Long overdue: my favorite new music.
Them Crooked Vultures. So often, musical groups try to steal and end up copying. Them Crooked Vultures have pulled off at least a half-dozen perfect heists on t...
Category: people
Why write?
Amusing and insightful take down of conservative think tank propaganda celebrates the pleasures of writing and of living the life examined.
The drug war: another health care externality.
America has a horrendous mental health problem and instead of addressing it we imprison the hundreds of thousands if not millions who try to cure themselves wit...
Amazing things, of late.
Brilliant idea: Balance the U.S Budget by Auctioning off 10 Million U.S Passports. A monologue that could make a great dialogue: you’re angry because you&...
On Quentin Crisp, the movie character.
For the minority of my friends who will read this, are familiar with “technologies of the self” and fans of The Naked Civil Servant: an excellent es...
Obama blinked.
Stephen Walt lays bare the failures of the Obama administration’s policy towards Palestine and Israel and makes some unsettling predictions about its impl...
Bush v Cheney
Evert Cilliers on Cheney and other cowards: There’s a stunning contrast between Cheney and Bush, who said about Obama:”I’m not going to spend ...
Failure is success.
Matthew Yglesias: The Republican strategy of holding out for total surrender is working just fine. They had an interesting theory that if you refuse to cooperat...
Justice Sotomayor as a first step for the sleeping giant.
A rare mainstream peek at tensions within the U.S. Hispanic community, from the New Yorker: During the Administrations of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Lat...
Realizing what is more than pay and prestige, “wildly and unpredictably.”
A great quote from Charles Taylor in an so-so piece: The individual pursuit of happiness as defined by consumer culture still absorbs much of our time and energ...
Robert Reich on bumper stickers and Obama-Biden in 2012.
Robert Reich on bumper stickers and Obama-Biden in 2012: The most painful political truth for Democrats is the nation won’t possibly be out of this jobs hole by...
What makes great teachers?
Teach for America and its lessons for public school reform: Things that you might think would help a new teacher achieve success in a poor school—like prior exp...
Good neighbors online.
The NYT reports on political turmoil in Malaysia where religious identity is being exploited for partisan gain. I found this detail interesting: at least 180,00...
Corporate espionage is alive and well.
The pseudonymous mad hedge fund trader on the new world order: Cyber warfare is a huge new battlefront. Some 100 countries now have this capability, and they ha...
Canaries (and more) in the coalmine that is Earth.
Margaret Atwood on why we should not assume any bird species will survive without our help: One more statistic: according to Al Gore, 97% of charitable giving g...
Journalists: your job is to speak truth to power. That’s it.
America would be a stronger, more democratic and far wealthier nation if our journalists asked questions as directly as the team of Frank Dohmen and Klaus-Peter...
Russian rules.
Lillia Shevtsova skewers European politicians (and, well, the U.S.) for giving Russia a pass on human rights violations.
Flip this.
The NYT: “The Story lost its magic amid the realization that speculators had simply been selling to other speculators, making the real estate market look ...
The terrorist attack that did work.
The NYT on last week’s suicide bombing by a double agent: The attack at the C.I.A. base dealt a devastating blow to the spy agency’s operations against mi...
Drag in Iran.
From a lively recap of the liberal revolution (youth movement) in Iran and what Western states can do to help it: See for example how an attempt by the regime t...