Archive for August, 2003
Racism
Over at Nathan Newman:
… a white criminal gets more job interviews than a black person with no record at all. It almost boggles the mind that there are people who maintain that racism is no longer prevalent in our society.
This is based on an award winning dissertation from this year’s American Sociological Association meeting. […]
Budget
It seems that US troops in Iraq are short on rifles, and are forced to use confiscated AK-47s! Maybe that’s because the US military doesn’t know where your tax dollars are going. That’s right, there is more than a trillion dollars missing and unaccounted for!
A study by the Defense Department’s inspector general found that […]
Water
Access to water is a fundamental human right. The Israelis are depriving the Palestinians of that right.
In spring 2003, CESR, in collaboration with local Palestinian NGOs, including the Palestinian Environmental NGO Network (PENGON) and the Palestinian Hydrology Group (PHG), conducted a project to document violations of Palestinians’ human right to water. From the construction of […]
Evidence
I’ve been following an excellent series of posts over at Alas, A Blog about the Kobe Bryant Case (1, 2, 3). In particular, a link to this article by Columbia Law Professor Michael C. Dorf caught my eye. Probably because he was a college friend of my brothers, and we just happened to bump into […]
Centrist
Thanks to Body and Soul for pointing out a great post on Gary Hart’s weblog about Bobby Kennedy. It is so “right-on” that I just have to quote a large chunk of it here:
The subject comes to mind when “leaders” say: “I’m a fiscal conservative but a social liberal.” The only way that shibboleth […]
Bushiban
Anyone who has lived in East Asia knows about bushiban. That’s the Mandarin word used in Taiwan for these “cram schools” which have their counterparts in Japan and Korea. Many an unqualified Western traveller has managed to have quite a good life because of the seemingly unlimited demand for white faces to teach English after […]
Liberty
As many of you may know, Ashcroft is running around promoting the Patriot Act and his new Victory Act as if it were snake oil. He also launched a new web site where he attempts to debunk the “myths” about the Patriot Act. In particular, he attacks the ACLU. Well, the ACLU was quick to […]
Soccer
After the crossover hit Bend it Like Beckham, comes another soccer film that I hope does as well. This film is by Stephen Chow (Chow Sing-Chi), the funny-man of Hong Kong Cinema. I love all his films - especially “The God of Cookery” - which is hillarious. And this film, Shaolin Soccer, already a hit […]
Opportunity
During my seven hour odyssey returning home to Jackson Heights from midtown Manhattan (nearly an 8 mile journey), I was fortunate enough to run into some very helpful people. There was the mother who helped me find a phone book (initially I thought I might stay with a friend in midtown), there was the West […]
Mermaids
Its funny how things seem to happen in the news just when I’ve seen a film about the topic. This weekend I watched John Sayles latest film, Sunshine State in which one of the main characters is a former Weeki Wachee Mermaid. Then, just today, BoingBoing ran a post linking to an MSNBC news story […]
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
