The local newspaper holds a fond place in the hearts of most people who grew up in small or rural communities. Even if the community is small enough that everyone knows everyone else and news gets around from gossip alone, the local paper is the snapshot that keeps it all together. The local paper is where you look for marriage and birth notices. It’s where you read the obituaries of people you grew up with. You might even still have the old yellow copy from years ago with your picture in it from when your little league team won the county championship. Even if you’re from a tiny suburb like me, where nothing ever happened that was fit to be printed in a newspaper, it gives the community a sense of identity that you can hold in your hand. Even though it was almost pointless to read because you knew everything it was going to say, just from hearing it from other people you knew, it would fill in the gaps that you hadn’t necessarily thought about and keep it in perspective. If I wanted a little broader scope, I’d get a copy of the Lowell Sun (which is a rag too, but hey), but for anything about goings-on in town, the town paper was where I turned.

Most of the stories that national and global news cover don’t affect us in the places where we live directly, but as news outlets they are every bit as important. Instantaneous telecommunication is one of the miracles of the time we’re living in; even up until the fifties it wasn’t always possible to get your message where you wanted in a reasonable amount of time, as large portions of the country were not wired to telephone networks. The internet, and computer and satellite telecommunications in general, have changed the way we see the world. Our ability to get news in a timely manner from all corners of the Earth helps us keep a global, big-picture perspective on the happenings of today. That we can see things happening very far away from where we live is what keeps us more liberated than peasant farmers in the middle ages who were completely ignorant of everything outside of the land that they worked. We cannot be manipulated so easily as people were back then; we won’t be sent to die in wars that we didn’t even know were happening. We won’t all be killed by diseases we didn’t know were sweeping across the entire continent. Our ability to know is what gives us the freedom to make informed decisions about the world we live in. As the planet becomes more and more interconnected, and smaller because of it, global news coverage will become increasingly important to the individual’s power to decide what he wants for himself and for the planet in general.

All of news reporting, regardless of its scope, has a much more important office than helping us understand our present; it is how we will someday understand our past. Modern life is becoming increasingly fast-paced and complicated (remember what you had for breakfast this morning? Me neither), and our collective understanding of where we’ve come from is getting cloudier and cloudier. A really cliched maxim tells us that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. While people in the future will never understand this time we’re living in like the people who were actually there, the written word and the images that will (hopefully) endure in filing cabinets and hard drives from our news sources will paint a very detailed picture of the issues of today.

But seriously I was listening to an interview today on All Things Considered with one of the npr people who covered the Bush administration, Don Gonyea. He was saying that they recovered twenty two million emails that the administration claimed to have lost due to a defect in their electronic archiving system. I missed some of the specifics on how because I was nerding out, thinking about what searching that extensive of a file system would entail for the poor guys whose job it was to do it. It was really interesting, as Gonyea astutely pointed out, that all of the emails were during a thirty three day period that included the beginning of the Iraq war, the Abu Ghraib incident, and the Valerie Plame scandal, and the controversial firings of all those attorneys. Which is kind of sketchy. The Bush White House said that they were lost in 2007, and since the Obama administration came into office they’ve been searching for them and have recovered most.

It was interesting to see what he had to say about it; he obviously knew a lot about it and had been covering it for some time. I wonder though what they would have heard from someone involved with the National Security Archives or Citizens for Responsiblity an Ethics in Washington, the groups involved in suing the executive branch over a bunch of stuff that the Bush administration did. I wonder if they would have more speculation on what the emails would say. I guess that’s mostly what the whole thing left me wondering, what do those emails say? That’s the million dollar question, but the answer might never really be conclusive because the emails may be covered by the Presidential Records Act and may be sealed for five to ten years. Even if the people involved with the lawsuit get to see them, the public might not ever get to. That’s just frustrating.

