August 2010
2 posts
The Freedom to Build
Spending more than ten minutes discussing the non-issue of Manhattan’s Cordoba House is an unimaginable waste of time. It is the greatest farcical discussion of this year, stupefying in its vapidity and breathtaking in its intolerance. It shows nothing more than a terrifying lack of understanding of and respect for the Constitution, despite what the House’s critics have claimed. It is...
June 2010
1 post
“History shall be kind to me, for I intend to become a Wikipedia editor.”
– The Cosmopolitist
April 2010
1 post
March 2010
7 posts
Opportunity Costs
David Frum is probably the best Republican strategist that Republicans aren’t listening to. Which, for them, has proven to be a devastating mistake. From “Waterloo”:
I’ve been on a soapbox for months now about the harm that our overheated talk is doing to us. Yes it mobilizes supporters – but by mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk...
Weekend Reading
“Americans start out at a young age learning classic adages like “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” Our time-honored golden rule has worked in every situation for me - until I got to Afghanistan. In Afghanistan the rule should read, “Do unto the Afghans as the Afghans do unto each other.” We should not expect them to embrace our approach simply...
“Geography is just physics slowed down,
with a couple of trees stuck in it.”
– Terry Pratchett
In Defense of "Funny" Cultures
Tim Rogers’ take on contemporary Japan over at Kotaku is a great example of how people should not write about foreign cultures: with near-total subjectivity.
The piece is a laundry list of things Rogers, having lived in Japan for several years, dislikes about the place. A sampling:
Once, shortly after getting a new job, a coworker announced he was getting up to smoke a cigarette. He asked...
Rising in the East
Articles and commentary touting the accelerated rise of Asia in the face of global economic calamity are easy to find. But this WSJ piece in particular tucks away a crucial, nuanced point:
The global financial crisis has accelerated Japan’s increasing orientation toward Asia, economists say. High unemployment and personal debt have made typical American consumers less of a focus for...
“When I was a small boy in Kansas, a friend of mine and I went fishing and as we...”
– Dwight Eisenhower
February 2010
5 posts
Weekend Reading
“Year after year, undergraduates and M.A. students find themselves on fire to do research and to teach. Some of them burn for other things as well, and follow other paths. Some discover that their vocations are not deep enough to last out the process of testing. But many stick it out—and finish—only to find that the completed quest leads into Rats’ Alley. These are the people...
“I must study politics and war, that our sons may have liberty to study...”
– John Adams
Health and Federalism
The Corner notes that despite the White House’s comments, the Republican Health Coverage proposal has been available online for months. But there’s a big problem with it. And it lies with the states. Stepping back, while Republicans have asserted—for a long time—that they’ve had a usable plan of their own on the table, there is not a single mention in their proposal regarding...
“Whoever attends a performance of [Beethoven’s] Ninth Symphony and then...”
– Loos
December 2009
4 posts
Is Avatar Racist?
A friend points us to Newitz at io9, who says:
These are movies about white guilt. Our main white characters realize that they are complicit in a system which is destroying aliens, AKA people of color - their cultures, their habitats, and their populations. The whites realize this when they begin to assimilate into the “alien” cultures and see things from a new perspective. To purge...
Film Review: Avatar
“Movies will never be the same” is the trailer tagline for this effects-soaked drama from the future. But in reality, a bit more modesty would have been appreciated—and appropriate. James Cameron’s latest is undoubtably entertaining (even more so in 3D). Its foreign lands are brilliant and luminous. Each rich, untouched natural space is breathtaking in its detail, and simply...
“One major cost the conventional American media bears in order to achieve its...”
– Yglesias
November 2009
1 post
Laws and Landmines
Turns out the U.S. will continue to NOT take part in the International Mine Ban Treaty. Why? Partly due to the actual difficulty of ratifying international treaties.
First, the facts of the Mine Ban Treaty: conceived in 1997, 156 signatories, 37 non-signatories (including China, India, Russia). Now, while the treaty has been in existence for nearly twelve years, the U.S. has never signed it (even...
October 2009
4 posts
Deep Thought
Health care reform could be Obama’s Saddam Hussein.
“- Do you mean to tell me that you’re thinking seriously of building that...”
– The Dean and Howard Roark
Evolution Denial
Razib Khan points out that a healthy number of prominent politicians—potential U.S. presidential candidates, no less—are “rather frank Creationists”. Maybe the biggest problem is how this isn’t shocking to a lot of people.
