Buried in a Wall Street Journal article from about a week ago was a startling piece of information. According to a Wal-Mart executive, Wal-Mart “participated in an exercise to prepare for an earthquake on the New Madrid fault line” earlier this summer. And officials at the U.S. Geological Survey have just released a report which indicates that they believe that the New Madrid fault zone has the “potential for larger and more powerful quakes than previously thought“. So should we be concerned? Do they know something that we don’t? The USGS also says that the frequency of earthquakes in the central and eastern portions of the United States has quintupled over the past 30 years, and that significant earthquakes have started popping up in areas of the country that were once extremely quiet. Along with the new report, the USGS released the following map… (Read More...)
Wal-Mart
America 2011
What kind of place is America in 2011? Sadly, it is one giant sea of conformity. If you traveled across the United States 40 or 50 years ago, you would encounter a vast array of cultures and you would meet a wonderful mix of people. But today America is slowly but surely becoming standardized. It seems like wherever you go you will find a Wal-Mart and a McDonald’s. Thanks to Hollywood and the mass media, people all over the country dress the same and look the same and talk the same. Sure there are various subcultures out there, but even many of those subcultures are virtually the same on one coast as they are on the other. The things that gave flavor to our local communities are dying off in favor of greater conformity and greater profit. Today, most retail stores and most restaurants are corporate owned. Most small businesses that attempt to go up against the Wal-Marts, the Targets, the Burger Kings or the Home Depots of the world have already been stomped out of existence or are in the process of being stomped out of existence. Eventually, if we are not careful, corporate conformity is going to dominate everything from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Some may view this as “progress”, but is this really what the American Dream is supposed to be all about? Is this really the “America” that we want to pass down to future generations? (Read More...)