Belle Waring goes for the low-hanging fruit, in form of Mark Steyn, and the results are oh-so-dilectably hilarious. Go read.
Shorter David Halberstam: Mitt Romney should emulate someone who made a crazy-sounding (if not actually crazy) statement that cost him any chance in the primary.
The NewsHour had a bit on the congressional hearings over the compromised VA data. If people think that this is a fluke occurance and won’t be happening again in the future - at other public and private institutions, many other times - they’re sorely mistaken. Indeed, it’s the fiduciary responsibility of these institutions to keep sensitive […]
If I have to watch one more alarmist news piece on MySpace, my head is going to explode. Yes, I’m sure unsavory people use the internet to do unsavory things. But they also use public parks or shopping malls to do unsavory things. The news hysteria seems to stem from an anxiety from the gap in […]
There’s lots I want to write about today but have little time to do so. So let me throw out a question with less than earth-shattering importance. Today Nicole’s law goes into effect in Massachusetts, requiring carbon monoxide detectors in every residence. Fine enough, though I guess there’s a libertarian case to be made against […]
I’ve been perusing Andrew Barr’s Drink: a Social History of America as a little background reading for the cocktail blog and came across this little tidbit: in the run up to the US’s involvement in World War II, anti-German sentiment led not only to Prohibitionist sentiment but also to a movement change the name of […]
Mark Jurkowitz, on Oprah:
[P]erhaps, she really is a feelgood force for positive things in this world. But I had to choke back the gag reflex watching clips of her carefully choreographed performance yesterday. To me, it felt like the secular version of some kind of overwrought televangelism morality play. I think Oprah’s amassed too much […]
Dan Kennedy catches Ted Kennedy blundering through an op-ed. Indeed, the Communist Manifesto was not written by Mao, the book supposed requested by the UMass student was Mao’s little red book. But I’m wondering how that slipped by because a) certainly Ted Kennedy doesn’t actually write his own op-eds, instead likely farming them off to […]
Lots of great stuff today in my RSS reader:
Tim Burke discusses the Africa beat for journalists:
Hardly anybody likes the mass media. Everybody likes to beat up on them, use them as an alibi for their own intellectual or political shortcomings. Academics have a particular form of that aversion: journalism appears to many of them relentlessly […]
Sorry for a slow posting week. I’m still settling back in from the long weekend and wading though the volume and emotional weight of all the media coverage and blogging on the hurricane aftermath. I don’t have anything new to add, so here are a few good pieces, in case you missed them:
Matt Yglesias on […]
Wow, David Brooks goes lefty on us today. I fielded some disagreement before when I mentioned that there might be progressive, nonracist reasons for the concept of a black underclass. Certainly the rise of black middle-class and the existence of rural, largely white poor and the working poor immigrants challenge Great Society-era conceptions of racial […]
On one hand, I’m glad the television news coverage has left its anchormen braving the storm phase. On the other hand, that’s a bad thing, because it signals that there’s rising damage and emergency from the post-hurricane floods in Louisiana. At this point, now that best case scenario has slipped away, one can only hope […]
Here’s the local chatter this weekend:
Francine discusses the downside of “Lance Effect” for cycling, a racing individualism that cuts against the communitarian spirit of cycling.
Derek wonders about first date rules, and if they apply equally to women and men, straight and gay. My feeling is that for gay men, they still apply, but more as […]
I took an internet breather this weekend. My email server has even been acting up so apologies if I’ve not responded to you. Anyway, here’s what I missed.
Brad Delong on national income accounting: “The national income accounting tells us that what is going on with benefits and their distribution has a profound effect on […]
Via Fistful of Euros, who’ve been on top of the developments of the London Bombings, I see that Sky News is reporting that four bombers died in the attack and have been identified as British Citizens. I have yet to see anyone else make this announcement - even at the BBC or the Guardian sites […]