The Mad Sociologist Blog

  • A Brief Message to Pat Robertson…

    …You are a walking anachronism, and your medieval philosophy should have died out with similar ideas such as hunting witches and trial by ordeal! Read more

  • Just How Much “Shock” Can Haiti Take?

    Last week I finished reading Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Klein highlights with meticulously researched precision how the demagogues of extreme free market ideology use catastrophes, be them natural or manmade, to reform a nation’s economy. Such economic advisers use the destruction of political, economic and physical infrastructure to institute Read more

  • A Time to Imagine

    A Time to Imagine

    Every year around this time I like to abandon my sociological imagination and just use my……um……normal imagination to describe my hopes and dreams for the coming year. These dreams are not necessarily grounded in the most current research, but I like to think they are unexpurgated by prevailing social and political trends. I allow myself Read more

  • What could be more amazing than surviving an atomic explosion?

    This is the story of Tsutomu Yamaguchi. On August 6, 1945, 29 year old Tsutomu Yamaguchi, an engineer for Mitzubishi Heavy Industries, stepped off of a city street car on a business trip. Unfortunately, he stepped off the street car in Hiroshima…just in time to be struck by the first atomic attack in history! The Read more

  • Turning Against Capital Punishment

    It’s always difficult arguing against the death penalty.  It really doesn’t matter on what grounds one is making such an unpopular (in the US) stand.  The bottom line always devolves to the accepted eye for an eye concept that those who take a life deserve to die.  Indeed, when one considers the kinds of psychotic Read more

  • How to Create a Conspiracy Theory in Five Minutes or Less!

    It’s actually pretty easy. Step 1.  All you have to do is identify a group or individual and identify something that they do.  It could be anything.  Really, don’t put much thought into it.  As you will see in a moment, it is impossible to disprove a conspiracy theory…even one made in five minutes. Step Read more

Trending