September 2009
5 posts
2 tags
Food Inc.: Fairly Snazzy (But Somewhat Empty)...
The Mrs. and I went to see Food Inc. this evening, knowing almost exactly what we were getting ourselves into. And there really wasn’t anything surprising in that hour and a half, except perhaps that it felt like a much longer movie. Having read Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I probably could have written this movie myself…or at least the parts with Pollan in...
August 2009
12 posts
4 tags
Nick Saban: Man, Myth, U-Haul Stockholder
ESPN reports today that Nick Saban - former coach at too many places to list and likely owner of a substantial amount of stock in U-Haul, allowing him to get out of town at a moment’s notice - signed a contract extension with the University of Alabama through 2017. Basically, he’ll now be making somewhere in the neighborhood of $4M/year, which actually isn’t a whole lot more than...
3 tags
Israel's Settlement Problem
According to Haaretz, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has just proposed a nine-month freeze on the construction of new West Bank settlements, after meeting with George Mitchell. The freeze, apparently, ”is a confidence-building measure that must be matched by reciprocal steps from the PA and Arab states.”
While I certainly don’t oppose the idea of a freeze on...
3 tags
Scalia, Executions, and Actual Innocence
This morning Seth Jolly passed along a link to Mark Cuban’s blog post about Antonin Scalia’s dissent on the Supreme Court’s Troy Davis opinion that a lower court should allow evidence of Davis’ innocence to be brought forward.
Like many people, Cuban is shocked that it’s not illegal to execute innocent people in this country and, not wanting to tackle the very...
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Great weekend: fun evening with Meg and Matt, followed by a pool party this afternoon. Now, watching golf and playing w/Powerpoint.
I’m sure I shouldn’t say this, but I can’t help myself: I’m very disappointed in the way the PGA Championship ended. I’m a huge homer. I admit it. I root for the Tigers, the Lions, the Pistons, and the Red Wings because I grew up in...
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[Fascinating] Attacks on Twitter Facebook, LiveJournal, Blogger & YouTube targeted one user: http://tinyurl.com/m69a4q (via @jonhutson).
It’s pretty amazing to see that some people regard social networking sites as being important enough to knock them out of commission around the world in order to silence one person whose views they oppose. This pro-Georgian blogger must have some really...
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Hillary Clinton proposes Twitter, technology as part solution to corruption in Kenya: http://bit.ly/lHH3w (via @akhilak, @WalshNYC, @mmaren)
I’ll be the first to admit that I have a huge crush on Twitter, not that anyone’s surprised to hear it. But I’m not entirely convinced that Twitter is the answer if you’re looking for democratic accountability. Perhaps I need to...
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Watch
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I’m beginning to think just saying “representation” 6 times in every sentence isn’t going to be the best way to teach Foucault to undergrads
In all seriousness, I think this section of the POLS 386 class is going to be both very interesting and very challenging. There’s a lot to say about the archaeological approach to knowledge that Foucault employs in The Order of...
4 tags
And so it begins; the NFL is the new Twitter police: http://tr.im/vtoB
Interestingly, this all happened on the same day that ESPN dropped the hammer on its employees. There’s been a lot of debate about whether this will really mean the end of the increased interaction between NFL players, ESPN on-air personalities, and fans of those players and personalities. My sense is that this...
4 tags
Rwandan refugees to be sent home by Uganda. Does this group require protected status? http://twurl.nl/t7zsr6 (via @vigilo, @ai_armswarcrime)
There’s generally a lot of confusion out there about who “counts” as a refugee and is, as such, deserving of special protection under international law. Or perhaps the confusion is with this particular group of Rwandans, about whose past...