This news comes to light at a time when children are prescribed more medication than any other time in history. More children than ever before are taking psychoactive drugs daily to alter their personalities. Psychiatric medicine has been one of the miracles of the modern era, allowing people with previously debilitating conditions like schizophrenia to live somewhat normal lives.

It has also been one of the most destructive forces to mental health in the way it is administered. Prescribed far too frequently because they’re much cheaper than counseling, psychiatric drugs have made many people in the United States dependent on a substance they don’t really need. While psychiatric drugs do help patients with neurological problems, when administered to modify behavior needlessly they only make the patient dependent on a very heavy and addictive drug.

Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder has become something of a phenomenon in the past twenty years; diagnosed cases in the United States far outnumber any other country. The most common treatment for ADHD is taking a daily stimulant medication like ritalin or adderall or any number of others. These drugs are all amphetamines, and are chemically very similar to drugs that have been illegal for years because of their addictive potential. Ritalin, for instance, is very similar in effect and chemical composition to cocaine. Adderall is a near analogue of any number of amphetamines that would be called speed on the street. They are much cleaner and purer than their illegal brothers, but are every bit as addictive and dangerous.

Taken in reasonable doses, ADHD medications do help a user concentrate (ask any college student); but taken over a prolonged period, it changes the body’s metabolism and can cause other problems like weight gain and anxiety. Many people who were prescribed it as children find themselves still needing it as adults, because they’ve become physiologically addicted to it. This includes people who were prescribed it because they were just hyper kids, and would have grown out of it given time.

But the dangers involved with the overuse of psychiatric medicine lie far beyond the immediate physiological effects they have on their users; their use is part of a larger trend in medicine that is becoming part of our culture, that undesirable behavior in people can be managed with pharmacotherapy. Not all mental health problems are manageable with drug therapy, and our culture’s shrinking tolerance of long-term solutions leads to otherwise healthy people getting on powerful drugs. There is a mentality in our culture that if you’re not feeling right, you can take a pill and then be normal. The biggest danger of all is people abandoning their confidence in themselves to deal with problems. When we stop thinking about what makes us feel different and try to bury it with drugs instead is when modern medicine has given up on us, and when we’ve given up on ourselves. I’ve seen too many smart people get turned ‘normal’ by SSRIs and bipolar meds; I’ve seen too many incredibly perceptive people become so dull and uninvolved once they were medicated. I know too many people who were convinced that there was something wrong with them for being different than everyone else.

This one is a picture from the feed of a thermal camera in Seoul’s airport to check people for fevers in an effort to stop the spread of swine flu.

One of the US Airways flight that landed safely after its engine was hit by a bird, and one of some floating pieces of Air France 447. Reminds us that planes still disappear into the ocean sometimes.

A few of the riots and protests after the election in Iran, when it almost looked like the country was going to change.

One of an old Ford plant in Michigan.

Darfur.

Piracy, a growing concern in third world countries and the oceans that surround them.

There aren’t a whole lot of happy pictures in this year’s. I wonder if that was intentional or not. Well, here’s a picture of people smoking weed at least.

Recently though, it looks like more and more conservative writers have looked into this interwebs thing and gotten on board. In sharp contrast to a few years ago when there was nothing but liberal sites, the internet is now awash with a growing number of conservative blogs and news sites. And the weirdest part is, some of them actually have some decent looking sites. Urban Conservative manages to incorporate CSS into its layout, despite it being cluttered like hell with links to other parts of the site. Though right now they have a picture on their front page of Kanye West cutting off Taylor Swift at the country music awards. I don’t know where they’re going with that but it’s not something I’d expect their audience to appreciate.

There are other gems like Red State, who generally have some intelligent articles if you’re willing to sift through the undifferentiated crap from most of their postings. A few weeks ago they had a thing on stimulus money spending in pacific northwest states that was pretty interesting, with a big interactive chart that broke it down by county. Unfortunately, Red State looks like it’s falling to the horde of popular opinion (which on the internet is a bunch of people calling each other asshats), and lowering some of its standards. A picture of Obama as the joker from the new batman movie? What a subtle, articulate way to communicate your disapproval of someone. Although maybe I’m giving them too much credit. To quote their about page, ‘RedState has played an integral role in the right’s fight online against the left.’ Oh, that’s what this is all about. Fighting the left.

