Monthly Archives: September 2005

End of a Freelancer

I’ve been meaning for about a week to write about my friend Ben Yagoda’s Slate article in which he bids farewell to a freelance career. I see a few bloggers couldn’t resist taking a dig at him for having another … Continue reading

Posted in Blogging, Miscellany | 6 Comments

Diamond, Cultural Anthropology, Postcolonial Theory

Frederick Errington and Deborah Gewertz have made a series of interesting posts about Jared Diamond, “Yali’s Question” and Papua New Guinea at Savage Minds. I agree with a number of comments I understand them to be making, particularly that Diamond’s … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Books | 6 Comments

Passages

I’ve been meaning for a while to blog about Passages, which is a web-based revival of a publication started and maintained by my graduate advisor, David William Cohen. I helped put together one of the original issues in the early … Continue reading

Posted in Academia, Africa, Blogging | 7 Comments

A Simple Lie, or the Can’t-Do Party

Like I’ve said, predictions and acting on predictions, that’s a complicated business. What’s not complicated is when the head of Homeland Security says, “Nobody could have predicted that this would happen”. You can’t spin your way past that one. You … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | 11 Comments

Update on the Precautionary Principle

Gary Farber has been doing an impressive job of compiling a wide variety of reports on the situation in New Orleans, particularly from The Interdictor, who is blogging from within New Orleans. One thing I’ll take back about my original … Continue reading

Posted in Politics | 7 Comments

Small Suggestion

This idea has cropped up in a couple of variant forms in various places–Glenn Reynolds notes that the University of Tennessee has already taken 50 law students from Tulane and Loyola— but it’ll take quick action to systematically reproduce that … Continue reading

Posted in Academia | 11 Comments