(Please read my disclaimer here to get a bit of a sense of how I approach music. Or don’t. Just know you’ve been warned.)
Today, the Jay-Z remix of Young Jeezy and Nas’s “My President” came on my Pandora. Despite the original song being almost 5 years old and the remix being just six months younger than that, I had never heard either song. And while I like the three primary artists on the track, I didn’t find the track anything particularly special. But as I thought more about it, I realized how simply being able to utter the lyric “My president is black” truthfully must have been an incomprehensibly powerful moment for these three black men.
Which got me thinking of a powerful memory that had somehow left my consciousness… Continue reading this post…
Car prices in Singapore can be attributed to one very basic policy move: Artificial restriction of supply. So, wonky question for the league: If you’re the mayor of a big city, how would you handle traffic congestion?
No Driving Blind today. Instead, everyone should take some time to read and consider the President’s speech on foreign policy from earlier. Full remarks below, Continue reading this post…
A meteor with devastating levels of radiation has collided with the Earth! Fortunately, most everyone you know has access to a room in special, radiation-proof apartment buildings the government has hastily thrown together. Due to contamination protocols, you will live by yourself in your own apartment six days a week; every seventh day, you will be allowed to mingle with others from your building in the commons area. You will need to live in this apartment for the next ten years; after that, the radiation levels will have dissipated enough for you to go outside again without threat of lethal exposure. Continue reading this post…
Friends in the LGBT equality movement, let’s take a minute to right-size our perspective, shall we?
We have made tremendous strides in the past few years. It’s gotten to the point that three states legalizing marriage equality in the past couple of weeks has barely made a ripple in the national news. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is dead. A major league athlete has finally come out, and the President of the United States praised him publicly for doing so. While the work certainly isn’t done, we have much to be genuinely joyful about.
One of the areas where there is still work to be done is with regard to immigration. Currently, same-sex couples comprising an American citizen and a foreign national cannot get the latter legal resident status based on the former’s citizenship, unlike with straight couples. This is unjust, of course, and it is rightly something we should work to correct.
So I can understand John Aravosis’s frustration when a provision in the immigration reform bill slogging its way through Congress that would have fixed the problem was killed the other day. It is genuinely disappointing to have legal protection of same-sex binational couples jettisoned so rapidly. On the other hand, immigration reform is going to be a very difficult issue to get any GOP support for, and I imagine such legal protections would make an unpalatable piece of legislation totally poisonous. It sucks, but something something sausage-making. Continue reading this post…
He did not move. Eyes shut, he waited, shivering. He heard Travis breathe loud in the room; he heard Travis shift his rifle, click the safety catch, and raise the weapon. There was a sound of thunder.”
A few weeks ago, I lost my mind about Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky.” I lost it to the point that I got suckered for an fan’s recreation of the song, then a leaked version of the song, then finally, the actual song. In every case, I loved it.
Now the album is out and I’m thrilled to report that it is…an album! Umm, with 13 songs? That’s good, right? And it features some good tracks! But also some bad tracks…goddamned albums. Let’s deal with that part first.
I dislike albums. No, wait, that’s not strong enough. I hate albums. Not all of them necessarily; there are some very good albums out there. But the vast majority of them are meh and there are a few examples of nightmarish disasters that are better worth never ever considering (like everything by Rush for example*). The problem is the medium itself compounded by the marketing. Continue reading this post…
So here’s another song of mine following up the last one I posted. This time I mess around (mildly successfully) with the free recording program Audacity. Rough around the edges, still, but I had fun with it. This one’s called Revolution Lullaby. It’s a love song.
A few weeks back, I asked my students what color play dough they wanted to make. After a few rounds of run-off voting, they decided unanimously for rainbow. Of course. Continue reading this post…
Several months ago, Rod Dreher, responding to several commenters on his blog, wondered whether a decline of Christianity in the West will lead to an atheistic society or a pagan one. There are, to be sure, plenty of begged questions in this scenario, but Dreher’s preference may be surprising to some:
Personally, I find paganism far more attractive than atheism, because pagans, however mistaken their understanding (from a Christian point of view) nevertheless share with Christians a recognition that there is Something There beyond ourselves, and the material world. I can have (have had) a fruitful, engaging discussion with my friend and commenter Franklin Evans, a pagan, in a way that I just can’t with friends who have no spiritual or religious beliefs, or a sense of the numinous.
I lowered my eyebrows when I remembered Emmanuel Levinas’ commentary to the Talmudic passages discussing the Israelites’ initial refusal to enter the Promised Land:
This then is the meaning of the revolt of these men: a crisis of atheism, a crisis much more serious than the crisis of the Golden Calf. Continue reading this post…
The number one thing that I’m wondering is whether Josh Marshall, Ezra Klein, and Jonathan Capehart will be writing columns that all include a particular phrase over the next few days or so.
This strikes me as being vaguely creepy, actually. I mean, perhaps it’s something like they’re having final tryouts to replace Jay Carney and, yeah, you could do a lot worse than pick one of these three guys and if that’s what’s going on, then there’s really nothing improper going on at all.
Being a paranoid dude, however, I came to similar conclusions to Ari up there. Am I wrong? Is that sort of thing kinda creepy?
