Can You Whitewash (Potentially) White People?
From Huffpo: They also note this weekend’s release of “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” a live-action adaptation of a video game that stars white actor Jake Gyllenhaal in the title role instead...
Monthly Archive: May 2010
The Criminal Diaspora
At his Future of the City blog, Conor Friedersdorf links to an Atlantic magazine piece from 2008 on a new suburban crime wave. Definitely worth reading.
Richard Epstein on Rand Paul’s Gaffe
What would happen if we repealed Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits private businesses from discriminating by race? Richard Epstein answers, I think rightly: Repeal would produce quite a stir....
Learning from Poverty
Jason has helpfully reminded us why we should not romanticize locally grown, organic peasant food. But Design Observer has an excellent post on Indian craft that reminds us that we may have something to...
Fixing the Service Academies
It’s a subject I know very little about, but this op-ed on Annapolis and West Point is a pretty searing indictment of how we educate our officer corps.
What Fiscal Responsibility Means
UPDATED This tool from the Committee for a Responsible Budget is fantastic. It also drives home just how difficult it will be to restore some amount of fiscal responsibility. I actually got the debt...
Substi-blogging
Around the tubes….LOG Alum Br. Jamelle Bouie and friend of the Ordinary Gents Sr. Dara Lind are both guest blogging for Matthew Yglesias [link fixed]. Congrats on the gig you two. It’s well deserved....
The Idiocy of Rural Food
I’m sorry to be a downer on the whole peasant food discussion, but that’s part of my job as a historian. In very good times, peasant food was halfway decent. Very good times were...
Department of Exciting Literary Developments
The first volume of Mark Twain’s autobiography (!) is about to be released.
Ménage à cinq
The French Romantic author Gérard de Nerval once wrote: “In the character of our nation, there is a tendency to exercise force when one possesses it, and have pretensions to power, when one does...
Discrimination, Suits
To stir the pot a bit, I recall reading somewhere…. that the most common type of discrimination lawsuit is age discrimination by older people; that these suits are the most expensive discrimination cases to...
In Your Heart, You Know He’s Right
IOZ offers some wise advice for Rand Paul, and also a reality check.
The Parable of the Banana Leaf
Mark asks a question: Take, for instance, the concept of “peasant food.” Such food is indubitably the outcome of tradition, and there is certainly something special about making it and eating it as a...
At least it’s not another remake
Always follow your dreams! Like Quentin Dupieux, whose dream was to make a horror movie about a run-amok killer tire that blows people up with its mind. Yes- you read that right.
Plato, “Crito”, and should we obey bad laws?
Now we come to the dialogue “Crito”, which poses the question: What does the individual owe his society? Specifically, if living in a society means obeying the “laws of the land”, do we owe...
Further Notes on Dispositional Politics
I’ve been thrilled to watch the discussion about dispositional politics unfolding here at the League. Here are some further thoughts, in part to try to rein things in. Not all politics is dispositional.
Rand Paul, Meet Max Weber
So Rand Paul wouldn’t have supported the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Let’s start with Max Weber’s definition of the state, which libertarians often embrace: The state is a monopoly on the legitimate use of...
Adventures in counterfactuals: A United States of America without the states
I’m curious – what do you think would be different about the United States if there were no states (other than the name of the country, obviously)? Let’s say that somehow, back in the...
