March 2010
58 posts
2 tags
How's this for historical irony: there's a tea... →
The operative question is this: does a British tea party movement mean that the American version will start pushing for a Stamp Act?
Please say yes.
(via abcsoupdot).
3 tags
Rwanda's home-grown gacaca courts set to close →
“Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama said the courts had succeeded in fostering reconciliation, ‘putting an end to the culture of impunity’ and revealing the truth about the genocide.”
Perhaps.
But I wonder if the people think so or just the Justice Minister…
Also, is this the end of Rwanda’s transitional justice measures? One hopes not. But I’m not...
3 tags
February 2010
101 posts
4 tags
Surprise, Surprise: Ahmadinejad Hates Israel
It’s interesting that anyone still covers as news anything that Ahmadinejad says about Israel, though it’s not at all surprising that Israeli newspapers print almost every word he says.
Addressing a conference of terrorists today, Ahmadinejad’s central message was that Israel was the enemy of humanity. Perhaps most interestingly, he ended his remarks by calling for a referendum...
2 tags
The David Foster Wallace Audio Project →
A fantastically comprehensive collection of David Foster Wallace audio files. I’d recommend grabbing a few of these, even if you’re not currently a fan of DFW’s writing. Listen for a little while and I’m guessing you’ll want to pick up a collection of his story fiction. Once you do that, I think you’ll become a fan.
HT: Chuck Klosterman.
2 tags
“So why don’t Jews write more fantasy literature? And a different, deeper but...”
– Why There Is No Jewish Narnia: Jewish Review of Books
4 tags
Congressional Memo - Genteel Partisan Conflict in... →
Clearly, yes. American politics is an unpleasant business.
But, perhaps more importantly, for at least ten seconds, before I clicked on the headline in NetNewsWire to read the whole story, I actually wondered what Mark Messier was doing all messed up in the unpleasantness of partisan politics.
I suppose sending Messier in there to knock a few heads together really couldn’t hurt…
2 tags
Weaponizing Mozart →
“In recent years Britain has become the Willy Wonka of social control, churning out increasingly creepy, bizarre, and fantastic methods for policing the populace.”
That sounds about right, especially after reading this article about using classical music as punishment. If you’re a fan of Anthony Burgess, you won’t find much here to surprise you … except perhaps the...
4 tags
East Stroudsburg U. Suspends Professor for... →
So a professor has a tough day and jokes on Facebook that she’d like to kill her students. Previously she also joked about wanting to hire a hitman after a day at the office. She thought she was venting to friends and family, not making public statements.
Now this is a pretty fascinating story for a few reasons:
The professor in question seems not to know the difference between private and...
3 tags
Gaddafi Calls For Jihad Against Switzerland →
Behind the amusing headline is a fairly serious issue: the Swiss referendum to ban minarets. Here are a few compelling quotes from a story in the Times back in November:
The “yes” is the latest act by European voters in support of anti-immigrant parties after electoral successes over the past decade by far-right groups in Austria, the Netherlands and France. A jubilant SVP insisted that the vote...
5 tags
4 tags
Post-Genocide Countries Ban Executions to 'End... →
At this week’s Fourth World Congress Against the Death Prenalty, Mario Marazziti, spokesman for the Community of Sant’Egidio, a Rome-based organization that promotes international relations founded on human rights and North-South interdependence, noted that Cambodia, Rwanda, and Burundi have all abolished the death penalty: “only without the death penalty can a reconciliation...
4 tags
The Heroism of Odysseus
Homer’s depiction of Odysseus’ endurance is meant to emphasize a connection between his form of heroism and that of the hero par excellence, Hercules. Indeed, Margalit Finkelberg (1995: 4) argues that “The only other individual hero besides Odysseus to whom the term aethlos [άεθλος; labor, ordeal] is consistently applied in the epics is Heracles…. The encounter of Odysseus and Heracles in the...
