I’m very pleased that my employer, the University of Michigan, has joined “Coursera”:https://www.coursera.org/. The aim of Coursera is to provide free, online courses of something approaching university quality, to everyone. Right now it hosts courses from Penn, Stanford, Princeton, and UM-Ann Arbor, with possibly more schools to be added soon.
[click to continue…]
{ 80 comments }
Today’s Guardian has a series of articles today concerning Britain’s colonial past and evidence of the “widespread destruction of documents”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-destroyed-records-colonial-crimes with evidence of crimes against humanity by British forces. Other pieces include material on “planned poison gas tests in Botswana”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/18/britain-poison-gas-tests-botswana , on the “coverup of the deportation of the Chagos islanders from Diego Garcia”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/apr/18/archives-diego-garcia (now used by the United States to bomb various countries), and of “serious war crimes during the Malayan emergency”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/18/colonial-office-eliminations-malayan-insurgency?intcmp=239 . And then there are “eighteen striking photographs”:http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/gallery/2012/apr/18/colonial-archives-kenya-malaya-aden of the British at work in Kenya, Malaya and Aden . The Aden photographs in particular call to mind similar later ones of British troops in Northern Ireland, where of course, torture was also employed: the techniques used on colonial populations being brought to bear against Irish republicans. And, of course, the look on the faces of the soldiers as they manhandle and abuse “natives” is really no different from what we see in pictures of the French in Algeria, of American troops in Iraq and, indeed, in footage of the Israeli Defense Force in the occupied territories. A timely reminder of the evils of imperialism and colonialism.
{ 341 comments }
Oh joy! “Gerald McBoing Boing”! “Rooty Toot Toot”! And thirtyplus other titles, many of which I’ve never seen! All these lovely old UPA cartoons are finally available on DVD – UPA: The Jolly Frolics Collection
You can read a short version of the UPA history on Wikipedia. Really short version: UPA was founded by disgruntled former employees of Uncle Walt who pioneered some simplified techniques while working for Uncle Sam, which – admixed with artistic ambition and modernist design sensibilities – led to some great animation. Then there was the Red Scare and they got into the Godzilla business and … well, more of a whimper than a bang. Ah, well. [click to continue…]
{ 9 comments }
A public service announcement – the Academic Blogs wiki that I used to run under “academicblogs.org”:http://academicblogs.org is now up again, under new management at the “Center for History and New Media”:http://chnm.gmu.edu/. Many thanks to Dan Cohen and Ammon Shepherd for taking it on. I had been running it on a version of Mediawiki which was not (to put it mildly) optimized for anti-spam, with the result that I had to spend a few hours each week cleaning out the garbage. The transition to a new, more robust system has taken a little bit of time, but it is now up and running again. XKCD has a cartoon this morning on the relative decline of the blogosphere. However, as best as I can tell from personal browsing, academic blogs appear to be relatively robust. It’s a lot harder than it was nine years ago to create an academic blog that can attract substantial public attention, but if you’re primarily interested in talking to other academics and a few interested bystanders, it’s still relatively easy. Academic blogs, unlike e.g. tech blogs or some political opinion blogs, don’t usually have sufficient potential audience to become commercially viable. But most academics are used to talking to smaller audiences, and as long as blogging technology is cheap or free, there will be some people at least who’ll be interested in doing it.
!http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ablogalypse.png!
{ 45 comments }
Via Martin O’Neill on FB, I see that reminiscences of Jerry Cohen by Philippe Van Parijs, John Roemer, Myles Burnyeat, Gideon Cohen and Tim Scanlon are now online (pdf). Enjoy.
{ 3 comments }
As everyone who has been paying attention knows, the news on inequality is nearly all bad. Not only has inequality increased dramatically in the US, but intergenerational economic mobility is declining[1]. And, where the US leads, the rest of the world looks likely to follow. The top 1 per cent lost more than most during the crisis of 2008-09 but, as Stephen Rattner reports here (drawing on work by Piketty and Saez), that was just a blip. A stunning 93 percent of the additional income created in the US in 2010, compared to 2009, went to the top 1 per cent, and there’s no reason to think things were much better in 2011 – average real earnings have fallen yet again, and employment growth, though positive, was still modest. Wealth inequality is also high, though it has not increased as much as income inequality.
The one bright spot mentioned by Rattner is that ” those at the top were more likely to earn than inherit their riches”. Since I’m already noticing that point popping up in the places you might expect to see it (can’t find a link right now), let me point out that Rattner’s explanation, that “the rapid growth of new American industries — from technology to financial services — has increased the need for highly educated and skilled workers” is wrong, and that there is every reason to expect a boom in inherited wealth.
