December 2008
35 posts
WatchJenny 8. Lee gives a delightful and humorous TED talk on her excellent book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles., which tracks the rise and popularity of Chinese Food in America.
Samuel Huntington, author of 'The Clash of...
Samuel Huntington, the prescient and controversial political scientist most famous for his theories on the “Clash of Civilizations”, died last week at the age of 81.
After the fall of the Cold War, many political scientists declared the ‘End of History’ – Western-style liberal democracy had won the day, and the globe was entering a long, uni-polar moment of American ascendancy. Huntington...
Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
I’ve just finished reading Ayn Rand’s hefty and imaginative tome Atlas Shrugged. The novel has a highly original plot: America’s captains of industry, frustrated with the shackles placed upon them by the government and led by the godlike John Galt, decide to go on strike. As the best men and women retreat from society, they create a vacuum filled only by chaos, starvation, and...
Who donates more to charity: Liberals or...
Conservatives donate a higher portion of their personal wealth to charity than liberals, Nicholas Kristof reports today. Even Arthur Brooks, the researcher behind the findings, is surprised by this. He tells us that he assumed liberals “genuinely cared more about others than conservatives did.”
Meanwhile, Kristof paints the news as an oxymoron: “Democrats, who speak passionately about the hungry...
Tattletale Mark "Deep Throat" Felt Dead at 95 →
"I think he's a charlatan. At best his conducting...
The New York Times today presents the most aggressively negative article about art I have ever seen. The subject: Gilbert Kaplan’s conducting of Mahler’s Second Symphony at the New York Philharmonic. (No, not National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation, a movie so bad it almost made me want to cancel my trip to Vegas next month.)
Kaplan is a Mahler enthusiast who turned his love of the symphony into...
“The UC Election Commission declared Flores the winner less than a day after...”
– Some things never change.
Bush tries to saves his legacy
President Bush hit the legacy trail yesterday, making the case for his presidency at the U.S. Army War College and in an interview with Fox News. Bush sums up his argument: “We’ll never know how many lives have been saved, but this is for certain: Since 9/11, there’s not been another terrorist attack on American soil.”
Today, 9/11 seems so long ago. In 2001, Bush was green in the job;...
“Burma’s dictator has a chestful of bullshit...
Slate’s Explainer came out with their “best of” questions that they didn’t answer this year, including one reader’s query about Mr. Than Shwe.
Too bad they avoided some of these questions – I am genuinely curious why humans don’t have a mating season. (According to this guy, it’s thanks to booze. Somehow I doubt that.)
There are some pretty funny questions in there - definitely worth a...
Staten Island tries to secede!
Staten Island is once again threatening to secede from New York City.
Andrew Lanza, the sponsoring politician: “I always thought secession was a good idea.” Really? Is that the best sound-bite you could come up with?
Several sources of humor, besides the obvious:
1. The legislation is somehow 2,115 pages long! Unfortunately it’s not public yet, so we’ll have to hold...
A Centrist Education Secretary
Obama today tapped Arne Duncan, the head of the Chicago school system, to be the nation’s next Secretary of Education. Newspapers greeted him with seemingly oxymoronic and near-identical ledes:
WSJ: Arne “has introduced some education reforms popular with conservatives without alienating teachers unions.”
NYT: Arne has taken “tough steps to improve schools while maintaining respectful relations...
Why are you playing hockey in Russia, Jaromir...
“If the police stop you [in the U.S.] because you’re going too fast, they can put you in jail. But sometimes you just need to go fast. Here [in Russia] you always have choices” — including, he seemed to imply, bribing one’s way out of trouble.
Welcome back, Client #9!
If you haven’t been reading Eliot Spitzer’s new column on Slate, that needs to change right now (here and here). A short eight months after the anti-prostitution crusader was discovered to be fiddling with a filly at the Mayflower, Client #9 is back dispending his valuable words of wisdom. If you were somehow uncertain as to the depths of Spitzer’s arrogance and narcissism, the swift arrival of...
will.i.blog gets a facelift
It appears my previous theme wasn’t optimized for all web browers. To accomodate my millions of readers who use Internet Explorer, I’ve changed my theme. Still working out the kinks…
will.i.saw: The Bush Twins
Is Barbara Bush getting married?
The Bush twins were seen by my sister Claire today shopping for wedding dresses at Vera Wang, and later lunching at Serafina Restaurant on the Upper East Side. The girls reportedly got carded when they ordered drinks at Serafina.
But who were they dress shopping for? Was it Barbara? The twins were with a friend, and my sister suspects it was the friend who is...
Sasha and Malia go to school
Barack Obama has decided to send Sasha and Malia to the plush, $29,000 a year Sidwell Friends School, but Claire Bulger has a nice piece in The Harvard Crimson arguing the President-elect should send them to a D.C. public school instead. Michelle Rhee is overhauling the D.C. public school system and working to break the teachers union; Obama should send a clear message that he supports this type...
Some smart political commentary wrapped in a fun challenge: Given a list of quotes, can you guess who said each one - Rod Blagojevich or Tony Soprano. (I got 9/10).
BarackObama@gmail.com unmasked! →
I wonder if Guru Raj reads will.i.blog now.
Thanks to MWH for the link.
A question on this whole Blogojevich mess
Why are we in America so allergic to holding special elections?
When a Senate seat becomes vacant, why don’t we simply hold a brief campaign (one or two months long) and let voters elect a new senator via special election? The abbreviated campaign would diminish the role of money in the election. It would return elector power back to the populace. Vitally, it we would wrest influence...
A brief description of what went wrong. →
And a longer one.
More bad news for the newspaper industry
New York Times set to borrow $225M against their beautiful, eco-friendly midtown building to forestall impending cash flow problems.
And the Tribune Company (owner of Chicago Tribune, LA Times) appears on the brink of declaring bankruptcy.
Drudge, with a heavy dose of schaudenfreude, shouts the NYT headline.
The Restoration of Larry Summers
The once-disgraced Larry Summers has found renewal, friend and erstwhile Crimson managing editor Javier Hernandez reports in this Sunday’s New York Times.
I wonder how Summers’ critics at Harvard feel now that their former adversary will be one of the most influential voices in favorite son Barack Obama’s new administration. Some professors have warmed to him, the Globe reports, but even in that...
A blog is born
There are 25 million blogs in the United States – one for every 7 internet users.
There are 1.5 million blog entries made each day around the world.
And every second, 1.4 new blogs are born. To that din, I have decided to add one more voice.
Welcome to my blog. I hope you enjoy it.