4 tags
Son of Hamas Founder Helped Shin Bet Foil... →
The forthcoming book by Mosab Hassan Yousef, Son of Hamas, is bound to be pretty interesting. One has to wonder, though, about the kind of danger that goes along with revealing oneself to have been a Shin Bet agent for many years, especially if your father founded Hamas.
3 tags
Good, Secular Reasons
Earlier this week, Stanley Fish provided us with a lengthy and fairly positive review of Steven Smith’s new book The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse. Or, at least, it’s positive insofar as Fish agrees with the general point that Smith makes; it’s not clear, from what Fish writes, whether he thinks others should bother reading Smith’s book or just go back to all of the...
4 tags
A Little Political Theory Humor
Dennis: I love that you're more of a Straussian than me these days.
Ari: You can't write about Homer and not be a Straussian. Unless you're an idiot. :)
2 tags
1 tag
“Get an accountant, abstain from sex and similes, cut, rewrite, then cut and...”
– Over the weekend, The Guardian published a collection of some great authors’ 10 Rules of Writing.
See what Elmore Leonard, Diana Athill, Margaret Atwood, Roddy Doyle, Helen Dunmore, Geoff Dyer, Anne Enright, Richard Ford, Jonathan Franzen, Esther Freud, Neil Gaiman, David Hare, PD James, AL...
6 tags
Is Hope Lost for Principled Conservatism in...
Like everyone else I know, I laughed about Jon Stewart’s most recent evisceration of Glenn Beck (on The Daily Show last night). It was amusing to see Beck’s failure to recognize that the “free books” from the library by which he claimed to educate himself are part of the progressive socialist conspiracy he despises.
But the most interesting part of the clip that Stewart...
3 tags
4 tags
“Winning a Cambridge ‘Blue’—for competing against Oxford in a...”
– This little gem — and countless others like it — can be found in the footnotes of Simon Winchester’s The Man Who Loved China. I think I’ve read something like half of Winchester’s books at this point and I’ve really enjoyed the distinct quirkiness in each one. If...
3 tags
“I will be out of the office starting Mon 01/11/2010 and will not return until...”
– I just received what is most likely the best automated reply email I’ll ever receive. In part, I suppose, it explains why it’s so wonderful to be a college professor. But there’s also so much chutzpah in sitting down and typing out what is, in effect, the following message:...
3 tags
Is Texas About To Execute Another Innocent Man? →
One thing’s for sure: no one seems all that interested in finding out.
Some important points to consider:
Skinner has been on Death Row in Texas since 1993, awaiting execution for the murder of his girlfriend and her two sons. He has maintained his innocence since his arrest, and investigators from the Northwestern University Journalism School’s Medill Innocence Project have shot numerous...
3 tags
“Mr. Zazi, 25, pleaded guilty in United States District Court in Brooklyn to...”
– squashed:
We disrupted a serious terrorist plot, didn’t torture the suspect, and now he has pled guilty and is cooperating all in well under six months?
It’s amazing how well our laws work when we decide to follow them.
Full article here.
2 tags
Whole Lotta Tweeting Goin' On
Graph with additional info here.
1 tag
3 tags
Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs
We’re currently working on a new brochure for UNL’s Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs minor. And I want your advice. Here are five possible photos for the front cover of the brochure; which one should we use? Or, if you have another one in mind that we should use, what is it?
#1: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
#2: Tank Man in Tiananmen Square:
...
3 tags
5 tags
Genocidaires Feel the Heat from Warmer... →
While the arrests of suspected genocidaires is very welcome news, by far the most interesting part of the article on improved relations between France and Rwanda deals with the possibility of a genocide trial for Agathe Habyarimana, the widow of Rwanda’s former president:
The Tutsi-led Rwandan government has long accused France of siding with the former Hutu regime and providing sanctuary...
3 tags
“‘To be appearing on platforms with Britain’s most famous supporter...”
– I have to admit that I hadn’t been following the escapades of Amnesty International in Britain over the past few days and so I was surprised to see a question about it from my friend Gavin Craig this morning via Twitter, with links to short pieces by Christopher Hitchens and Salman Rushdie.
