History doesn’t simply repeat itself, of course, but Catharin Dalpino of the Brookings Institution has a great essay showing how each of our mistakes in Vietnam - underestimating nationalism, reinforcing religious and ethnic divisions, importing political leadership, and creating the illusion of democracy to hide realpolitik - is replaying itself out on the political stage […]
I just joined Netflix and have noticed a feature they have on there to automatically recommend films for you based on your ratings of films you’ve seen. It’s a feature similar to Amazon.com’s “You may also be interested in” recommendations, only Amazon seems to look at customers buying more than one item and correlates them, […]
Grudgingly, I’d say Joan Vennochi’s comparison between the Rick Santorum and Dixie Chicks controversies is more apt than most liberals would want to admit. Granted, there are issues she doesn’t mention - like whether the Republicans should be satisfied with a blatant homophobe as No. 3 Man in Congress - but those trying to replay […]
Paul Krugman has posted another clarification on job creation and the business cycle on his website - a bit technical (i.e. involves graphs) but a good concise explanation of why the Club for Growth types are either confused or lying. As Krugman has pointed out in the past, anti-globalization lefties and their liberal sympathizers generally […]
Brookings fellow Peter Orszag and economist Joseph Stiglitz have a well-argued piece in Sunday’s globe maintaining that taxes should be raised to solve the state’s budget crisis. Curiously, the debate has so far taken place between the state’s conservatives, who see government waste everywhere they look (even before looking) and the liberals, who see vital […]
The Economist releases its annual Big Mac Index. Often they use the Big Mac purchasing power parity index to determine the likely trajectories of currencies by seeing which ones are over or undervalued. They do, however, concede a couple of exceptions. First,
there are some persistent deviations from PPP. In particular, emerging-market currencies are consistently […]
The Guardian has a dossier on Third Way politics and policy, leading off with a passionate and well-written piece by sociologist Anthony Giddens. Definitely worth a look. One of the contributers, Peter Mandelson, outlines a plan that’s exactly the sort of political program I’d like to see the left adopt:
First, equality has always been central […]
For those wondering what exactly the Marxist bit is on this website, I now have a page up on Pierre Bourdieu. I decided to create one, not only because it dovetails with my current dissertation chapter in progress, but also because surprisingly little worthwhile is out there on the internet…If Friedrich Hayek has his own […]
I’m always complaining about poorly written music reviews, so I should put in a good word about the top-quality ones in the Guardian. Usually snarky fun, but the one on Madonna’s new album is also insightful:
Blessed with a sharp set of ears and a perfect sense of timing, her skill has lain in repackaging the […]
As I mentioned on The Daily Treatise blog, this site now hosts a Pierre Bourdieu page. Lately I’ve been revisiting Distinciton for my dissertation chapter on middlebrow culture in postwar US, and I can’t help but remarking how brilliant it is (Distinction, not my chapter).
Coincidentally enough, for that same chapter I was getting around to […]
I’ve used the Guardian’s George Monbiot as a straw man before, but I’ll use him again, for his piece today, arguing that the only way Britain can resist the US’s power is by joining the Euro. Military competition is futile, and trade boycotts would simply be symbolic he argues. Instead, Monbiot wants to attack the […]
Sometimes what Thomas Friedman writes makes a lot of sense, but his most recent piece, arguing that “there were actually three bubbles that burst at the beginning of the 21st century: a stock market bubble, a corporate ethics bubble and a terrorism bubble,” reminds me of precisely the qualities I don’t like about his writing: […]
Another shameful instance of the politicization of science under the new Republican political climate: the sugar industry now is lobbying Congress to tie World Health Organization funding to “proper” findings in their nutritional recommendations. In their words, “Taxpayers’ dollars should not be used to support misguided, non-science-based reports which do not add to the health […]
The link has expired, but a couple weeks ago Jon Pareles had a review of the White Stripes in the Times that criticized them for selling authenticity despite their clearly contrived gimmick. True as far as the observation goes, but I find the criticism a little unfair. For one thing, the new album is actually […]
A number of liberal-left commentators are eating crow over their doomsday pronouncements over the war… okay, not as many as the Weekly Standard would like. After all, things aren’t finished yet, we still haven’t installed meaningful democracy in Iraq, much less spread it to any place else. I’m still convinced this is a war of […]