Pierre Tristam | August 30, 2009
Franz Kafka’s “Trial” is the story of a nobody tried for crimes never made clear by faceless authorities upholding secret laws that never fail to get their guilty verdict. You could read it to understand how easily reality is distorted and justice impersonated, even in “civilized” nations. Or you could read the inspector general’s recent more »
Pierre Tristam | August 23, 2009
The Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch” is a reality series based on the toil and tyranny of crab fishing in the Bering Sea. About 4 million people watch the show every week, making it one of the top-rated programs on cable. It’s a strange phenomenon, considering that it’s just watching people work. But it’s more than more »
Pierre Tristam | August 16, 2009
You remember the e-mails five years ago. They were all the same, junking up our in-boxes with bullet lists of how great things were going in Iraq – the exact number of new schools built, the number of Iraqis happily employed, the number of cell phones beeping everywhere (including, presumably, those used to detonate roadside more »
Pierre Tristam | August 9, 2009
Mountain-top removal coal mining in West Virginia: the grinding tragedy of Kayford Mountain, where Massey Energy has been removing mountaintops to dig out coal.
Pierre Tristam | August 2, 2009
Empires rise and fall on the strength of their kitty, not their guns. Spain in the 17th century, France in the 18th, Britain in the 19th – they each went bankrupt, exhausted from debt. With unsustainable trillion-dollar deficits projected through the next decade, is the United States going the way of its European forebears? If more »
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