Category Archives: Commentary

Feeding Back

11/8/2007 – 11:10 am

For years climate scientists have warned rising temperatures will create “feedback loops” – self-perpetuating cycles in which cause and consequence take on lives of their own.  Warmer temperatures melt pack ice in the Arctic Ocean, dark water reflect less light than ice and snow, hastening the melting of the remaining ice, creating more surface water, […]

By floegel | Also posted in Oil | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Twelve Dollars a Year

11/1/2007 – 10:06 am

In the late winter of 2006, the citizens of Burlington, Vermont prepared to elect one of five candidates to a three-year term for an open mayor’s seat. At one forum, a citizen stood up and asked, “Within the next mayoral term, it’s likely the price of oil will hit $90 a barrel and gas will […]

By floegel | Also posted in Oil | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Weird Little Gift for America

10/25/2007 – 10:52 am

The autumn afternoons are ripe and warm; the mornings are heavy with dew that is not yet frost, but soon. It’s the annual nostalgia for the summer passed and anxiety for the winter to be endured. I was staring through the window at the blaze orange of a sugar maple the other day, caught up […]

By floegel | Also posted in Civil Liberty, Iraq Invasion | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

The Money Primary

10/11/2007 – 10:04 am

Early in the Republican primary race to see who would challenge Bill Clinton in 1996, then-Texas Senator Phil Gramm said, “The only primary that counts is the money primary and I’ve already won it.” Mr. Gramm raised and spent an impressive $20 million, but he was nonetheless out of the race before New Hampshire citizens […]

By floegel | Also posted in Electoral Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Growin’ Up

10/4/2007 – 12:58 pm

In the summer of 1979, a few months after the accident at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant, Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) staged the “No Nukes” concerts in New York City. One of the acts, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, took the stage to a tremendous roar from the audience. Many […]

By floegel | Also posted in Civil Liberty, Electoral Politics, Iraq Invasion, Nuclear Energy | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Ric Was Right

9/27/2007 – 9:24 am

At the beginning and end of 2004, I wrote here that it would be the year that determined whether America would remain a democracy. The axis upon which that question turned was whether George Bush would receive a second term in the White House, but there was more to it than that. Through that year, […]

By floegel | Also posted in Civil Liberty, Electoral Politics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Stanley Milgram, Call Your Office

9/20/2007 – 9:46 am

In 1961, in response to the “I was just following orders” defense of Holocaust logistician Adolf Eichmann, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram devised a series of experiments in which volunteers were led to believe they were administering progressively stronger electric shocks to a fellow volunteer on the order of an authority figure conducting the experiment. In […]

By floegel | Also posted in Civil Liberty | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)