Author: Marc Jampole

Earlier this week, CNN Money published a list of the 10 cities in the United States that achieved the greatest population growth from 2000 to 2010. I’ll save you the trouble of clicking through all 10 web pages to see all the top-growing cities by telescoping it to a single quarter page: Charlotte, NC Raleigh, […]

Read More… from Does making making list of Top 10 growth cities indicate vitality or regressiveness?

You ever wonder why Americans so easily follow our leaders into stupid wars or believe such nonsense as it’s uncool to do well in school or be smart? It’s because hidden in the subtext of what we read, hear and see are a group of ideological assumptions that define how we live and think.  The […]

Read More… from Sunday NY Times loaded with articles that communicate hidden ideology to an unsuspecting public

Hybrids and other fuel efficient cars tend to cost more than comparable cars without the hybrid battery or other fuel-efficient technology. The natural question from the economic point of view is how long until the breakeven point? How many gallons of gasoline do I have to pump into the hybrid until the cost savings of […]

Read More… from Payoff of fuel efficient cars depends on how you jigger the numbers

Reading the news online this morning made me so angry that I wanted to hurt someone. Actually I wanted to hurt a bunch of people. But since I’m a left-listing pacifist, I don’t really want to injure anyone or make them experience extreme pain. Maybe just make them feel a little discomfort and a whole […]

Read More… from A round of wedgies for Supreme Court, pro-gun extremists, Paul Ryan, Rick Santorum and others

Yesterday I took a local Metro North train from White Plains, where I had been meeting with a client, back to Manhattan, where we’re staying for a few days. The train was crowded and along the way I saw people get on and off, riding from one Westchester County suburb to another. At the Fordham stop […]

Read More… from Take a look around and everywhere you’ll see the benefits of government to businesses and people

William Happer, a physicist at Princeton who specializes in optics and spectroscopy (study of wavelengths), authored an anti-global warming screed in this morning’s Wall Street Journal which could serve as a primer for propaganda techniques. The article pretends to prove the veracity of the its title “Global Warming Models Are Wrong Again,” but careful analysis […]

Read More… from Anti-global warming professor may or may not know physics, but he sure knows propaganda

Yesterday’s rally of atheists, agnostics and others who don’t believe in religion had a flavor of liberation politics. The tone of the language reported across the country and around the world resembled the kind of pleas for recognition that people of color, gays, women, Hispanics, people with disabilities, Moslems and other groups seeking their rights […]

Read More… from Atheist march reminds that in our secular society there shouldn’t be polarization between believers and nonbelievers

With the Supreme Court considering multiple challenges to the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 next week, OpEdge readers might want to delve into the long-term history of health care reform in the United States. If so, there is no better place to go than Paul Starr’s recent Remedy and Reaction: The Peculiar […]

Read More… from Paul Starr’s Remedy and Reaction offers insightful review of the history of U.S. health care reform

The core of Romney’s big speech in Chicago yesterday was his accusation that the Obama Administration has pursued “an assault on freedom” with new business regulations and higher taxes. The expression freedom is bandied about a lot, especially by Republicans bewailing its imminent loss—economic freedom, personal freedom, religious freedom. But what about freedom from breathing […]

Read More… from For Mitt Romney, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to win

For the first time ever, the fast food version of Siva the Destroyer, AKA McDonald’s, is going after senior citizens—and I don’t mean newly AARPed 50-year-olds, but those in their late 70s and early 80s. I saw this commercial for the first time during one of the many breaks during the last two minutes of […]

Read More… from According to Mickey D’s, the hot spot for octogenarians to hook up for romance is Mickey D’s