December 2011
2 posts
August 2011
1 post
Things to Remember
There’s nothing novel here. Each of these points have been made many times by many others. Still, as a kind of summer 2011 debt ceiling post-mortem, I would like to note that: 1. Negotiating positions are not policy or legislative positions. 2. Leaks are not facts. 3. Wall Street gets what Wall Street wants. 4. We live in an oligarchy. 5. I dunno if the debt ceiling is more or less...
July 2011
2 posts
June 2011
1 post
“The history of history-education evaluation is littered with voguish pedagogy,...”
– http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2011/06/27/110627ta_talk_paumgarten#ixzz1PqV8DBe7
May 2011
1 post
When "Research" = Research + Service + Teaching
While Scott Walker, Rick Snyder, and other Republican governors have set their sights on busting unions, Texas governor Rick Perry has set his sights on professors. Perry wants to use his record short-fall of 15 to 27 billion dollars in order to stick it those lazy, left-wing professors. Part of the reform Perry envisions is to evaluate individual professors in terms of how many customers they...
April 2011
1 post
March 2011
1 post
February 2011
6 posts
The presentation I’m working on for the SCAR symposium.
Lawrence Wright talks about the Muslim Brotherhood...
“But hysteria is not a sign of health. When Glenn Beck rants about the caliphate...”
– Bill Kristol, “Stand for Freedom”
“It’s an article of faith among conservatives that the fundamental cause of the...”
– David From on the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission report. Frum reads the crisis as argumentum in utramque partem. Awesome.
January 2011
12 posts
“I don’t know anything, have no expertise… If there comes a point when I...”
– —Paul Krugman on Egypt
Yes, we shouldn’t speak about stuff we don’t understand.
Last night George and I were watching footage of the Cairo protests. At one point, a man went running across an open space and was suddenly kneecapped by a bullyclub-wielding police. George laughed and said, “That guy’s pretending to be a bad guy. The good guy pretended to knock him down.” Obviously, George was interpreting the scene from the insufficient background of an...
“In the best global economy we can imagine, the countries with the largest GDP...”
– Ezra Klein
“As I was awakening to the willful racial self-blinding of white Christianity, I...”
– “Outlaw” Christian writer, Reynolds Price, 1933–2011 | via Joanna Brooks
Watch“Ever been to an Irish wake? I’ve never been sadder and laughed harder in my life. And I got news for you guys, ‘Amen’ ain’t far from ‘Whoo-hooo!’”
“Imagine if Palin had come out and said, “My initial response was to defend...”
– Ezra Klein
“You know, Sarah Palin just can’t seem to get it, on any front. I think...”
– James Clyburn
what he *is*
So much energy is being used in order to define the Tucson shooter. He’s a leftist, a rightist, a Tea Partier, a conspiracy theorist, an anti-semite, etc. And then there’s the super-category of insane, which has the wonderful property of absolving all social and political positions/movements.
Thanks in part to certain comments from a certain Professor Herring, I’m much more...
WatchSlavoj Žižek, “God without the Sacred.”
Watching this talk before going to Manhattan recently, I was struck by how nice it was below ground where the subway station was called “World Trade Center,” while above ground folks said, “Ground Zero.” Of course, “WTC” has got its own ideological baggage, but not nearly that of “GZ.” This...
“Economic thinking has its own reason and veracity in that it is absolutely material, concerned only with things. The political is considered immaterial, because it must be concerned with other than economic values. In sharp contrast to this absolute economic materiality, Catholicism is eminently political.”—Carl Schmitt, Roman Catholicism and Political Form
December 2010
2 posts
WatchWeiner’s wrong about a lot of stuff, but I do love to watch him. (BTW, he’s right that the inheritance tax doesn’t double tax an income because the earner is dead.)
November 2010
4 posts
unsmart
Almost two years ago, I mentioned to a friend that I didn’t know if the US population understood Obama, even though they’d just excitedly elected him. Well, things unfortunately suggest they still don’t get it. Take this headline, for example:
Americans favor universal health care — until anyone tries to pass it
October 2010
9 posts
“I continue to believe that Obama is the president many Independents voted for:...”
– Andrew Sullivan
“if you assume Williams has been doing valuable work all these years, firing him...”
– Matt Yglesias, On Juan Williams
The Roots of Lunacy |
How not to understand Obama →
Even the Weekly Standard thinks Dinesh D’Souza is off this rocker.
“When Don was back at his apartment studying Midge’s not-very-interesting...”
– Matt Zoller Seitz
Keyboard Shortcut for "Save as PDF..." in OS X →
quick and easy .pdfs
September 2010
13 posts
"I've never heard of Said or Unger. Who are these...
Edward Said and Roberto Unger made it onto Beck’s blackboard last night, courtesy of Dinesh D’Souza.
See the weirdness here:
“Professor Klarman made four main points about what he calls...”
– Worshipping the Constitution: The tea-partiers’ little red book | The Economist
2 tags
WatchWhat’s especially interesting here begins at the 2.25 mark, where Beck plays Elizabeth Warren being interviewed by Michael Moore. Warren states that market economies are the result of man-made rules and not some form of natural or divine law. Seems like a pretty legitimate argument, right? Well, Beck and his radio crew can’t believe there would come a day when “leftists”...
“the one statement that can be fairly and accurately made about Muslims, a group...”
– Nisa Qazi, “The Muslim Question: It’s not about ‘decency’”
WatchIf comedic/satiric performances couldn’t deliver important and serious messages, then Megyn Kelly wouldn’t be an idiot. But since they can, she is.
