less taboo culture. The freedom and easiness of the Hollywood life terrified many of the leading politicians who still placed the same value on patriotism, nationalism, and conservative traditions, ideas that the Hollywood and artistic society of the 1950s scoffed at.
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salem" means peace, and the town's founders had hoped that Salem would be a village of peace. Further, they had drawn the word salem from Jerusalem,
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Chapter I. Nature - 0 views
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The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister, is the suggestion of an occult relation between man and the vegetable.
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For, nature is not always tricked in holiday attire, but the same scene which yesterday breathed perfume and glittered as for the frolic of the nymphs, is overspread with melancholy today.
Obama didn't "cave" on the debt ceiling - 0 views
Unemployment Is Killing People | The Public Record - 0 views
Think Again: God - By Karen Armstrong | Foreign Policy - 1 views
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An inadequate understanding of God that reduces “him” to an idol in our own image who gives our likes and dislikes sacred sanction is the worst form of spiritual tyranny. Such arrogance has led to atrocities like the Crusades. The rise of secularism in government was meant to check this tendency, but secularism itself has created new demons now inflicting themselves on the world.
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In the West, secularism has been a success, essential to the modern economy and political system, but it was achieved gradually over the course of nearly 300 years, allowing new ideas of governance time to filter down to all levels of society. But in other parts of the world, secularization has occurred far too rapidly and has been resented by large sectors of the population,
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Shiism had for centuries separated religion from politics as a matter of sacred principle, and Khomeini’s insistence that a cleric should become head of state was an extraordinary innovation.
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