Archive for February, 2005
Chronotope
Afghanistan is unique, utterly unlike any other war-ravaged landscape. In Bosnia, Dresden or the Somme for example, the devastation appears to have taken place within one period, inflicted by a small gamut of weaponry. However, the sheer length of the war in Afghanistan, now in its 24th year, means that the ruins have a bizarre […]
Shake Down
Are Republican leaders trying to shake down the AARP so as to get concessions on social security “reform”? It sure looks that way. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is now promoting the idea of replacing income tax with a national sales tax. Why is this a threat to retirees? Kevin Drum puts it this way:
Suppose […]
Encouraging
Via Ampersand, a story in the L.A. Times about a Tennassee judge who is threatening to take children away from immigrant mothers who fail to learn English:
“The court specially informs the mother that if she does not make the effort to learn English, she is running the risk of losing any connection — legally, morally […]
Nepal
Has the Nepali king’s coup helped him in the battle against Maoists? One Indian official has this insightful comment:
“at least 40% of the army’s troops are now censoring newspapers and patrolling the streets. How can the rest of the soldiers hope to defeat the Maoists?”
To keep up-to-date with the latest developments check out the blog […]
Mobilization
… despite the outcome of the election, Democrats outmobilized Republicans in 2004. In addition, the 2004 results indicate that Democratic mobilization efforts matter more than Republican mobilization efforts because mobilization has a greater impact on lower SES voters than on higher SES voters. We need to make sure that these efforts continue in 2006 and […]
Email Tips
There is a lot of discussion on the web about e-mail overload (here, here, and here). So I thought I’d share my tips. I’ve been using e-mail since before most people even heard of the internet - back before there were web browsers! (God, I must be old!) And over those years I’ve learned a […]
Feta
I’m slightly lactose intolerant, so Feta cheese (and other goat’s milk cheeses) is one of the few cheeses I can enjoy. My favorite kind of Feta is the Bulgarian variety, which is creamier than the saltier Greek version. However, it looks like only Greece is allowed to use the term “Feta” for its cheeses:
In a […]
Leninism
In his op-ed today, Krugman mentions that much of the strategy for social security “reform” was laid out in a 1983 article in the Cato Journal. What struck me is the title of that article: “Achieving Social Security Reform: A ‘Leninist’ Strategy” (PDF link). It is hard to think today, with the Republicans so firmly […]
Child Labor
The above is a picture taken by Lewis Hine for the National Child Labor Committee in 1909, titled “Photograph of Bibb Mill No. 1, Macon, GA.” The following news story would make you think we are back in the 19th century:
The nation’s largest employer, and one the nation’s largest corporate political donors, was cited for […]
Sentimentality
One of my favorite films of the past few years is the poetic “Elephant” (2003, Gus Van Sant). It was widely attacked by critics for not taking a clear moral stand on the issue of school violence. I was upset at the time that any variation from traditional Hollywood narrative structure, with the inevitable moral […]
An anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, 