...
2 tags
“There are less hubristic ways to start a career as a novelist than by retelling...”
– John Swansburg’s review of Zachary Mason’s first novel — The Lost Books of the Odyssey — has gotten me excited about a new novelist who’s (re)telling an old story.
In part, of course, I’m excited because I love Homer’s Odyssey; in part, it’s because...
3 tags
1 tag
2 tags
2 tags
3 tags
“‘When I read his stuff, I say, “Is he running for office, or does he...”
– Andrew McCarthy made his reputation as a prosecutor of the suspected terrorists in the original plot to destroy the World Trade Center, famously asking the jury, “Are you ready to surrender the rule of law to the men in this courtroom?”
Now, of course, he vehemently opposes the civilian prosecution...
4 tags
3 tags
Robot Warriors and "Guilt" →
Guided by virtual emotions, robots could not only make better decisions about their own actions but also act as ethical advisers to human soldiers or even as observers who report back on the battlefield conduct of humans and whether they followed international law.
My favorite part of the ethical robot warrior article has got to be this:
Dr. Arkin has begun work on an ethical system for robots...
4 tags
Bad Deal on Guantanamo in the Works?
I got this message from the Midwest region of Amnesty International USA while I was teaching human rights this morning; that seemed like enough of a sign that I should pass it along.
So here you go:
GUANTANAMO: IMMEDIATE ACTION NEEDED!
Please Call Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) & President Obama and Oppose their Deal on Guantanamo! Talking points and phone numbers are here:...
3 tags
This Old Porch
Every few days, I get sort of fixated on a particular song or album. I’m going to start posting them here, since it’s a pretty good indicator of my mood or what I’ve been doing. For the past couple of days, it’s been Lyle Lovett’s version of “This Old Porch”:
Lovett co-wrote the song with Robert Earl Keen, who recorded a version that sounds very...
6 tags
3 tags
“[W]e Israelis must also be taught the discourse of rights. The better we...”
– The above quote is drawn from a thoughtful op-ed by Gilad Heiman about Israel and human rights in Ha’aretz. The author makes a number of compelling points about the fact that Israel will almost certainly continue to lose the public relations war with the Palestinians as long as its leaders...
4 tags
3 tags
Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell Rolls Back... →
abbyjean:
Gay and lesbian state workers in Virginia are no longer specifically protected against discrimination, thanks to a little-noticed change made by new Gov. Bob McDonnell. McDonnell (R) on Feb. 5 signed an executive order that prohibits discrimination “on the basis of race, sex, color, national origin, religion, age, political affiliation, or against otherwise qualified persons with...
3 tags
Atlanta Progressive News fires reporter for trying... →
azspot:
In an e-mail statement, editor Matthew Cardinale says Springston was asked to leave APN last week “because he held on to the notion that there was an objective reality that could be reported objectively, despite the fact that that was not our editorial policy at Atlanta Progressive News.”
5 tags
“On Monday, the Dubai police named 11 of the 17 people they suspect in the case....”
– It’s a classic Peter Sellers-esque whodunit — or it would be, if we weren’t talking about the assassination of a top Hamas official who came to Dubai to buy weapons.
Now Israelis — who initially celebrated the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh as another brilliant move by...
2 tags
101 Muppets of Sesame Street →
Don’t know much about Osvaldo, Oscar the Grouch’s Puerto Rican counterpart? Forgot about Murray, a member of “The All Monster and a Guy Named Murray Chorus”? Maybe you want to know more about Captain Vegetable, who encourages kids to eat vegetables?
If so, you will definitely want to take a look at the National Post’s 101 Muppets of Sesame Street. Seriously fun; I...
1 tag
5 tags
Talking About Torture
Jonathan Turley has an interesting post about the failure of the Obama administration to say anything publicly about how (and, indeed, whether) we ensure that detainees are not subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.
As he argues, “this should be an easy question of policy. It is the very crux of the controversy over extraordinary renditions and the use of...
4 tags
