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POPSSlavoj Žižek on the Matrix, #2 Another Žižek essay, "Welcome to the Desert of the Real," from 2001. Also on my reading list. Looks more closely at the images of violence and devastation and their role in the popular, post-9/11 imagination.
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POPSSlavoj Žižek on the Matrix This is Žižek's famous 1999 essay, "The Two Sides of Perversion." I'm clipping it because I intend to read it; the bits I've looked at are very good.
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POPSThe economics of the liberal-arts education I think this guy's statement of the problem faced by liberal arts institutions is pretty good, but his solution (make decisions based on values) isn't all that compelling (i.e., it doesn't say much).
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POPSOld-school journalism + blogging, social networks: synergy? Linked from Dave Winer's blog, I think. A cool, experimental idea: connect beat reporters with an online circle of stakeholders joined by modern net-based social-networking tools. In this scenario, the "new" "Web2.0" model of information distribution doesn't kill old-school journalism but reinvigorates it.
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POPSPrivacy law: "I've got nothing to hide" misses the point Haven't read this yet, but it looks interesting. Addresses the common, dismissive response to concerns about privacy and the law by people who say, "I've got nothing to hide, so why should I care?" and explains why this misrepresents the nature and importance of privacy.
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POPSFeast of Fools interviews Chocolate Rain's Tay Zonday This is why I gotta love the Internet. You don't just get Tay Zonday's wacky YouTube video. You get the video, plus the online conversation around it. Turns out he's an Am Civ grad student with interesting things to say about race and GLBT issues.
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POPSBradley Burstyn, Haaretz: What 1967 did to Judaism Bradley Burstyn writes in Haaretz last week that 1967, in convincing rabbis that they could be generals and putting them in a position of providing spiritual sustenance to an occupying army, effectively destroyed Orthodox Judaism. A provocative claim.
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POPSJohn Dixon on Michelangelo's Last Judgment I was looking through Wikipedia (http://snipr.com/1nau6) for a good reproduction of Michelangelo's Last Judgment (as background to some reading I've been doing on Rembrandt - http://snipr.com/1nauj) and I stumbled on this article. Looks useful. It's certainly true that the image of Jesus in the fresco is pretty enigmatic. He doesn't look wrathful, nor does he look welcoming; he seems to be thinking. And the position of the hands is especially mysterious. So I think Dixon is on to something in trying to parse the theology that underlies Michelangelo's portrayal. For images, see this clip .
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POPSLearning from history: the British pullout from Iraq, 1932 Maj. Joel Rayburn, a historian and officer now posted to CENTCOM, writes about the dangers of a too-hasty exit from Iraq, drawing on the British experience post-WWI. I need to read this more carefully, but it seems his ideas present a pretty strong rebuke to both Republican and Democratic positions on the war right now. He says: a purely military approach, which is what the administration is pushing (though they claim not to be) will probably make things worse, but leaving now would probably be just as bad. From Foreign Affairs; a cached version.
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POPSCurrently Reading a cousin of a colleague. a derivatives genius turned millionaire then avid philanthropist. we need more money makers like this guy.
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POPSR.I.P. Falwell: preliminary roundup of media coverage From various sources, here is a quick roundup of mainstream coverage of and blog responses to Falwell's death this week. I've barely begun to get through this list. Someone ought to start a wiki. Many of these links are from ReligionHeadlines.org and from other Religion Newswriters Assoc. pages. Some are from the GetReligion.org post on Falwell from this week. Others are from Beliefnet. Highly incomplete; I plan to update this. Feel free to leave additional links in the comments.
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POPSPNAS: Innovation, growth, and the global future of urban life A new article suggests that many sociological indicators for urban life conform to a relatively simple mathematical model, and that the model predicts that "innovation cycles" will have to increase consistently in order to avoid urban "stagnation" or social "collapse." Somewhat alarming.
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POPS"Ear-Ripping-Off Battles" against the devil Fascinating interview, prob. 2005, with Bob Welch, author of "You, the Warrior Leader." Welch, an evangelical Southern Baptist pastor and former Green Beret and wounded Vietnam vet, discusses the application of military thinking to "spiritual war."
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POPSBill McKibben on why "self-reliance" is a chimaera Self-reliance is the American "pathology" -- in the consumerist form of everyone cocooned in front of his own TV screen, or the environmentalist back-to-the-land form, or the survivalist nut-job form. We depend on each other & might as well admit it.
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