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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Thoman E. Mann, writing in today’s New York Times opinion page, applauds the defeat of “Election Reform” ballot initiatives in Ohio and California on Tuesday. Both initiatives “would have required a round of redistricting in the middle of this decade” and, Mann claims, “any initiative requiring mid-decade redistricting smells like a power grab by the […]
The Wall Street Journal features a review of Terrors of the Table by Walter Gratzer today (Normally, WSJ Online is by subscription only, but it is open to anyone this week, so enjoy!). Gratzer’s book comes on a swell of anti-diet-faddism and gives the long view of how things like the Atkins and South Beach […]
In a long line that stretches from Benjamin Franklin to Mark Twain and beyond, H. L. Mencken stands as one of America’s most influential stylists and its most prominent iconoclast. “It is a sin to believe evil in others,” Mencken said, “but it is seldom a mistake.” Preachers, politicians, pundits and pedants — Mencken exposed […]
by Gary Giddins, author of Weather Bird: Jazz at the Dawn of Its Second Century and the forthcoming Intelligent Design The waters that in the first days of September drowned New Orleans are the waters that established the incomparable city as a key port before the railroad replaced shipping as the primary vehicle of trade. […]
Tyler Cowen of Marginal Revolution praises Eric Oliver’s Fat Politics in a post today and gives us a peek into his eating patterns. First, I have recently switched from Raisin Bran to Spelts cereal in the morning. Second, I prefer mineral water to Coke, but Szechuan restaurants do not serve the former. I am waiting […]
Few costs infuriate the modern consumer more than the price at the pump. Type “fuel price riots” into Google for a list of fatal incidents from Yemen to Indonesia. US pundits have been raging against “price gouging” in the wake of Hurricane Katrina’s damage to the energy infrastructure, while in Britain a fuel protest never […]
THIS is first-rate history by a first-rate historian. Unlike many of his brethren, James T. Patterson can write, and he understands the value of vivid detail, using “Annie Hall,” “Norma Rae” and “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” to help explain the women’s movement. What’s more, he can think, and he offers analysis and interpretation that is consistently sensible…
PATTERSON captures one of the era’s most deplorable trends, the increase in individual and group selfishness that has manifested itself in, among other things, huge executive salaries and irresponsible tax cuts. He also zeroes in on one cause of this trend that few others have perceived: the “rights revolution,” which brought laudable progress for blacks, women and the disabled, but as it spread to other individuals and groups often transformed itself into a sense of entitlement without accompanying obligation, of rights without duties.
by Richard Davis, author of Electing Justice: Fixing the Supreme Court Nomination Process (Originally published in the Nov. 3 edition of Roll Call) For the third time in less than four months, the Senate is preparing for another Supreme Court confirmation, and of them, this one promises to be the most tension-filled. It is highly […]
John Reeves of The Motley Fool, an investment advice website, interviewed Tim Harford this week. It is a rare opportunity to hear the author of The Undercover Economist reveal his thoughts on how he would investment his money. Harford provides his analysis specifically of GM, Apple and the U.S. real estate market. Here is a […]
The brief history of America’s global war on terrorism demonstrates the folly of allowing the executive branch a free hand in determining the scope and conduct of that conflict. Deference to Mr. Bush’s fixation with Saddam Hussein has cost the United States dearly. To expand that misadventure will only drive those costs higher. Furthermore, an […]
Rosa Parks gave us a different image—defiance that was dignified and determined. And it moved us to action—action that was immediate in Montgomery, and spread over time throughout the South. It planted in my generation the psychological seed we needed to break out of the protective cocoon of our segregated worlds, where our families—biological and extended—did everything within their limited powers to keep us out of harm’s way, echoing, for different reasons, the white mantra that we should “stay in our place.” Rosa Parks defined her place –as a first class human being—and planted the seeds that germinated in the souls of young people like myself. Within a few years, we would follow Sister/Mama Rosa, I, into a resistant, all- white University, my classmates and friends into the streets held by Atlanta’s white powers—defying their intransigence singing that old spiritual: “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me’roun.” As we, each in our own ways, challenged the system that made us second class citizens, we came to “see…in a new light both our past and our future. We could see that past—the segregation, the deprivation and denial—for what it was, a system designed to keep us in our place and convince us somehow that it was our fault, as well as our destiny. Now, without either ambivalence or shame, we saw ourselves as the heirs to a legacy of struggle…ennobling…[and] enabling us to take control of our destiny.”
Ben Keene, editor of Oxford’s Atlas program, made the circuit of NPR radio programs this week to discuss Atlas of the World, Deluxe Edition. He has appeared on Weekend Edition and Marketplace and both segments are available in the show archives. The Atlas of the World is the only atlas that is updated every year […]
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution printed a great excerpt from James C. Cobb’s Away Down South over the weekend. Entitled “RED CLAY AND THE BLACK EXPERIENCE,” the excerpt addresses “the readiness, even eagerness, of African-Americans both in the South and outside it to identify themselves unequivocally as Southerners and claim the region as home.” Here is the […]