November 2011
22 posts
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Behind the Throne: Alinsky, Strauss, and the... →
Nice piece on the search for intellectual conspiracies.
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You may think it’s self-evident that whatever people think of the Occupy movement, they shouldn’t fracture veterans’ skulls, drive cars into protesters, etc. Roy Edroso rounded up some rightwing bloggers who disagree.
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Riding on the Shoulder →
In case anyone missed it: Jake Mohan’s Twin Cities Runoff article about “The Marginalized Cyclists of the Twin Cities” is good.
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“There was water before there was bottled water. Nobody was dying of thirst.”
– Chris Lane of Xanterra Parks and Resorts, a concessions company that stands to lose from a ban on disposable water bottles in the national parks, and is lobbying for the ban anyway.
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Is Yemen's Capital City Doomed? →
Amanda Erickson: “Yemeni capital Sana’a is on track for a highly dubious honor: experts say it may become the first waterless capital city.” Also: “For the first time, some activists released a Green Guide to Hajj, which outlines ways a pilgrimage to Mecca can be more sustainable. This comes on the heels the first-ever light-rail system to Mecca.”
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OBNOXIOUS: Katie Roiphe’s Harasser-Centered Sexual... →
Garland Grey: “Last Saturday Katie Roiphe’s ‘In Favor of Dirty Jokes and Risqué Remarks’ appeared on the New York Times’ Op-Ed page. Roiphe took as her ostensible subject the Herman Cain sexual harassment allegations, but quickly abandoned that topic to meander aimlessly through a collection of every ignorant thing she had ever thought about sexual harassment in the workplace....
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Brazil's Population Is Now Majority Minority →
According to Nate Berg of The Atlantic, the change is mostly not due to a shift in genetics, but to “more African-Brazilians feeling more comfortable self-identifying as black or mixed race.”
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In the summer every bike ride was a joy, but now it isn’t; it isn’t even pleasant, really. With every day that’s colder than the day before, getting on a bike seems increasingly dumb. But I’m still smiling, so far, and I think it’s because it’s an opportunity to tell Nature, “You’re not the boss of me!”
But someday soon Nature will...
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“Mr. Gordon said some other criticisms of Mr. Cain’s foreign policy comments had...”
– Richard A. Oppel, Jr., reporting on how much Herman Cain doesn’t know. This, of course, is why some candidates spend any part of their lives learning about the world before they run for president.
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Class warfare is unpopular. Will Occupy Wall... →
Brad Plumer: “[T]he number of Americans who agree with the statement that ‘government should reduce income differences between the rich and poor’ has plummeted…. As it turns out, wealthy CEOs aren’t driving the drop. Americans with below-average income are. Kuziemko and Norton’s theory is that, during rickety economic periods, people at lower income levels worry that...
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Who Exactly IS The 1%? →
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Washing Machines Are Culprit in Plastic Pollution,... →
“Over the last decade, scientists have become increasingly alarmed about a type of pollution that cannot be seen. Micrometer-size fragments of plastics like acrylic, polyethylene, polypropylene, polyamide and polyester have contaminated the surface waters of the northeast Atlantic as well as shoreline habitats in Britain, Singapore and India, the researchers write.”
All the President's Frenemies →
Adam Serwer writes about Cornel West, Tavis Smiley, and Barack Obama. “Is it realistic though, to expect any president to ‘represent the legacy of Dr. King’? Brown University economics professor Glenn Loury says it isn’t. ‘I find West’s formulation—”lackey,” “running dog,” “puppet”—laughable. Not that it’s inaccurate but that he should be...
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9-9-9 in One (Really Long) Graph →
(via Ezra Klein)
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The Livestream Ended: How I Got Off My Computer... →
This is long (for a blog post), but good, and important. “Never in my life did I imagine I’d be sitting with a group of adults seriously debating policy as if our decision made a difference.”
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Global CO2 emissions rising faster than worst-case... →
“Worse than worst-case” is not a headline you like to see.
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An open letter to the “Black Bloc” brigades -... →
bustedpuppet:
Don’t be so quick to judge the people that vandalized buildings and smashed windows; they’re not all rowdy rich kids, they’re not all males, they’re not all monsters (these same people brought me in when I was a traveler; they served me tea, they offered me clothes, they offered me books). Their costumes, their implements and their collective actions all speak to premeditation and...
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Cold Weather Bicycling: Minneapolis Issues Forum →
Good advice on winter biking (along with some digressions), some of it specific to Minneapolis. Me, I’m still undecided.
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Notes on income inequality →
Ezra Klein: “Martin Gilens, a political scientist at Princeton University, has been collecting the results of nearly 2,000 survey questions reaching back to the 1980s, looking for evidence that when opinions change, so too does policy. And he found it—but only for the rich. Policy changes with majority support didn’t become law except when that majority support included voters at the top of...
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