He notes:
Creationism doesn’t really have the same valence as abortion as a “culture war” issue, but, it is useful in being a distinctive marker for social...
September 2009
6 posts
“In stories, those who look back — Lot’s wife, Orpheus and Eurydice — are lost....”
– Tim Kreider
Iran: The Day After
Could someone please give a reason why an attack on Israel would be in Iran’s long-term interest? Because there really doesn’t seem to be one.
The anti-semetic rhetoric, the bellicose posturing, the internal surpression complimented by rape and torture—all of these elements have been essential in Ahmadinejad’s attempt to become a global political player. And people (like Bret...
Congress and the Commons
One of the most admirable elements of British democracy is its incessent open-airing of thoughts, requests, and complaints. But Andrew Sullivan makes an essential point—in light of Joe Wilson’s interruption of Obama’s joint session—on the limits of such exchanges within this kind of legislative body:
[O]ne thing you are not allowed to shout in the Commons is that another speaker is a...
“Hyperbole is a bipartisan indulgence.”
– Josh Marshall
August 2009
11 posts
Robots at War
John Carney thinks that the growing use of robots in armed conflict could cut down on war-marking. That doesn’t seem likely. Here’s why.
Consider:
But there’s another type of war demand that probably would be [diminished]. That’s the popular war demand, the “war fever” that has been witnessed countless times through the ages. A key factor of this demand is the...
“There are good ships, and there are wood ships,
The ships that sail the sea....”
– Edward Kennedy
Yale Fail?
Christopher Hitchens is furious at Yale University Press for what he’s referring to as possibly the “worst episode in the steady surrender to religious extremism—particularly Muslim religious extremism—that is spreading across our culture”: specifically, its refusal to reprint the controversial Jyllands-Posten Mohammed cartoons in an upcoming book, The Cartoons That Shook the...
Could New Urbanism Save the Midwest?
St. Louis, Missouri is the prototypical Midwestern city. It’s large in size, boasts a rich local history, and lays claim to a set of wildly popular major sports teams. It’s enviably affordable, and hosts several world-class medical and educational institutions. And its weather? Relatively pleasant (albeit sticky in summer).
But most importantly, it suffers from a staggering...
“You’re an expatriate. You’ve lost touch with the soil. You get...”
– The Sun Also Rises, 1926
Fun with Health and Taxes
Many have already discussed the relationship between taxes and services, but with the health care debate turning near-mindless, it seems like a good thing to revisit. There is a reality in the American political system. It is that high taxes will, more often than not, yield a high amount of public services. Conversely, low taxes lead to low-serivce locales. People tend to have a preference for one...
“Alexander, they say, tried to conquer the world
With a helmet and a shield to...”
– Clark Gesner, 1957
China: The New Russia?
That was then:
Post-Soviet business oligarchs include relatives or close associates of government officials, even government officials themselves, as well as criminal bosses who achieved vast wealth by acquiring state assets very cheaply (or for free) during the privatization process controlled by the Yeltsin government…Although the majority of oligarchs were not formally related with the...
July 2009
7 posts
Why Politicians Don't Read Bills
With a 1,000-page health care bill bouncing around Congress, Rep. John Conyers said this about the act of reading congressional legislation:
Yes, elected officials usually do not read the bills they pass or reject. As we know, many important bills have become law with little or no time for members of congress to vote on them, such as the USA Patriot Act, whose 241 pages were presented the...
“The crisis of today is the joke of tomorrow”
– H.G. Wells
WWII in Three Hundred Words (or Less)
It’s been done. In the least likely of places ever, no doubt, but done. An excerpt:
The USA tools up the world, ‘cause it’s got more factories than everybody else put together, & they’re out of bomber range. Axis runs out of steam in Russia, cause Russia’s enormous & bloody freezing. Allies invade on D-Day… 5 landings: 2 British, 2 American, 1...
Healthy Competition
Missouri Representative Roy Blunt recently offered up an intriguing take on the role on everybody’s favorite celebrity couple—the U.S. government and health care:
Look. There’s a bunch of arguments people can make against government involvement in the American health care system. A real bunch. But the idea that introducing a government-provided option into the mix of industry offerings would...
A Blog of the World
From what is now modern-day Turkey came a man, born two millenia ago, named Diogenes of Sinope. He was a controversial type, infamous for embracing poverty as a “natural” way of life and shunning the plesantries of civilization for what he saw as a return to simplicity. At one point, asked of his origins, he replied
“I am a citizen of the world.”
A strange idea, as...