{ 45 comments }
Contrary to early indications, NR folks have had quite a bit to say about the Derbyshire firing. I thought this probably wouldn’t happen because then they would have to say that the Derb was basically in the right on the intellectual merits, tone issues aside. Which would be awkward. But they have gone there (to their intellectual credit and/or moral discredit – you decide). For example, here’s the latest from John O’Sullivan:
The paradoxical result is that a piece that begins as a criticism of anti-white racism gradually morphs into something akin to an expression of white racism. It therefore strengthens the anti-white racism it is meant to satirize which, as it happens, is a growing problem in the U.S. — not in the suburbs or backwoods but in the corporate executive suites, the media elites, the courts, the bureaucracy, and of course the entire industry of sensitivity training which used to go under the more honest title of “Political Reeducation” in the gulag. Combined with class snobbery, as it usually is, anti-white racism produces bigotry and discrimination against innocent persons too, less viciously than past discriminations perhaps, but also more unanswerably because it operates under the virtuous disguise of anti-discrimination and social justice.
{ 252 comments }
Thought is a new philosophy journal dedicated to publishing short (4500 words or under) papers in metaphysics, epistemology, logic and related areas. It is going to be open access for the first two years. After that unfortunately it will be closed, but the funds from it will be used to support the activities of the Northern Institute of Philosophy. The first issue is now up, and as I said it’s open for now, so if you’re interested, pop over and have a look.
{ 15 comments }
Duncan Black – aka ‘Atrios’ – is trying to identify the wankers of the decade, and finding that reliving the trauma is hard.
bq. I’ve been a bit jokey about the difficulties of writing the wanker posts, but in truth it has been difficult, though not because it’s hard work or similar. The ESCHATON DECADE has been a pretty fucked up decade, a time when this country stopped even bothering to pretend to live up to many of its supposed ideals. We go to war and kill lots of people for no good reason, elites have eliminated any accountability for themselves for criminal wrongdoing, we’ve tortured and assassinated people, and the response to massive economic suffering and related criminal fraud has been to give lots of free money to the people who caused it all. And one premise of his blog is that all of this shit happens, in part, because of the fucking wankers who rule our public discourse. Paying too much attention to it every day can be bad enough sometimes, but reliving it all again is actually a bit painful.
I don’t know how you _could_ deal with this stuff without being jokey – it both helps you deal with the anger and gets the point across better than frustration and rage. Then, I don’t understand how he’s been able to do this day in, day out, for ten years either. Which is why I’m suggesting that people give him a hand.
We have seen seven of the ten wankers of the decade so far: in order, they’re:
9th runner up Megan McArdle.1
8th runner up Richard Cohen.
7th runner up Diane Sawyer.
6th runner up Jonah Goldberg.
5th runner up Lord Saletan.
4th runner up Mark Halperin.
This leaves three wankers yet to be chosen. I would be startled if Thomas Friedman isn’t one of them (surely, he has to be odds-on favorite to take the grand prize). I’m also hopeful that Charles Krauthammer won’t be overlooked. But there are many others who are surely worthy of consideration, and volumes and volumes of material to be gone through, all likely to cause anger and increased blood pressure. Hence my suggestion: I encourage CT readers with the time and inclination to document the _very worst_ atrocities of likely nominees, with hyperlinks and all, so as to help ease the anguish of Duncan Black’s trip down Memory Lane. The comment section is yours.
1 McMuddle must be disappointed with her poor finish behind Richard Cohen. Perhaps she’ll find consolation in the publicity for her forthcoming book, “PERMISSION TO SUCK, about “how risk aversion is sapping America of its core strengths.”” (We all have permission to suck, but Comrade McArdle abuses the privilege).
{ 194 comments }
Ben Bella is dead, as the charismatic leader of the FLN in the Algerian war of independence, he was one of the great (though flawed) figures of the wave of post-war revolutionary decolonisation. Obituaries and reports in the New York Times , Guardian, Le Monde .
{ 35 comments }
I’ve already gone over my looking at words limit today, so this will be brief. I thought this odd problem was caused by watching a bad TV show in which some of the characters have Southern accents. Nope. In wending my way through the various neuroscience labs and so forth I have learned that they basically don’t know jack about migraines. But in any case migraines are exhausting. So I am strongly inclined to make curious mistakes, wrong words, spoonerisms, aphasia, whatever. (I couldn’t remember the word “tesseract” the other day. My doctor laughed at me when I brought this up as a complaint.) And to regress. But regress to what, when I was 6? I never have had a Southern accent as an adult. I speak overly quickly, but with a normal East Coast accent. Except under the strain of continual pain and electric storms in the brain I…have a Southern accent now? My daughter said “ain’t” the other day? What in the everlovin’ blue-eyed world is that, I ask you. My family is going to give me constant hell from the minute I see them till moment I leave. I’m afraid to go home to DC! I’ll go to S.C. sure, no one will notice.
