Sam Smith at Undernews asks the unaskable: why is the military sacred? He prefers the teachings of Jesus Christ and midwestern socialist Eugene Debs, who said, “I would no more teach children military training than I would teach them arson, robbery, or assassination.”

George Schmidt may be a ranter, but you would be too if you knew what he knows: “Problems are festering or growing at every general high school on the west and south sides right now. And the cause of the increase in those problems, this year and for the last three school years, has been the school-closing and ‘Renaissance’ policies of CPS.” All the details are at the District 299 Chicago Public Schools Blog.

“Give everyone a personal carbon ration. If you run out, buy it from someone else,” says Treehugger, summarizing the strong global-warming medicine prescribed by George Monbiot the UK Guardian.

Alon Levy of Abstract Nonsense tees off on libertarians who cling to a 60-year-old scripture: “When Hayek said in The Road to Serfdom that the growth of government spending was a threat to freedom, he had an excuse: at that time there was no evidence to the contrary.”

Dudes, I swear he means it as a compliment!  Bill McKibben on the new WorldChanging book: “Their book, a compilation of their work over the last few years, is nothing less than The Whole Earth Catalog, that hippie bible, retooled for the iPod generation.”

Orac at Respectful Insolence calls the Chicago Tribune‘s Sunday story on alternative medicine full of a “little too much credulity.” For one thing, personal testimonials, “with few exceptions, do not constitute useful data regarding the efficacy of a therapy.”

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