By Glynn Wilson – Texting, using a cellphone and sending and reading email messages are the most frequently used forms of nonpersonal communication for adult Americans topping home phones and Twitter by far, according to the latest Gallup poll on the subject. Between 37 percent and 39 percent of all Americans said they used each…
By Glynn Wilson – WASHINGTON, D.C. – If you are an educated liberal, an urban progressive Democrat or just an independent American voter looking for candidates to make government work better in the U.S., you are probably severely disappointed at the outcome of the election on November 4, 2014, concerned about the next two years…
“Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.” – John Steinbeck Eschew Obfuscation – By Michael Douglass – Gas is at three bucks a gallon. Unemployment is under 6 percent and the stock market is through the roof. Everything Republicans say they…
Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – I’m not going to lie, this week’s election was a blow. That’s exactly why we’re doubling down now, and I need to know you are too. Friends of Big Oil have taken control of the Senate, and they have a 100-day action plan that reads like Big Oil’s…
Thomas Jefferson As A Tactful Tactician – The Big Picture – By Glynn Wilson – MONTICELLO, Va. – In the introduction to one of the versions of The Writings of Thomas Jefferson available online at Project Gutenberg, former West Virginia Governor George W. Atkinson describes Jefferson as the quintessential tactful political tactician and statesman. “Thomas…
Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – Oil prices have dipped lately. In the short term, that’s probably good news (unless you’re an oil company or a petrostate). If we look at the big picture, though, it’s a lot less relevant. That’s because oil prices don’t reflect the true costs of extracting and burning oil…
Secret Vistas – By Glynn Wilson – BALDFACE ROCK OVERLOOK, Va. – It is election day all across America and the big question is whether the Republicans will take over control of the U.S. Senate. But since I am not now living and working in Louisiana, North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Arkansas or one of the…
Secret Vistas – A Photo Essay – By Glynn Wilson – SOMEWHERE IN THE MOUNTAINS, Va. — We continued our journey on Wednesday by leaving the Shenandoah National Park and coming out at the little town of Elkton. We headed back north to continue the loop around Washington, D.C. and found a beautiful private campground…
By Robert Reich – Commenting on a recent student suicide at an Alaska high school, Alaska’s Republican Congressman Don Young said suicide didn’t exist in Alaska before “government largesse” gave residents an entitlement mentality. “When people had to work and had to provide and had to keep warm by putting participation in cutting wood and…
SECRET VISTAS – By Glynn Wilson – BIG MEADOWS CAMPGROUND, Va. — We pulled into this largest campground in the Shenandoah National Park on Sunday afternoon late, and without knowing it, picked a campsite right on the Appalachian Trail. The view Monday morning at dawn was stunning, and we found out from hikers it was…
Eschew Obfuscation – By Michael Douglass – We are this close to the midterm elections and the goddamn GOP is about to close it hard on irrational fear. Isis and Ebola. Fear porn. How did we get here? Completely random elaborately imagined clusterfucks that would not survive the advent of oxygen or sunlight if applied.…
Images from Skyline Drive in Virginia – Secret Vistas – By Glynn Wilson – SHENANDOAH, Va. — It is the last weekend of the season at Mathew’s Arm, the northern most campground in the national forest. We scouted it out on Thursday, secured a campsite and toured the first 22 miles of Skyline Drive, stopping…
Secret Vistas – A Photo Essay – By Glynn Wilson – SHENANDOAH VALLEY, Va. — The autumn color is not quite at its peak in these famous mountains with the legendary Shenandoah River running through them. But the scene should come to fruition in the next three weeks. This is the result of day one…
By Bob Wells – It’s been a big month for those of us who get our internet from cell providers so in this and the next post were going to talk about getting internet data from cell signals. In today’s post we’re going to talk about two big things that happened this month. It’s going…
Coming Clean – By Michael Brune – The fossil-fuel divestment movement has been on a roll lately to the tune of $50 billion, but one of its biggest successes happened last month: The world’s most profitable oil company squirmed. Exxon Mobil’s vice president of public and government affairs published a critique of divestment that concluded…
By Robert Reich – Imagine a system of college education supported by high and growing government spending on elite private universities that mainly educate children of the wealthy and upper-middle class, and low and declining government spending on public universities that educate large numbers of children from the working class and the poor. You can…
Eschew Obfuscation – By Michael Douglass – I still remember vinyl. The whole audio visual experience of riding my bike to the record store, buying a vinyl album, bringing it home, removing the shrink wrap, putting it on the turntable. I remember setting the needle down, reading the liner notes, the smell of polyvinyl chloride…
Secret Vistas – A Photo Essay – By Glynn Wilson – GREENBELT, Md. — After a couple of days of drizzling rain and clouds — and a month in the Washington, D.C. area waiting for fall color to hit the trees — autumn arrived in style on Friday in Greenbelt Park, National Park Service land…
WASHINGTON, D.C. – NASA launched its sixth consecutive year of Antarctica overflights to study changes that could be a significant harbinger of climate change due to global warming. The science craft measures the ice sheet over all, the glaciers and the surrounding sea ice for changes that could provide scientists with the latest up-to-date information…
Take a look at the secret lives of these endangered bats in what is believed to be the first-ever video taken inside a bonneted bat’s natural roost. To find Florida bonneted bats you would usually look in artificial roosts such as bat houses. “The bats definitely yawned a lot. We probably woke them up,” one…
