Monthly Archives: June 2008

Let Us Entertain You

I was curious about what the commenters at Cartoon Brew thought about Wall-E. While I was there, I was drawn into reading a much-commented upon entry about one of the writers for Kung-Fu Panda, and a blog entry he had … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging | 6 Comments

Abra Kadabra

Wall-E is terrific, but I also really liked the Pixar short, Presto, beforehand. There have been some attempts to recapture the spirit of the classic Warner Brothers’ cartoons over the years. As far continuing series go, I liked both Pinky … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging, Popular Culture | 5 Comments

Big Pharma, Big Wonkery

In the current issue, Discover has an interesting article on pharmaceutical testing. On one level, it’s consistent with many other critiques of the pharmaceutical industry and of academic and medical researchers who do its bidding. However, the article also raises … Continue reading

Posted in Academia | 11 Comments

The People Are The Enemy

There’s not a lot to say about Zimbabwe that I have not already said. Things are bad, they don’t look to get better, they have the potential to get even worse, hard as that is to imagine. It’s not about … Continue reading

Posted in Africa | 34 Comments

When Wertham Comes A-Calling

I’m working through David Hajdu’s excellent The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America. While it’s a story that I already knew well, Hadju has collected a lot of interesting reminiscences from comic-book creators of the … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Books, Popular Culture | 18 Comments

Mirror Mirror

I think if you did a search-and-replace on this David Brooks column, substituting the columnist’s own name every time he mentions Obama, it would be a pretty apt description of Brooks’ calculatedly dishonest approach to commentary.

Posted in Politics | 6 Comments

M is for Mandarin

Via 11D, here’s an article by William Deresiewicz that I like considerably more than his recent standard-issue world-we-have-lost complaint about contemporary English Departments. Deresiewicz is concerned about the particular character of meritocratic elitism in contemporary higher education, and about the … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Swarthmore | 17 Comments

It’s a Mystery

Kind of on a nostalgic impulse, I decided to pick up the 4th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, which came out on June 6th. I haven’t played so-called tabletop games, including D&D, for a long time, but this release caught … Continue reading

Posted in Games and Gaming, Popular Culture | 8 Comments

Neither Victims Nor Torturers

Alberto Mora was one of the speakers at Swarthmore’s commencement this spring. He gave a short, terse and I thought powerful speech about the decisions he had made as General Counsel for the U.S. Navy and about the consequences of … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | 6 Comments

Vindication

Must remember to take my medicine tonight.

Posted in Domestic Life, Food | 1 Comment