Posts Tagged ‘Syria’
Wednesday Links!
* CFP: Imaginaries of the Future. The Futures Industry.
* The Center for 21st Century Studies calendar for the fall looks amazing; I’m especially excited for the visits from Paul Jay, Wendy Brown, and the MLA Subconference organizing committee. Tom Gunning’s talk on “Title Forthcoming” should also be really illuminating.
* Who’s Getting Tenure-Track Jobs? It’s Time to Find Out.
* The Right Things to Do vs. the State of Florida.
* The most and least under-employed majors.
* Occupations of College Humanities Majors Who Earned an Advanced Degree.
* Ferguson: The Syllabus. Eighty Years Of Fergusons. The economics of Ferguson. Two Ferguson Cops Accused of Hitting, Hog-Tying Children. “The City of Ferguson has more warrants than residents.”
* Here is the NYT description of Michael Brown compared with NYT description of Unabomber. With the Boston Marathon bomber. “No Angel.”
* Police often provoke protest violence, UC researchers find.
* As soon as Prosecutors saw this video, they dismissed all of the charges against Jeter. Interesting to note, an investigation by Bloomfield PD’s scandal plagued internal affairs division had found no wrongdoing by officers.
* Perhaps it will always be a mystery: According to a coroner’s report obtained by NBC News, Victor White, a 22-year-old black man, committed suicide in the back of a police car by shooting himself in the chest while his hands were cuffed behind his back. The report contradicts the official police account, which said White shot himself in the back.
* Tenth Circle Added To Rapidly Growing Hell.
* Attack on Kiska: Untouched Relics from a Baffling WWII Battle.
* Animal personhood watch: Oregon Supreme Court Rules Animals Can Be Considered Victims.
* Just Six Months After the Olympics, Sochi Looks Like a Ghost Town.
* Can’t we, as a society, come together and finally end seat reclining on planes?
* “He thought David Sedaris was just okay.”
* The Rise of Neoliberal Feminism.
* American teenagers, rejoice! The American Academy of Pediatrics wants all US schools attended by children aged 10 to 18 to delay their opening times to 8.30 am or later. It’s crazy that more school districts won’t make this switch.
* Christian Parenti in Jacobin proposes we rethink Alexander Hamilton.
* The Washington Post says war today, war tomorrow, war forever. The Fun of Empire: Fighting on All Sides of a War in Syria.
* Wisconsin’s nightmare spiders could be coming to your town.
* Gasp! Faulty red light cameras produced thousands of bogus traffic tickets.
* Prepare yourself for a dark, gritty Full House sequel. Only the literal end of the entire damn world can save us.
* Such a sad story: Plane Crash Claims Lives of 4 Students at Case Western Reserve U.
* And there’s never been anything that showed what the inside of my brain is like as closely as this xkcd. My blessing; my curse…
Sunday Links
* Maps that will change the way you see the world.
* Report Suggests Nearly Half of U.S. Jobs Are Vulnerable to Computerization.
* Free Time: The Forgotten American Dream.
* Ideology at its purest: State bans rehab of orphaned wildlife.
* Devaji Tofa, community leader from Mendha Lekha, told Down To Earth that the traditions of the Gond tribal community to which the villagers belong, do not see land as property or something to be owned by individuals. “It is seen as a community resource.” The modern concept of private ownership has done a lot of damage to communities, said he. “With private ownership, people tend to get selfish and isolated.”
* Judge Throws Out Officers’ Convictions in Killings After Hurricane Katrina.
* The Arctic is on course for an ice-free summer within the next few decades, as scientists on Friday declared that sea ice in the region had fallen to one of the lowest annual minimums on record.
* Corey Robin: “Voldemort Comes to CUNY.”
So that’s where we stand. The delicate flowers of academic freedom at CUNY wilt before the jeers and jibes of a few students but warm to the blazing sun of the state. A four-star general who led two brutal counterinsurgency campaigns in Eurasia, a former head of the CIA whose hazing rituals at West Point alone probably outstrip anything the NYPD did to these students, requires the fulsome support of chancellors, senates, and deans. But six students of color beaten by cops, locked up in prison for a day, and now facing a full array of charges from the state, deserve nothing but the cold silence of their university. So much tender solicitude for a man so wealthy and powerful that he can afford to teach two courses at CUNY for a dollar; so little for these students, whose education is the university’s true and only charge.
* Just a tiny sample of the radical incoherence the right gets away with. These statements are days apart.
Friday Links! All Of ‘Em!
* A brief write-up of my science fiction class in the Marquette Tribune.
* zunguzungu: Sir Warsalot and the Daily Show.
* Everything is broken: Snowden’s latest revelations demonstrate that the US surveillance apparatus has completely broken both the Internet and the US telecommunications industry.
* Never-used Breaking Bad storylines.
* How to End It All: By Carlton Cuse, Damon Lindelof, Vince Gilligan, and Alan Ball. That’s not exactly a promising lineup for the end of Breaking Bad (though the last few minutes of the very last Six Feed Under were admittedly pretty all right).
