[In case it needs to be said: I don't agree with every word of everything I link to. --L.]
- Conscious Servility — the two most influential papers in the country throw in the towel
- [Hullabaloo - Digby]
The Post's ombudsman made it clear that they are determined to cater to the conservative movement. The NY Times ombudsman revealed the same thing in his post-ACORN apologia promising to consult FOX News as a legitimate source in the future. Despite all their blathering about unbiased reporting,the two most politically influential papers in the country are admitting openly that they are capitulating to the sustained, cynical right wing campaign to force the media to treat it with kid gloves. They're not even trying to hide it anymore.
I think Ana Marie Cox has it right in the article when she says that the Washington Post didn't know they weren't getting a doctrinaire conservative in Weigel. In fact, from their reaction it appears that they don't actually know what movement conservatism is, nor do they care…
- One major under-discussed environmental danger
- [Pandagon - Amanda Marcotte]
When it comes to environmentalism, there’s a real danger in taking an absolutist position, which is that people will tune you out completely, since they find that impossible.
Which is too bad, because on the whole, Cox is right. Air conditioning is one of the great environmental disasters of our time. It’s way overused, and to make it worse, it allowed people to build bigger houses and public buildings on the grounds that they could cool them off pretty easily, and it discouraged the use of more energy efficient ways to cool off your home. It’s created cultural acclimation of the sort where people will never accept anything less than air conditioning, even when opening a window would actually be just as good. [...]
From my war on A/C, I’d say that in many places, you could cut it by 70% with a few small adjustments to our cultural expectations of what temperature a room should be, and by getting people to consider taking many steps to cool off before resorting to the A/C, such as wearing fewer clothes at home, opening windows, using fans, building in places where there’s shade, drawing curtains, shutting doors to rooms you’re not using instead of air conditioning the whole house, etc.
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