The second event which influenced my sense of identity was more technology-driven, and it came much later in my life. The transition from vinyl albums to compact discs was a difficult one for me, and it was at this time when I first realized that for better or worse, change was inevitable; there was no […]
The final innovation which profoundly affected my personal sense of identity was the advent of the Internet. By the time my wife and I broke down and bought our first PC in the early 90s, the World Wide Web was already a full-blown global phenomenon. The Internet opened up entirely new vistas of research and […]
“Congratulations, America! We spent 40 million dollars surveying Bud Light® drinkers all over the country and the results from two years of consumer focus groups have shown that for some reason the words ‘mix’ and ‘tail’ scored highly with our target audience: people with an IQ below 80 and the tastes and desires of the average 10-year old child. Adding […]
For all human beings, the reality we experience on a daily basis is the product of our language. Language allows people in every culture to categorize and conceptualize reality, define it in rational terms, and ultimately, to help create it. More importantly, it enables people to communicate with each other about this physical realm we […]
I became estranged from my father after my parents’ divorce in the early 90s. My wife Valerie and I had been living in Albuquerque for a few years at that point and we began hearing rumors that my dad – Roscoe – had bought a mail-order bride over from the Philippines and married her. She was half […]
THE HOUSE I GREW UP IN (Riverside, California) Google Earth. Long shot of the American continent. Zoom in to the west coast. The Pacific Ocean is on the left. Zoom in again to southern California. The geography of the Los Angeles basin is easily recognizable – Oxnard further to the northwest along the coast, Palos […]
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s heartbreaking 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail is a classic rhetorical response to social injustice and to those who seek to perpetuate injustice either by ignorance, complacency, or tacit approval. MLK eloquently calls out the clergymen in Alabama who condemned him as an “extremist” for his very reasonable and honorable – […]
Musings on the Beatles and Manson Another bizarre twist to this tale involves a little guy by the name of Charles Manson. He was so obsessed with The Beatles he thought they were sending hidden messages directly to him through their music. While this had nothing to do with the ‘Paul is dead’ controversy per […]
In this blog I will demonstrate how the term ‘conspiracy theory’ has been misused by the media. In particular, I will focus on the so-called ‘alternative media’ and the many ways they marginalize and isolate reasonable suspicions about the political economy which have the potential to de-legitimize the prevailing social order. The archetypical example of […]
Elite propaganda Scholars such as Lance DeHaven-Smith and Mark Fenster have advanced this field of study by revealing the ways in which valid questions about activities of the power elites in the US have been abrogated by simply applying the term ‘conspiracy theory.’ The pejorative use of the term dates back to a CIA memorandum […]
Jason Darensburg's Blog-o-rama 