In George Orwell's essay/short story "Shooting an Elephant," where he was stationed in Burma (now Myanmar), he remarked of the Buddhist priests: "I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's guts." It seems that certain punk rockers in Myanmar share a similar sentiment today.
The public debate on hydraulic fracturing (the process of pumping a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into the ground to crack rock formations and release natural gas) is nearly impossible to follow. It’s hard to find unbiased information on a subject so intermingled with political and economic self-interests.
Filibuster. Filibuster. It’s a fun word, isn’t it? J.K. Rowling thought so when she named a fictional brand of magical fireworks after it. It sounds so silly and happy-go-lucky. What isn’t funny is the fact that a filibuster is even more idiotic than it sounds. Chronically aimless and generally futile, filibusters do little but waste time, something the governing bodies they delay are quite good at already. While this time-suck can serve a purpose, such as preventing or delaying the passage of a bill, the filibuster as it currently stands allows for far too much abuse.
