Is the tide turning? Is Bush loosing his grip? There do indeed seem to be signs that he has simply gone too far for many of his most ardent supporters. Today, Andrew Sullivan, a senior editor at the new republic and ardent defender of Bush, said this: The president launched a war today against the [...]
Scott Sommers discusses some of the shortcomings of the Social Science Citation Index. I would add that the problem goes beyond the fact that the index is so incomplete, or that the user interface can be frustrating and difficult to use: I think it is a more fundamental problem with the entire antiquated academic publishing [...]
Professor Schama is calling for a return to a “golden age” of historians of the calibre of Gibbon, Macaulay and Carlyle. He says modern-day historians – with a few notable exceptions – have lost the ability to inspire the public with tales of the past in the same way as their predecessors. Which brings to [...]
Barbara Ehrenreich has co-edited a new book: Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy. I haven’t read it yet, but she outlines some of the key themes of the book in an exchange on Slate (scroll to the bottom). I was particularly struck by this quote: There’s another, far more heartrending, [...]
Ampersand says this about Keywords: …a very smart lefty blog that I’ll definitely be checking in the future. You know, it doesn’t take much to make a blogger happy. We don’t do what we do for money, we don’t do it for fame, but we do want one thing: the respect of our peers. Thanks! [...]
There has been considerable discussion (see the comments over at Lessig’s blog) about whether or not San Francisco’s mayor was right to go against the law in allowing Same Sex Marriages. I think Ampersand has the definitive take on the issue: The Mayor has argued that two California laws – the constitutional call for equal [...]
From what I have read, in the New York Review of Books, Aristide is no democratic leader, although he was once seen as one: In the late Eighties, Jean-Bertrand Aristide’s courageous opposition t the military junta that had taken power following Jean-Claude Duvalier’ departure led many to see in him a Caribbean counterpart of Nelso [...]
In an excellent Op-Ed in the New York Times David Shipler (who had a Magazine article on the “working poor” in the Times a few weeks ago) writes: “About 35 million Americans live below the federal poverty line.” I think it is important that we take a moment to think about where these numbers come [...]
Kevin Drum doesn’t understand why Gregg Easterbrook is confused by the fact that material progress doesn’t bring people greater happiness. I would like to argue that this is not such a confusing stance for an American to take, as I discussed before, when Thomas Jefferson demanded the freedom to pursue “happiness” he was really arguing [...]
The N.Y. Times publishes an Op-Ed by Noam Chomsky on Israel’s wall: What this wall is really doing is taking Palestinian lands. It is also — as the Israeli sociologist Baruch Kimmerling has described Israel’s war of “politicide” against the Palestinians — helping turn Palestinian communities into dungeons, next to which the bantustans of South [...]