Sunday Mornings

Sometimes it’s the simple things in life. I actually drive this mantra home way more often than I should. I might not post the straightforward, mind-numbing quotes on social media, but I certainly apply them in my mind. Guilty as charged. I love Sunday mornings. It’s when the rest of my family goes to church….

Matt Bruenig Revisited

A couple days ago, I composed a short little write-up on the Matt Bruenig Situation. The gist is that the left in the United States is divided. Any casual observer of American politics is probably thinking well, no shit. The left is terribly poor at mobilizing in the United States, and you can attribute it to…

Part III of III: The Connections Between Ancient Rome, Trump, Sanders, Labour and The SNP (How’s that for click-bait?!)

Part I of this project established that poverty was widespread in ancient Rome and Part II concluded that grudges of elites often superseded the interests of the populace. Clearly, it follows that when rivalries are deemed by rulers to be more important than their constituencies, social problems such as poverty will likely not be addressed…

Part II of III: Ancient Rome, Clodius, Cicero, and the Populares Label

Part I of this project established that widespread poverty in ancient Rome was a sustainability issue. Different leaders with different motives enacted different measures to counter poverty, and in this portion of the project the focus will be to examine and evaluate the success of the Roman elite as it pertained to enacting policies that…

Part I of III: Poverty & Welfare in Ancient Rome

Herein, the Ancient Roman topic that will be analyzed with regard to the sustainability-related issues it likely gave rise will be the topic of welfare. In Ancient Rome, of course, the focus will be on the implementation of grain supply practices that offered Roman citizens grain at subsidized rates, or, under certain leadership, completely free…

The Matt Bruenig Situation

This is a super geeky topic of discussion but I can write about what I want in this blog so here we go. There have been a number of articles written about the Matt Bruenig situation over the last few days, and if one wishes to try and get the full back story it has…

A Retrospect: Edward Snowden & The Big Picture

Wrote this up in 2013 post-Snowden. I feel as though these stories are important to revisit down the road, to remember how we felt then, and if we still feel the same now as we did then. In a recent Quinnipiac poll, over half of Americans consider Edward Snowden—the former technical contractor for the NSA…

Crafting an Online Persona: The Case Studies of Facebook, Twitter, and Spotify

For someone that keeps a pretty small circle and would appear to not care about how he is perceived online very much, I’ll be the first to admit that it probably crosses my mind more than it should. I guess that’s just the nature of contemporary times—it’s a virtual world and we’re addicted to it….

Rapid Reaction: Liverpool-Sevilla Europa League Final

With a spot in next year’s Champions League group stage on the line, Liverpool just fell to Sevilla in the Europa League Final 3-1. This one hurt. If you’re reading some random blog about Liverpool, I imagine this isn’t your first rodeo. I don’t have to recap the quarterfinal against Dortmund or the semis against…

The Dalí-Picasso Rivalry: Freud, Obsession, and a Savior Complex

There are few relationships that captivated the world’s minds in the 20th century in the way that the rivalry between Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso was able. The storyline sounds as old as time, but it is one that has always seduced the masses: mentor and mentee, once comrades beneath the umbrella of the same…

Epicureanism, Cynicism, and How they Stack Up Against Stoicism

In the following piece, the philosophical schools of Epicureanism and Cynicism will be examined in some depth. These two schools are not paired side by side terribly often—Cynicism’s natural partner is its descendant Stoicism and in contemporary philosophical discussion Epicureanism is sometimes dismissed rather brashly as reductive, and thus its conclusions are rejected with expedience,…

Realism and the Iraq War

In contrast to disciplines pertaining to the hard sciences and much of its brethren within the social sciences, scholars within the field of international relations struggle to endorse and subsequently implement policy that adequately alleviates potential security threats in the international system. Of course, the dynamic nature of the international community does not facilitate this…