The Round-Up #7

Welcome to the Round-Up. Whenever I something interesting, funny, or unique online, I post it on DWG's Twitter feed, DownWithGT. Then, every weekend or so, generally on the weekend, I post a list of the 3(ish) most linkable pages and call it the Round-Up. Number seven after the jump.




Today's Round-Up is a hefty smorgasbord of interest and insight. Set aside some time and sit down with a hot chocolate. You could be a while.

We start at the ever-famous Onion, where three mock reports reveal more about America's political and news climates than "serious" reporting could. There is the report that  it's going to take more than an inconceivable act of violence for the country to rise above petty politics, the projection that the intense conflict in the Ivory Coast may rise to the status of news blurb, and the analysis of pundits that finds they are disturbingly adept at getting inside the mind of the Tucson shooter.

Let us now dispense with the purely negative article, which suggests that there are too many opinions available and that we must question any political environment where so many people can find multiple new ideas every day of the week and where so many people seem to feel a need to have an opinion on everything.

Then we can move on to Slate's listing of the most interesting questions sent to them that they either couldn't or wouldn't answer, including such thought-provokers as whether 3-D glasses work on cats and whether it's legal to booby-trap your house.

Finally, we find the blog of Walter Russell Mead and finish with two similar pieces. The first examined liberalism and argued that in America the liberals of the 20th century are fast becoming conservatives by continuing to support the same government structure that made them liberals yesteryear. The other asks whether we have reached the pinnacle of development and suggests we in the US have much untapped potential for satisfaction and happiness.