Dive into the archives.

• also, green day

  anarchist (?n’?r-k?st) – n. – political and social provocateur whose activist education is rooted in a used Fight Club DVD and six Rage Against the Machine MP3s. cf. mook with an associate degree. –Merlin Mann

  05 Sep 2008 & Cetera, Society (or "the social"); one comment. permalink   

• gustav relief

  Hurricane Gustav made landfall earlier today, and it shouldn’t be hard to find ways to help through your favorite charitable organization. (Bonus for anarcho-capitalists: go ahead and pretend those evil taxes you pay are for charity.) One of the first requests for help I received was, oddly enough, from Design Observer. It seems the AIGA’s [...]

  01 Sep 2008 & Cetera, Society (or "the social"); no comments. permalink   

• how the colombians freed betancourt

  For those of you following the story of the dramatic hostage rescue in Colombia last week, you may wonder how a government helicopter snuck into a leftist rebel camp armed to the teeth. Well, they disguised themselves as members of an NGO. Since the late 1990s, the NGO practice of dragging the military into court [...]

  08 Jul 2008 Politics, Society (or "the social"), War & Peace; no comments. permalink   

• islamic lobby hates cute puppies

  If CAIR wants to hunt down those who are making Islam look bad, maybe they want to look at some of their own followers. It seems Muslims in Scotland are outraged by a postcard that local police sent to publicize their new phone number, featuring a “wide-eyed, 6-week-old puppy” named Rebel. A comment over at [...]

  05 Jul 2008 Politics, Society (or "the social"); one comment. permalink   

• the “conservative” case for gay marriage

  Jonathan Rauch, a scholar at the Brookings Institute and a writer for the National Journal makes a good case for encouraging the movement toward gay marriage. For once, it doesn’t say “Gay marriage is good, because people who are against it are uptight Bush-loving Methhead NASCAR freaks who are probably closeted anyway.” Just a note: [...]

  22 Jun 2008 Politics, Society (or "the social"); no comments. permalink   

• twenty-one accents

  Sure, her southern accent is a little rusty, and her Texan and Brooklyn are sketchy, but it’s far better than I could hope to do. h/t: the sister. addendum Click here for an interview with Amy Walker and an answer to just which of those accents is the real one.

  20 May 2008 & Cetera, Society (or "the social"); no comments. permalink   

• another step “backwards”

  My dear friend Shruti Rajagopalan writes in the WSJ Asia about the Indian Supreme Court ruling on caste-based quotas in higher education. For those unfamiliar with the matter, it’s definitely worth a read. The prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management were some of the last bastions of meritocracy left in India, [...]

  21 Apr 2008 Economics, Society (or "the social"); no comments. permalink   

• the myth of the middle class squeeze

  iPod-toting hipsters love to talk about income inequality and the evils of capitalism. After my lecture, one young woman walked up to me on her way out and huffed: “What I favor is a radical redistribution of wealth in America.” I tried to tell her that America’s greatness is a result of our focus on [...]

  18 Mar 2008 Economics, Society (or "the social"); no comments. permalink   

• “i ain’t never heard nobody complain ’bout the beer we got”

  Obviously Alabama Representative Alvin Holmes (D) has never listened to Jeremiah mocking Coors adverts. From Reason’s Hit & Run, an excerpt from the debate on the gourmet beers bill in the Alabama House: “What’s the matter with the beer we got? I mean, the beer we got drink pretty good, don’t it? I ain’t never [...]

  18 Mar 2008 Economics, Politics, Society (or "the social"); no comments. permalink