My Chinese business partner loves it, she thinks Southern accents are the cutest things in the world, and it also means I talk at about…2/3 the speed of my previous rate. Maybe even 1/2. It’s just, really weird. I can feel it; I can actively fight it with concentration. It varies throughout the day, depending on pain and so forth. The funny thing is that I used to be unable to produce a Southern accent on demand. If she asked me to do it, I couldn’t, I would just freeze up somehow, it felt like I was pretending something. Oh well, ain’t is a perfectly fine word.
{ 61 comments }
I’ve just finished the Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard’s _A Death in the Family_, the first volume of his sequence of autobiographical novels, _My Struggle_ . The novel, if novel is the best word for it, is at once brilliant and horrible. Brilliant, because of Knausgaard’s talents for description and for self-observation; horrible because of the meticulous way in which he sets out the decline of his father and grandmother. In the novel, and doubtless in real life, Knausgaard’s father is an alcoholic, who at the end of his life, barricades himself into the house of his semi-demented mother and drinks himself to death amidst his own waste. The final third of the book consists of the author’s description of himself and his brother cleaning up the mess and preparing for the funeral. Incomprehensible to the author – and to the reader – is his father’s sudden mid-life transformation from being reserved, proper, distant and controlling, first to would-be bohemian and then to hopeless drunk. Though this change provides the organizing principle of the novel, it is only one of its parts. Much of the “action” (if action there is) consists of an alienated Knausgaard recalling his adolescence and observing himself struggling to write somewhere in Stockholm. In the course of this, we get his reflections on art – and what it does for him – his feelings towards his pregnant girlfriend and children (less warm than he thinks they should be), on death, alcohol, music and much besides. I can’t say that it is anything other than compelling, even though simultaneously revolting. Of course we cannot know what Knausgaard holds back, but he gives a good impression of total candour: he notices the difference between what he ought to feel and think and what he does, actually, feel and think, and tells us anyway.
[click to continue…]
{ 21 comments }
Our 10-year old daughter is only now becoming a serious reader. She had terrible trouble for a long time. We thought she had dyslexia, and maybe she does. Or maybe it’s an eye thing. One a bit lazy. Anyway, lots of letter reversals. b’s and d’s. p’s and q’s reduced her to tears. Reading made her literally sick to her stomach and exhausted for a long time. For her any reading was like reading in a car for anyone else. On the other hand, she could read stuff upside down just as easily as right-side up. Which is to say: not very easily, but better than you would expect. And then she got over it. Now I’m looking for good history books, or history-themed (possibly fictional) books for 10-year old girls, because Zoe has gotten more curious about that and she doesn’t get much history in school, somehow. US history. World history. Ancient history. Modern history. I’m flexible, so long as it seems like the treatment is likely to be entertaining to a bright 10-year old girl.
Accordingly, I’ve taken a flutter on this Kickstarter project that got BoingBoing’ed this morning. Seems like the right idea.
Suggestions?
Re the whole learning to like reading thing. It does seem that somehow she just outgrew or worked through whatever problem she was having, but Harry Potter seems to have played a not-inconsiderable part in the drama. I used to have a theory that the Harry Potter books just got freakishly lucky, being as popular as they were. Sure, they were good, but not that good. I thought it was more a social thing. Once everyone got into Harry, everyone got into getting into Harry and the snowball rolled down the hill into an avalanche. But my daughter is a counter-example to that. Harry Potter electrified her brain as nothing really had before, and it was nice that some of her friends liked it, too. But the books were the thing. It seems that J.K. Rowling’s formula is, simply, the perfect formula. Good to know.
{ 102 comments }
are “here”:http://www.locusmag.com/News/2012/04/2012-hugo-and-campbell-awards-nominees/. List of the fiction awards below the fold with brief reactions.
{ 64 comments }
I’m a bit puzzled by Rich Lowry’s degree of confidence that no one at NR agrees with what the Derb wrote. After all, the Derb himself is at NR. He was posting there as of two days ago. Does this mean he’s out at NR? Is Radio Derb going to cease broadcasting its message of freedom? Kremlin watchers want to know.
I’m curious to see how comments to Lowry’s post shape up. [UPDATE: no such luck. They’re closed.] What is wrong with Derb’s version of ‘the talk’, after all? He has the courage to speak Bell Curve truth to liberal power? He has the keen-eyed discernment to see race hucksterism and political correctness for what they really are? His remedy consists entirely of the rigorous practice of freedom of association? “Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.” I’m not seeing the problem here.
The Derb is a veritable Gandhi of passive resistance to injustice – compared to George Zimmerman, just for example. In a season in which reasonable conservatives are debating whether Zimmerman was is the right, surely they can at least come together in agreeing that the whole sorry situation – and the President’s shameful if perhaps inevitable insertion of race into the mix – could have been avoided if only someone had taken Zimmerman aside, at an earlier point in his life, and given him the Derb’s version of the Talk. [click to continue…]
{ 196 comments }