You’ve probably heard about the “superdelegates” who could end up deciding the Democratic nominee.

The superdelegates are under lots of pressure right now to come out for one candidate or the other. We urgently need to encourage them to let the voters decide between Clinton and Obama—and then to support the will of the people.

If we can reach 200,000 signatures, we’ll publish the petition as an ad in USA Today.

I signed. Will you?

The message that this web site promotes makes amazing sense: We’re living on a planet of finite resources, but we’re exploiting them as though we have an infinite supply of resources ahead of us. At some point, we’re going to run out, unless we fundamentally change the way we do things. A change this fundamental is going to require a shift in our world-view: Right now we’re stuck in a rut where we seem to be convinced that economic growth is the primary purpose of our culture. We’re really afraid of economic recession, which basically means that the economic growth we’re really used to is slowing down. Instead of freaking out about economic recession, we should be directing our efforts into transforming our economy into one that remains at the same level, rather than growing uncontrollably.

Our growth-oriented economy is ruining the environment and ruining the lives of working-class people who live in undeveloped nations. We don’t need plasma HD-TVs or Hummers or the newest MacBook or this year’s hottest fashions. Rather, we should learn to be satisfied with the wonderful things we already own.This valentines day, you should take some time out of your busy schedule and watch the Story of Stuff video. It’ll be worth your while, I promise.

According to a New Yorker interview, Philip Pullman (the author) intended the story to be a “secular answer” C.S. Lewis’s Narnia fable, which was intended to be a novel of Christian allegory. Although the story frames the Church in the story, the “Magisterium,” as the the evil, controlling power in this story, Pullman seems to do very little to refute or disrupt religious thought. Aside from being described as a “church,” the Magisterium does not at all seem to be a spiritual body, but acts more similarly to a corrupt government.

I have only two complaints about this movie. The first, I have already stated: the movie tried too hard to be similar to other recent fantasy films. My second complaint is that it did not follow the story in the novel closely enough. In fact, in order to make the movie shorter, it seemed like the main character, Lyra, made two or three seemingly random leaps of judgement in order for the story to continue. For example, when she discovers the identity of her mother, she instantly jumps to the conclusion that a completely different, unrelated character is her father. Non-sequiturs like this detracted from the overall quality of the movie.

If you plan on watching this movie, I only recommend, as I always would, that you first read the book.

• Discourse on Method by René Descartes
• Ethics by Benedict de Spinoza
• A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume
• Critique of Judgement by Immanuel Kant
• The Poincaré Conjecture: In Search of the Shape of the Universe by Donal O’Shea
• How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci by Michael J. Gelb
• The Portable Cervantes by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
• The Power of Mindful Learning by Ellen J. Langer
• The Google Story by David A. Vise
• The Power of Babel by John McWhorter

I can’t wait to get started! I’ll be blogging about my interesting reading experiences as they happen.

I’ve always been a big fan of Google’s products. Even more so than Apple, they seem to really understand the needs of their users. Their interfaces seem to be comfortable for n00bs and experienced users alike. That said, the more I use Google’s apps, the more I want from them that I don’t quite have. Here are some of my biggest gripes so far (blogged in the hopes that they will be fixed someday):

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