Detroit, again
Outsiders moaning about Detroit’s woes can be a little unseemly (see this photo gallery, for example), but it’s hard not to feel for the residents of this embattled neighborhood. Read the whole thing, as...
Monthly Archive: March 2010
Community, technology, & work
I think this Amanda Marcotte piece is pretty interesting. She touches on the idea of work and community and how the modern workplace has, until very recently, served to cut us off entirely from...
Lost blogging – ‘Sundown’
I’m a little late to my Lost blogging again – mainly because I didn’t end up watching ‘Sundown’ until this past Friday. I thought it was a good episode. Very dark. The show is...
Mysticism, (Huh), What is it Good For? Absolutely Nothing (But Relatively Something)
As the League’s resident ordained clergyman to be, I read with piqued interest Br. Jason’s take on Ross Douthat’s take on the American take on contemporary religious mysticism. Jason quotes this passage from Baba...
I never get tired of these.
The conservative-attack-on-Ayn-Rand essay isn’t anything new, and I don’t know if anyone will ever top Whittaker Chambers’s classic review of Atlas Shrugged, but The New Criterion’s Anthony Daniels has made another entry in the...
Mystical America
All sorts of interesting this morning from Ross Douthat, regarding America and the mystical experience. He writes: Conservative believers fixate on the culture wars, religious liberals preach social justice, and neither leaves room for...
Jeopardy recruits heavily from our blogroll
First James Poulos of Postmodern Conservative, now frequent commenter Kyle Matthews of Vogue Republic. We expect (nay, demand!) an incredibly dorky blog shout-out when Trebek interrogates you after the first commercial break, Kyle.
Markets and morally satisfying outcomes.
I need to vent a little bit about the way the discussions under Jason’s post on markets and E.D.’s response have tended to move into debates about the merits of communism and capitalism, as...
Compare and Contrast
From TNR’s excellent review of The Killer Trail, a history of one murderous French expedition into the heart of 19th century Africa (emphasis mine): The Europeans, Taithe notes, never recognized African kingdoms as states,...
Of Elections and Insurgencies
Stephen Lee Myers in the New York Times: Defying a sustained barrage of mortars and rockets in Baghdad and other cities, Iraqis went to the polls in strength on Sunday to choose a new...
The Unholy Alliance
Will Wilkinson discusses markets, governments, and corporations, and what happens when the latter two team up to defeat the former. I generally agree, but my own intuition suggests we don’t really know how much...
A brief defense of Walmart
In my ‘wealth and moral character’ post, the discussion quickly turned to the Walmart debate, and whether Walmart was bad or good for local economies, communities, etc. Let me first say that I understand...
Mapping Herodotus
Via Rogue Classicism comes a truly awesome project at Leeds: The Herodotus Encoded Space-Text Image Archive (HESTIA). Using digital technologies like Google Earth, they’ve mapped out all the spatial information in Herodotus. You’ve got...
Shadow Banking Must Read
This is a very informative piece on how the shadow banking system works (i.e. the “repo” markets – as in sale and repurchase). Enjoy
“Majoring in Idiocy”
Something’s in the air: over at the Front Porch Republic, Jason Peters rails mightily against universities as “diploma retailers” turning young people into “idiots”. It’s well worth reading.
Podcast: Oscar Night at the League
Here at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen, we’re doing our part to help kill off serious film criticism. I sat down with distinguished League alumnus Freddie deBoer and Sonny Bunch of America’s Future Foundation...
Hayworth FAIL
Br. Erik (as the League’s Arizonan) is probably in a better position to assess this, but why is J.D. Hayworth running an ad with John McCain painted in Avatar-war paint? 1. McCain is remembered...
The Weekly Standard pulls a Cully Stimson
Does the name Cully Stimson ring a bell? In 2007 Stimson, in his capacity as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, made a series of bizarre statements on NPR criticizing the law...
We Don’t Need No (overpriced) Education
Taking a breather from celebrity nudity and Rob Reiner’s thoughts on health care, the Huffington Post is currently on a tear about college tuition rates. Angry undergrads are protesting tuition hikes across California and...