* Colorado Proves Housing The Homeless Is Cheaper Than Leaving Them On The Streets.
* No, the Student Loan Crisis Is Not a Bubble.
For the most part, it’s not helpful to think of student lending, circa 2013, in terms of bubbles at all. Rather, as Chadwick Matlin has put it at Reuters, it’s more of an anvil weighing on a large but discrete group of very unfortunate borrowers.
* When College Presidents Are Paid Like CEOs.
* Plain Talk: Wisconsin’s school vouchers are a scam.
* Want to break into professional comics artistry? Just draw us a cheesecake picture of a naked woman in a bathtub preparing to commit suicide and you’re in.
* In the popular imagination, opposition to the Vietnam War was driven largely by the privileged, while supposedly reactionary blue-collar workers supported the war effort. That memory is wrong.
* Mind-boggling: College students cheer sex abuse.
* Unpaid internships must be destroyed: file your lawsuit today!
* CFP for the inaugural issue of BOSS: Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies. I can’t believe I wasn’t approached for the editorial board.
* “He was a wonderful boss. I lived with him for five years. We were the closest people who worked with him … we were always there. Hitler was never without us day and night.”
* And John Cleese explains the brain. That should clear everything up.
The French Aren’t Keen Either
From the great Teju Cole: 9 questions about Britain you were too embarrassed to ask.
Scattered Labor Day Links
* A Functional Form Has Its Own Beauty: An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson. I liked Redshirts and all, but 2312 really should have won the Hugo.
* Florida International extracted more than $18 million of its $25 million in 2011-12 revenues in the form of student fees. College Football’s Grid of Shame.
* Radiation levels spike at Fukushima nuclear plant. But the lede is buried a bit here:
TEPCO had originally said the radiation emitted by the leaking water was around 100 millisieverts an hour. However, the company said the equipment used to make that recording could read only measurements of up to 100 millisieverts.
* Which Syrian Chemical Attack Account Is More Credible?
* The only memory of the bee is painting by a dying flower.
* This Labor Day, Thank a Teacher.
Better even than a real conflict, though, is a hypothetical conflict. Why bother with the effort of forgetting, when you can merely invent? Those are the very best wars, the ones that are dreamt of in the American imagination. No conflict has ever been as noble, no war as good, as our hypothetical war for Rwanda.
* Bedbug reports skyrocket in Milwaukee area, nationally. Ugh.
* Drug Agents Use Vast Phone Trove, Eclipsing N.S.A.’s. Ugh.
* And the news just gets worse: Legendary anime director Hayao Miyazaki announces his retirement.
Thursday! Thursday! Thursday!
* The newest Ted Chiang story details the struggle of forgetting against memory.
* CFP for ICFA 2014, always my favorite conference experience of the year. This year’s theme is “Fantastic Empires.” If history is any guide, I’d wager Ted Chiang will be there!
* Am I Yanomami or am I nabuh? The child of a Yanomami woman and a male American anthropologist goes to the Amazon to look for his mother.
* The Internet Explained By Prisoners Who Have Never Seen It.
* The five (and a half) stages of humanitarian military intervention. Great moments in op-eds: Bomb Syria, Even if It Is Illegal. Adam Kotsko: If the U.S. government lacks either the will or the ability to take care of those very serious problems in a country where it enjoys largely unquestioned legitimacy, stable institutions, and a docile population, exactly why the fuck is it remotely plausible that it can solve problems in a foreign country embroiled in a civil war?
* Hometown news! A Morris County court has determined that knowingly texting a driver could leave you on the hook for their crash.
* Football’s Concussion Crisis, Explained. The NFL has just settled with the players for $765 million in the latest round of concussion-related lawsuits.
* Johnny Manziel’s suspension exposes ridiculousness of NCAA’s double standards.
* Even if he wins, will Bill de Blasio actually be able to accomplish anything?
* Do Republicans really have better-than-even odds to take the presidency in 2016?
* Northeastern just has its adjuncts’ best interests at heart. If anything, maybe it loves too much.
* Meet Dr. Donna Nelson, science advisor for Breaking Bad.
* Eric Holder Says DOJ Will Let Washington, Colorado Marijuana Laws Go Into Effect.
* Science proves men are just the worst.
* The New York Times has a feminist history of Monopoly.
* Definitely, 100% accurate: Scientists say they’ve found key to actual warp drive.
* Teju Cole’s Dictionary of Received Ideas.
SCANDAL. If governmental, express surprise that people are surprised. If sexual, declare it a distraction, but seek out the details.
SEMINAL. Be sure to use in a review of a woman’s work. Proclaim your innocence after.
SMART. Any essay that confirms your prejudices.
STRIKE. Always “surgical.” (See EGGS.)
* Mitch Hurwitz keeps making promises that he better by God deliver.
* And SEK’s Internet Film School is officially open for business. Go read up!