Human Events is another one to keep an eye on. They post a lot of articles from writers and political analysts who have something intelligent to say. I think there was one a little while ago that Howard Zinn wrote. They’re not immune from the sensationalistic stuff that seems to pass as news and opinion these days, though. Ted Nugent writes for them a lot actually. I read a few of his articles just because I saw the name. Turns out he’s a really hateful, xenophobic guy. Who knew?

Even more surprising than the large blogs though, are the hundreds of small independent ones that you’ll see stumbling around the internet after long enough that are mostly scattered around blogger and wordpress. They all have some cute name that usually follows the format “[strong adjective] Republican / Conservative”, next to a really unflattering picture taken of an older man or woman with a cheap digital camera. They are renowned for their lack of web design aesthetic as well as their insipid content, like this one. But regardless of what you may think of them, they represent a growing conservative voice on the internet. Maybe the older conservative base is starting to realize that without internet exposure they will become irrelevant. Maybe it’s a newer conservative force represented by a younger generation. Maybe it’s just natural as more and more media moves onto the web.

During the 2008 election, it was funny to see the party’s conferences. Both the republican and democratic parties played a video introducing their candidate before they came on to speak. Those videos, while ultimately kind of pointless and showy, highlighted a major different between the ways that the two parties are adapting to the future. McCain’s video looked like it was made by his nephew in iMovie and a cell phone. The democrats knew that their product would have to be taken seriously and clearly hired a professional. Damn, did that campaign movie pop.

Birthright has an office in Amherst center that was the site of a protest yesterday by students and residents living in the area. Protesters said they were trying to raise awareness of the CPC in Amherst being a ‘fake abortion clinic’ and seeking to abridge women’s rights.

I didn’t know that there was one of these centers in Amherst. I was aware of some sort of pregnancy clinic, but naturally I assumed it was actually a pregnancy clinic run by a medical organization. Looking around, the nearest abortion provider to Amherst is in Springfield.

Birthright’s website claims that they take a “non-moralistic, non-judgmental approach toward helping women through their pregnancy dilemmas.” They also say that they are unaffiliated with any religious or political organizations. Their site also looks like the kind of site I would be very hesitant to buy something off of.

Let’s say that Birthright is honestly committed to helping women, and would rather do so without suggesting abortion. That’s not really malicious, but it’s still irresponsible. It would be like going to a hospital and having your doctor tell you, we want you to be healthy, but without the use of the treatment you need because we personally disagree with it. Or worse, not even telling you that the treatment you need exists and suggesting alternatives.

But more likely, the organization is honestly committed to stopping women from getting abortions. They still view it as helping them, because it would be immoral to abort an unplanned pregnancy. And they have every right to do that, so long as they’re being up front about it. If they billed themselves as an abortion-alternative pregnancy clinic, they would just be being unhelpful. But since they go around pretending to be a women’s health organization, they are deliberately misleading people into trusting them when they actually have no medical staff whatsoever.

The prevailing sentiment about the school’s deal with coke seems to be one that you hear around a lot more recently as the economy gets worse and worse: you do what you have to. If the school’s out of money and we can save some by buying steeply discounted products from coke, so what if we have to put a few ads up. I feel like if the school was better off, people would be a lot more resistant to the idea of part of their education being sponsored by coke; then it would feel a lot more like whoring out the student body’s potential for advertising exposure. But the recent economic downturn has shown that even UMass isn’t safe from a simple fact we’ve all come to learn: when you’re desperate, you do a lot of things that you thought you never would.

