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The Media’s Blackout Of The National Defense Authorization Act Is Shameful
The Media’s Blackout Of The National Defense Authorization Act Is Shameful The broadcast media’s ignorance and unwillingness to cover the National Defense Authorization Act, a radical piece of legislation which outrageously redefines the US homeland as a “battlefield” and makes US citizens subject to military apprehension and detainment for life without access to a trial…
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How Frank Luntz is teaching Republicans to talk about Occupy Wall Street
How Frank Luntz is teaching Republicans to talk about Occupy Wall Street austinkleon: The evil DoubleSpeak genius Frank Luntz is up to his old tricks: 1. Don’t say ‘capitalism.’2. Don’t say that the government ‘taxes the rich.’ Instead, tell them that the government ‘takes from the rich.’3. Republicans should forget about winning the battle over…
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Riley Palmer, a second grader at City and Country, said that creating a series of Brooklyn Bridges, each about three feet tall, helped her class understand what it had been like for the original builders. “There is so much you can do with blocks,” Riley said. “You can stagger them. You can stack them. It’s…
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brianlucid: The National Endowment for the Arts released a Research Note on Artists in the Workforce today that contains industry-specific, regional, and demographic data on the 2.1 million artists working in the U.S. There is plenty of interesting data inside, starting with the fact that designers by far hold the highest percentage (39%) of all…
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Robert Reich: The Rebirth of Social Darwinism
Robert Reich: The Rebirth of Social Darwinism Darwin is okay in the board room, but not the class room? robertreich: What kind of society, exactly, do modern Republicans want? I’ve been listening to Republican candidates in an effort to discern an overall philosophy, a broadly-shared vision, an ideal picture of America. They say they want…
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austinkleon: Al Jaffee’s Iconic MAD Fold-Ins: The Definitive Collection, 1964-2010 | Brain Pickings Had no clue there was a collection of Jaffee’s Fold-Ins out! This interview is great: When I met Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart and the writers who work for them, all of them were so nice to me primarily because they had…
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Is She or Isn’t She?
lareviewofbooks: JOHN CLUTE on Margaret Atwood and the S and F words. Elevator Girl House F1 © Miwa Yanagi 1997 Margaret AtwoodIn Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination New York: Doubleday/Nan A Talese, 2011. 255 pp. There are a few problems here, which may take a few minutes to sort through before we can get…
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Barthes vehemently opposes the view that authors consciously create masterpieces. He maintains that authors such as Racine and Balzac often reproduce emotional patterns about which they have no conscious knowledge. He opposes the view that authors should be interpreted in terms of what they think they’re doing. Their biographies have no more relevance to what…
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According to this reading of myth, a myth occurs only if someone is a true believer who consumes the myth innocently. This is why, for certain later writers, a postmodern ‘ironic’ reading, which recognises and plays with the constructedness of myths, is deemed subversive. It is also why ironic uses of stereotypes are sometimes differentiated…
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David Chalmers, however, argues that materialist reductionism of the Churchlands’ type throws out too much, and cannot deal with the fact that humans enjoy sunsets. Chalmers agrees with Thomas Nagel that there is something that it feels like to be a bat, or a human, but there may be nothing that it is like to…