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Three ads this week
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Letters to the Editor
from Wes Carr, Pat Holder, Chris Claypoole, Crazy Al, E.J. Totty, MamaLiberty (a.k.a. Susan Callaway), and The Editor
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A State of Education—Some Views of a Nontraditional Student
by Cathy L.Z. Smith
I find nothing with which to disagree in Greg Lukianoff's analysis of the state of free speech on today's college and university campuses (see Greg Lukianoff on campus censorship). Censorship is a nearly universal trend, one embraced by both sides of the political spectrum, leaving those on either side who would argue against it with little recourse and no firm ground upon which to mount their objections.
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Man, They Are Still On That Shooting
by James Glaser
You have to know if a member of Congress or a federal judge had not been shot at that supermarket in Arizona that story would be old news by now. Even if someone, let's say a school teacher, were making the recovery that Gabrielle Giffords is making, we wouldn't hear about it. However, because Giffords is one of America's elite, we still get almost hourly updates on her condition and improvements.
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Goose Stepping Through Woodland Hills
by Wayne Grantham
Yesterday (Jan 19, 2011) a cop was shot. He wasn't hurt severely; he had a bulletproof vest under his uniform (Incidentally, if any of us "little people" wear a bulletproof vest, we're automatically suspected to be criminals. It may not even be legal.) Within minutes, some 350 LAPD storm troopers cordoned off a 7-square-mile area of the West San Fernando Valley, sealing thousands off from their homes and their children's day-prisons. Sealing more thousands into the area, unable to go to their homes elsewhere. 9000 students were locked down in their prisons (as if that's not the case during every weekday).
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Choosing
by A.X. Perez
Freedom is risky, it's dangerous. It means making choices and taking chances on the outcomes. Consider vaccines. You have to weigh the chances of whether you will get sick with the infectious disease in question, how sick you are going to get (up to and including death), and the risk that you will spread it to others, against the chances that you will have a bad reaction to the vaccine (everything from mild fever to autism for young children to death from allergic reaction). Frequently, the dangers are misstated out of ignorance and/or malice. On the one hand there have been scares over swine and bird flu, West Nile Virus and so on. On the other hand there is an ongoing debate over whether the evidence that vaccines cause autism was falsified.
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Three 'Toons About Sara Palin
by Rex "Baloo" May
Three, count 'em three cartoons.
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A Word About Sweeter Than Wine
by L. Neil Smith
My publisher, Shahid Mahmud of Phoenix Pick, the science fiction imprint for Arc Manor, is highly unusual among publishers, in that he wants me to be happy with the way my books turn out. There's nothing inside my Phoenix Pick books I don't want there, and nothing has been taken out that I wanted in. I have to be happy with the cover or Shahid isn't happy. For those of you who don't do what I do for a living, you may rely on me when I say this is a rare quality in the industry and I value it highly.
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A History of Freedom of Thought
Chapter IV
Prospect of Deliverance (The Renaissance and the Reformation)
by John Bagnell Bury
The intellectual and social movement which was to dispel the darkness of the Middle Ages and prepare the way for those who would ultimately deliver reason from her prison, began in Italy in the thirteenth century. The misty veil woven of credulity and infantile naïveté which had hung over men’s souls and protected them from understanding either themselves or their relation to the world began to lift. The individual began to feel his separate individuality, to be conscious of his own value as a person apart from his race or country (as in the later ages of Greece and Rome); and the world around him began to emerge from the mists of mediaeval dreams. The change was due to the political and social conditions of the little Italian States, of which some were republics and others governed by tyrants.
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Atlantea The Beautiful No. 109
by L. Neil Smith and Rex May
Number 109 of a weekly cartoon series.
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Agenda 21: The United Nations Programme of Action

Planning for Your future, serf!

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