Slim pickings today because I spent so much time research the new #XBone and snarking it up with everyone else on Twitter. David Bezmozgis describes how he writes, including using Freedom to block the Internet and how “technology is moving inexorably in one direction.” Alexander Nagel’s new book Medieval Modern examines the anachronistic intersection of two different artistic periods. Zach Schonfeld takes us over the Reagan Rainbow
Maybe Georgia Republicans were right after all; maybe Obama really does a Marvel-comics-like mind control ray. How else does one explain the obliviously self-destructive actions of Rand Paul and the entire right-wing media machine this past week? Last week had been shaping up so nicely for the opposition party. The IRS, long-time scourge of conservatives (and let’s be honest, pretty much everyone else at one time or another) was forced to apologize for targeting conservative non-profit organizations during an election ...
It is hard having children out-of-step with your friends. Ten months ago, you were down to hit the town on a Thursday night. You HAD been to the new noodles place, thanks very much, and YES, the jjambbong WAS the jjamb-bomb. You went to the free weekly jazz concerts on the steps of City Hall. Etc. You knew about cool things and even, from time-to-time, actually did cool things with cool friends. You got your norms from your “normal,” obviously, ...
By now probably everyone knows about the devastation that wracked Oklahoma City and its suburbs, especially the town of Moore. As regular readers of mine will know, my sister teaches at the University in Norman and I was relieved to hear that she and her husband are fine. In fact, I have now heard from everyone I know in OKC, and am grateful beyond belief that those I know and love have dodged the bullet. This includes League regular Anne, ...
Ted Heller feels like he’s betraying someone, or something, every time he picks up his new e-reader. Maybe though he should consider more deeply the nature of this perceived betrayal before taking to the pages of Salon to write about it. What would George Orwell think about the Internet’s effect on the English language? This man is worried about his finances even though his gross income is over $500,000 a year. But is a $32,000 Lexus really
From BlaiseP’s recent obituary of Kenneth Waltz: Da Vinci once said “Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.” Waltz did the opposite of his peers: he looked at the world as it was and worked back to the reasons. The field of International Relations was never the same thereafter. What Newton was to physics, ...
Give Jessica Valenti credit; she’s not afraid to be ahead of the curve. At least that’s one explanation for her piece at The Nation, “Why I’m Voting for Her.” We’re all to assume, as indeed we all do, that “her” is Hillary Clinton, and the voting in question is for the 2016 presidency. But Valenti’s piece isn’t about Clinton. [Continued @ Jubilee]
“Russia in fact no longer existed – Only the Soviet Union…” (Our kickoff post is here, and our discussion posts are here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Thanks to Living Colour, we’re all familiar with the phrase “Cult Of Personality“. I found myself wondering at the etymology of the phrase. Well, when it started, it was not a political but a Romantic (note the capital ‘R’) concept related to “Cult of Genius”. Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly?), it looks like the ...
Last year I wrote about the complicated relationship of conservatives and science. New events underscore this problem as of late. Max Tegmark, writing for the Huffington Post discusses an MIT survey on religion and science. We found that only 11 percent of Americans belong to religions openly rejecting evolution or our Big Bang … Whereas only 11 percent belong to religions openly rejecting evolution, Gallup reports that 46 percent believe that God created humans in their present form less than 10,000 ...
Edit: Reposted with a new date so that people can comment on it and stuff. Note: This post is spoilerific. It will completely ruin any surprises that might exist in the upcoming movie Star Trek Into Darkness. If in fact you decide to continue reading past this point, I’m not going to take any responsibility for your nerd rage at being spoiled. The entire post will be ROT13ed until the movie’s release date at which point I will unROT13 it but ...
So that's why my glass of George T. Stagg tasted like Jack Daniel's. According to the local news here in NJ, 29 bars and restaurants (many of them TGI Friday’s franchises) are under investigation for putting cheap liquor in premium bottles and serving it to unsuspecting customers.
How one of the bars was able to mix rubbing alcohol and dye and then pass it off as scotch has me befuddled. ( 26 comments)
Yes. Yes It Was. Asked about his ongoing verbal spat with Tiger Woods, Sergio Garcia said the following: “We’ll have him ’round every night. We will serve fried chicken.”
After the inevitable backlash, he said this: “I answered a question that was clearly made towards me as a joke with a silly remark, but in no way was the comment meant in a racist manner.” read more... ( 33 comments)
Is This Wrong? My school has uniforms. Female students have options that allow them to wear dresses/skirts or not to. However, for certain occasions, formal dress is required. This demands that the girls wear either a dress or a skirt. Boys are required to wear khakis.
This seems wrong to me. Forcing females to wear skirts and dresses just doesn’t sit right. Is it wrong? Is there something sexist at play? read more... ( 183 comments)
~ Gifts of Gab
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~ Around the League
Not A Potted Plant: Linky Friday #26 ~ May. 24. 2013. ~ Food:
[F1] I hate finding out that there's a kind of meat that... Read More
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Mindless Diversions: Weekend! ~ May. 23. 2013. ~ Holy cow, is tomorrow Friday already?
Indeed it is.
Wooooo!... Read More
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Mindless Diversions: Fistfight! ~ May. 23. 2013. ~ Alternative bar fight question:
Who would win a fistfight betw... Read More
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Blinded Trials: Get a grip, Mr. Aravosis ~ May. 23. 2013. ~ Friends in the LGBT equality movement, let's take a minute to rig... Read More
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Mindless Diversions: Horns! ~ May. 23. 2013. ~ After re- re- re- reading (and yet another clarification) I found... Read More
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Mindless Diversions: Somniloquy! ~ May. 23. 2013. ~ We're continuing Brief Lives, with Reformed Republican and Jaybir... Read More
James K 
Burt Likko 
dexter 
Trumwill 
Jesse Ewiak 
greginak 
Miss Mary 
Mike Hunt Rice 