I was kind of discouraged at the lack of student interest in the subject, and feeling more and more like I was intruding on the cycle of eating, class, drinking, and sleep that life here becomes late into the season. There were two or three people that I talked to who had something to say about it, though, and that was relieving. Coke is a large corporation with a lot of influence in this country, and they have a really sketchy track record of labor, environmental, and human rights abuses. To a lot of people, companies like coke are a symbol of the naked greed of corporate America and the toll that it takes on the country and the rest of the world. And it’s very naive to think that coke sponsors the school out of any generosity. They’re trying to make money, and sponsoring the school gives them exclusive access to the market that everyone wants to attract, the eighteen to twenty four year-old crowd. In the past, the school was in a position to say no thanks, we don’t need your “help”; but we don’t have that luxury anymore. It’s true, what I heard from a lot of different people today, not good or bad but just the way it is; you do what you have to.

“The first thing I thought was that someone broke into the room, once I saw all my stuff all over the place. I talked to Jake, the guy who lives next door, and he tells me the cops were up here.”

UMPD searched Alan’s room in John Adams Hall in the Southwest residential area on a warrant, not even an hour after he’d left to go home for break. After looking through his belongings and putting his room back together, he saw that they’d taken his marijuana pipe.

“I just don’t understand how this happened- I’ve never gotten written up for anything, I never smoke in here. On what grounds they got a warrant, I have no idea.”

Alan has not seen a copy of the warrant, even after requesting one from the police earlier in the week. He said that the police never contacted him regarding the search of his room. If it wasn’t for his neighbors having told him that the police searched his room, he would still be in the dark.

The look on his face as he says this, carefully folding a shirt before placing it back in his wardrobe, is one of unease. “Thinking about them being up here makes me just feel nervous… they moved a picture of me and my girlfriend off my desk, I mean, what is that? It already feels like living in the projects up here in JA. All the lights are in unbreakable plastic fixtures, our doors lock automatically. And now we even got cops up here raiding our stuff. It’s just disheartening.”

But that’s nothing compared to Fox’s opinion programming. I watched Glenn Beck’s show when it came on a little later. That man comes off as a parody of himself. It looks like he’s putting everyone on and he knows it. Like he’s thinking, what other ridiculous shit can I do before they catch on? If you took him seriously, you’d think that Obama was the antichrist himself and wants to personally devour everyone you’ve ever loved. And that the forces of communism are trying to destroy America. He just paints such an amazingly exaggerated  and colorful version of American politics. He clearly has quite an imagination. Though overall it’s a nice blend of old school fearmongering and newer material. It isn’t enough that Beck has been dropped from most of his sponsors because of comments he made saying that Obama has a “deep-seated hatred of white people” and that he wants to destroy their culture.

It’s kind of stupid to hate on Fox when cable news in general is so bad right now. I don’t consider nbc, abc, cbs, or cnn to be good news sources either. They’re all sensationalistic and spend most of their time on dumbed down or trivial things. But none of them have so blatantly and ferociously fought against reason in this country as Fox does.

Mostly I was interested in what products sold the most out of vending machines and were ordered the most for dining halls. Unfortunately this was two different questions for two different offices who each work with two different companies. The coke products used in the DCs are ordered from the Coke bottling company, which is based in New England, and the other coke products that are vending and sales related (like in bluewall or the convenience stores) are bought from the national brand. Of course, the first person I met with didn’t really know the specifics of either of these business relationships, so to find those out I had to talk to the people in charge of finances. They knew what we ordered and what we sold and how much money we were making off of it, but they weren’t in charge of actually deciding what gets ordered. “We’re just pencil pushers, really”, one of the women who works in the financial office told me. To find that out, I had to talk to another guy in another office across the building. At this point I’m thinking, christ, how many people did they manage to cram into this clown car of an office down here.

Overall I found most of what I was looking for. I regret not having given the woman I met with originally more of a heads up, because ideally I wanted big printouts with sales numbers on them, and they just didn’t have it all in one place to show me. Or if they did, no one knew where it was.