Whether by design or otherwise, our national media, especially news outlets, dictate the agenda and parameters of popular public discourse. We in America are so saturated by media that even when attempting to we cannot completely escape exposure.

A quick example: I hate American Idol. I absolutely loathe it. If someone is watching the show, I go into the other room. A couple of years ago as I was driving into work, a morning show DJ unexpectedly started discussing the merits of the previous night's edition of the show. So although I wished very much to avoid it, my brain was tainted with a few seconds of American Idol blather. Media's agenda will be heard.

As to parameters, if a person has two choices, and must choose between them, is he free? What if the number of possible choices are actually one hundred yet he must still only choose between two? Does it matter if ignorance or coercion relegates the chooser to two possible choices?

Why is it, do you suppose, that sexual orientation is either biologically determined or a conscious choice? Exactly who framed the parameters of this topic in such a way? Do we define the powerful force of socialization as 'choice'? Or are we to ignore that option altogether? Media has framed the debate.

There’s a strike going on in America. Not a labor union strike, but a strike on the Internet to protest two bills making the rounds in Congress this week. The bills, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA), were touted by their supporters as a cure for Internet theft by foreign websites of copyrighted material such as music and movies. Such piracy has been the bane of these content providers for years and has been going on almost as long as the World Wide Web has been in existence.

The claim, as well as the monetary loss, is real. The problem is real and the pirates are real. The bills to stop this piracy, according to opponents of SOPA and PIPA are not, however. At best they are overreaching and at worst, they are both useless and overreaching. Plus, in this extremely partisan government, they were supported by both political parties.

SOPA, and its U.S. counterpart PIPA, purport to give content providers protection from Intellectual Property piracy by essentially disconnecting these foreign sites from the United States. But these bills plainly go too far in that they would also penalize websites which contained links to these site, which brings in search engine giants like Google into the mix. In other words, these pirate sites can’t be prevented from stealing the material, but you wouldn’t be able to connect to them.

Since the Supreme Court decided in 2010, with the Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission decision that corporations had the same free speech rights as the rest of us, the country has been divided as to that decision’s constitutionality. But since then the opposition has been mostly complaints about the legality of the decision and little in the way of constitutional challenges to the ruling.

Until recently, anyway. It’s beginning to look like there will be a showdown between the Supreme Court and the issue of state’s rights. A David and Goliath Supreme Court case is predicted to happen once there is an appeal in the Supreme Court to Montana’s law barring political contributions by corporations in state campaigns which was passed 100 years ago in 1912.

Casual observation suggests that the Earth is flat. It looks flat. There is certainly nothing on the distant horizon that suggests the Earth is spherical. Casual observation also suggests that the sun orbits the Earth. The sun comes up in the east, goes down in the west, and comes up again in the east the next morning. And all the other heavenly bodies seem, from my perspective, to rotate about the Earth in some way or another. Earth must be the center of the universe.

The vast amounts of space between heavenly bodies must be filled with something. There must be some conduit in which light can travel and by which bodies affect other seemingly detached bodies.

Certain chemical reactions produce a growth of crystals. It must be possible to transform certain substances into gold.

Criminals have a certain shape to their skull. Studying the shape of a person's skull should give insight into their character.

Many arguments can be made that race is an invalid biological demarcation among humans. Although admittedly circumstantial, no greater argument can be made against race than this: the concept of race predates all knowledge of genetics, is an ancient assumption based on casual observation and passed along through history absent any scientific evidence of its validity.

If you're receiving unwanted telemarketing calls and your number is in the National Do Not Call registry, it could be time to sign back up. The registration expires every five years.

Other things you can do to reduce solicitations include:

• Opt out of pre-screened credit card offers with the credit bureaus.
• Opt of national mailing with DMA (cost of $1)
• Opt out of email from DMA members

In the case of the Direct Marketing Association, opting out will only help with advertisements from DMA members.

Credit monitoring services are frequently advertised on television. You may have heard the catchy songs for “free credit report dot com”. This should not be confused with AnnualReport.com, which was created by the credit bureaus to comply with the requirement that all citizens be allowed to view their credit reports for free once per year. AnnualReport.com will allow you to see the information that all three major credit bureaus have on file and also offers a means to challenge inaccurate information. It does not include a credit score, although they will attempt to sell you that information. From personal experience, it may take more than one attempt to remove false information from your credit report.

How is it that so many people run for their rhetorical pitchforks and torches around this time of year, claiming that some societal Grinch is taking Christmas away from them? What drives this epic, annual battle between the Christians and, well, the rest of the populated world over this particular holiday? In other words, how is it this poor guy called Jesus Christ can't get a break in December?

As befits a war, there is a small army up in arms over the notion that Christmas has fallen victim to political correctness because another large army prefers the less-specific *happy holidays* and rally around their own iconic image, the *holiday tree*, which oddly enough is identical in every detail to a *Christmas tree*.

And that, in a nutshell, is the reason for this decidedly low-key warfare. Many people are enraged that their holiday is being stripped of over 50% of its name. But is this a justification for such un-Christ-like anger?

There is a phrase that bugs me that goes like this: “Blank is the new blank”. For example, “forty is the new thirty”. Here's one straight from my heart: “Nothing is the new anything”. The whole concept of this phrase relies on the idea that we've all accepted a certain standard and now, unbeknownst to us, the standard has changed. And who among us has been given the authority to make such proclamations? Well, apparently anyone who finds himself or herself on television: reporters, B-list celebrities, anonymous social butterflies.

Reporters are probably the worst to redefine various old stuff into new stuff. Reading Facebook comments aloud on air is the new reporting, by the way. In the same spirit, and out of curiosity as to what the newest of the new happens to be, I searched this phrase in Google news: “* is the new *”.

And the top results at the approximate time of this post were as so:

(image credit: Gage Skidmore)

When you are online, shopping, reading the news or interacting with friends, just how private do you think those Internet sessions are? Especially on social networking sites such as Facebook, how private is your privacy? Well, not very, it seems.

In the latest story about the privacy invasion, recently, Facebook Inc. struck an agreement with the federal government, by way of the Federal Trade Commission, on a 20-year privacy agreement that requires the social networking giant to ask subscribers for permission before they release any personal information. So far, most Facebook users were unaware the company had been selling their personal information, which users thought they were sharing only with friends.

No one except those involved can positively state at this point that Herman Cain is lying when he denies the allegations against him. And whether or not the allegations are true is far less interesting to me than Cain's strategy, which apparently is to deny all allegations early and often. And not just partial denials, but blanket denials.

It became rather popular for a while for politicians to make at least partial admissions of wrongdoing. After Bill Clinton famously admitted to “not inhaling”, it seemed reformed pot smokers came out of the woodwork to eagerly confess their pot smoking past. I wondered at the time if people were admitting to things they didn't do just because it seemed more believable.

(Image courtesy Gage Skidmore)

Have you ever been pulled over by police and didn't have your driver's license? Or maybe you didn't realize it and your driver's license was expired? Don't let it happen in Alabama. Depending on the whims of the particular jurisdiction, you might be taken to jail, without passing go and far from collecting two-hundred dollars.

Section 12 of Alabama's now infamous immigration law requires law enforcement to verify upon any lawful traffic stop the citizenship or immigration status of the driver, when “reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States”. Exactly what would constitute “reasonable suspicion” in this case is not the least bit clear. The law specifically prohibits considering “national origin”, for example.

(Image from wikimedia)