Monthly Archives: November 2012

Why It’s Not Even Worth Talking About Gaza

I don’t often link primarily to just say, “I’ll have what he’s having, bartender”, but this short essay by David Atkins on Gaza is a good reason to break that habit. As Atkins says, it’s pointless and thankless in several … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | 14 Comments

On Lincoln and Accuracy

A Facebook friend of mine directed my attention to Eric Foner’s evaluation of the film Lincoln. Foner likes the film somewhat, but complains that it is inaccurate in some important respects. Foner comments, “The emancipation of the slaves is a … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Popular Culture | 3 Comments

Flash Mob Protest Wanted

Yo, people of San Francisco! If ever there has been a store that deserves to be periodically picketed by a flash mob, it’s Unionmade. (493 Sanchez Street). The Gawker story has all the information you need to know. Postmodern bullshit … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | 1 Comment

A Mismatching of Frame and Picture

I understand the allure that a certain kind of soft-authoritarian approach to governance offers, not the least because when the man on the white horse is genuinely devoted to producing beneficial outcomes in his (or her) territory, good changes with … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | 2 Comments

Danger in Numbers

Writing and reading large numbers of letters for tenure and promotion dossiers is quite a chore. On that, I agree with Don M. Chance. On almost everything else he says about such letters in his essay for the Chronicle, we … Continue reading

Posted in Academia | 4 Comments

Those Who Won’t Teach

The various distinctions that institutions of higher education like to draw between themselves are sometimes important and sometimes true (not necessarily both at once). And sometimes those distinctions hold some weight outside of higher education, among prospective students and their … Continue reading

Posted in Academia | 3 Comments

The Folkloric First Amendment

One curious part of online discourse almost since the beginning of the Internet has been the way that the First Amendment figures as an iconic artifact at certain recurrent moments, almost as much as the comparison-to-Nazism described by Godwin’s Law. … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | 5 Comments

The State of the Art: 500px and Flickr as a Window Into Social Media (II)

II. Algorithmic Culture: Code and Agency New media theorists and digital humanists, most prominently Alexander Galloway, have been writing over the last decade about “algorithmic culture”, about practices, interpretations and readings that arise within and around algorithmic media. Galloway often … Continue reading

Posted in Digital Humanities, Information Technology and Information Literacy, Oh Not Again He's Going to Tell Us It's a Complex System, Pictures from an Institution | 1 Comment

Akins of Tomorrow

I posted a while back on Facebook about Todd Akin’s statements on abortion and rape, but the subject is worth returning to this morning. Among the post-mortems is the proposition that extreme anti-abortion sentiments cost the Republicans two Senate seats … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | 14 Comments

What Could Change

Lest anyone think from my essays yesterday that I didn’t vote, or that I don’t think it’s important to vote for Obama, a quick note. 1) I can’t think of anything that Romney would likely improve, even in areas where … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | 2 Comments