August 2011

Coups, corporations, and classified information

By Arindrajit Dube, Ethan Kaplan, and Suresh Naidu

The Central Intelligence Agency was created in 1947 under the National Security Act. The act allowed for “functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security,” in addition to intelligence gathering. Initially, the scope of the CIA was relegated to intelligence, though a substantial and vocal group advocated for a more active role for the agency. This culminated in National Security Council Directive No. 4, which ordered the CIA to undertake covert actions against communism.

A Facebook roundtable of the Left

Who said academics don’t know how to use social media? Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, has certainly proved them wrong. After reading this article by Glenn Greenwald, Robin turned to Facebook.

Raining sand

By Michael Welland
It was a double-dose of adrenalin: watching a violently growing volcanic eruption while retaining a firm grip on my twelve-year old daughter to prevent her sliding off the rolling boat and plummeting into the turbulent waters of the Sunda Strait. The boat was a rickety old tub, the Sumatran helmsman grinning cheerfully. The volcano was Anak Krakatoa.

Kneading bread for the needy

By Anatoly Liberman
In those rare cases in which people ask my advice about good writing, I tell them not to begin (to not begin?) their works with epigraphs from Mark Twain or Oscar Wilde, for the rest will look like an insipid anticlimax, and, disdainful of ground-to-dust buzzwords and familiar quotations, I also suggest that people avoid (naturally, like the plague) such titles as “A Tale of Two Friendships/ Losses/ Wars,” etc. and resist the temptation to

A call to reason

By Elvin Lim
America’s economy is not in crisis, but its political system is, or so thinks the S&P. The real problem, however, is not the political system per se, but its infection with populism.

Even though the S&P has downgraded the US’s credit rating, it did so from an exaggerated understanding of American politics based on its shrillness, and not its constitutional fundamentals. This is why on the first trading day after the downgrade, American bonds are still the place to go.

The justification of punishment

By Victor Tadros
When an offender commits a crime most of us think that the state is justified, and perhaps also required, to punish him or her. But punishment causes offenders a great deal of harm, it costs a lot of money, and it not only harms offenders, it also harms their family and friends. What could possibly justify doing these things?

When men are left alone

By Phyllis R. Silverman, Ph.D.
It was with some excitement that I read the article on men and grief in the July 25th edition of the New York Times. It mentioned Widower: When Men Are Left Alone, which I had written with Scott Campbell, a text that is now 20 years old and still very relevant. I was pleased for another reason that took me a while to recognize. The article

The Catholics have won.
(Or so it seems.)

By Thomas A. Tweed

Whose country is this? It’s ours. That’s been the recurring answer to that persistent question. Of course, in religiously and ethnically plural America that means many groups have claimed the nation as their own. As Reverend Josiah Strong did in his 1885 book Our Country, some have proposed that this is an Anglo-Saxon Protestant nation. But others have proclaimed primacy too. There was already a grid of tribal nations here when Europeans started planting flags and raising crosses.

Why history says gay people can’t marry…nor can anyone else*

By Helen Berry

I happened to be in New York at the end of June this year when the State legislature passed the Marriage Equality Act to legalise same-sex marriage. By coincidence, it was Gay Pride weekend, and a million people waved rainbow flags in the streets of Manhattan, celebrating this landmark ruling in the campaign for gay rights, and I was one of them.

What struck me as a visitor from the UK – where civil partnerships for same-sex couples have been legal since 2004 – was the way in which gay marriage is still such a divisive issue in American politics.

How cats land on their feet

By Ian Stewart
Falling cats can turn over in mid-air. Well, most cats can. Our first cat, Seamus, didn’t have a clue. My wife, worried he might fall off a fence and hurt himself, tried to train him by holding him over a cushion and letting go. He enjoyed the game, but he never learned how to flip himself over.

Have you heard of René Blum?

Well? Have you? If not, it’s probably because René Blum’s lifelong career in the arts has been safely hidden from the history books. Only his brother Léon Blum, the first Socialist and Jewish Prime Minister of France, received enormous attention. But Judith Chazin-Bennahum knows why René Blum deserves to be remembered: because he was an extraordinary man. Chazin-Bennahum’s book introduces the reader to the world of the Belle Epoque artists and writers, the Dreyfus Affair, the playwrights and painters who reigned supreme during the late 19^th century and early 20^th century period in Paris. Below she provides us with just a few of his most impressive accomplishments.

That ugly Americanism? It may well be British.

By Dennis Baron
Matthew Engel is a British journalist who doesn’t like Americanisms. The Financial Times columnist told BBC listeners that American English is an unstoppable force whose vile, ugly, and pointless new usages are invading England “in battalions.” He warned readers of his regular FT column that American imports like truck, apartment, and movies are well on their way to ousting native lorries, flats, and films.

Engel’s tirade against the American “faze, hospitalise, heads-up, rookie, listen up” and “park up” got several million page views

1 million dead in Iraq?

By John Tirman
As the U.S. war in Iraq winds down, we are entering a familiar phase, the season of forgetting—forgetting the harsh realities of the war. Mostly we forget the victims of the war, the Iraqi civilians whose lives and society have been devastated by eight years of armed conflict. The act of forgetting is a social and political act, abetted by the American news media. Throughout the war, but especially now, the minimal news we get from Iraq consistently devalues the death toll of Iraqi civilians.

Executive pay: are the days of golden packages numbered?

By Christine Mallin
The disquiet over excessive executive remuneration packages and a lack of appropriate links with relevant performance measures has been a matter of concern in recent years. After the financial crisis, there is even more of a focus on this aspect with shareholders becoming increasingly frustrated with both the amount and the design of executive remuneration packages.

Do evangelical Christian politicians help evangelicals?

By David Sehat

On Aug. 6, Texas Gov. Rick Perry will lead a prayer rally in Houston despite criticism that his event violates the separation of church and state. Though Perry said recently that he felt “called” to run for the presidency, he also told a Christian radio show that the rally will not be political. “This is simply people calling out to God,” he said.

Not an inkling

By Anatoly Liberman
Inkling: English is full of such cozy, homey words. There is the noun inkle “linen tape or thread” and the verb inkle “to whisper.” The noun is still listed as current, while the verb, which was extremely rare in the past, has survived only in dialectal use. Both, as well as inkling, were first recorded in Middle English, but little can be said about them. Winkle, twinkle, and crinkle shed no light on their past. Inkle “tape” and inkle “whisper” don’t seem to belong together. Dutch has enkel “simple,” and Swedish has enkel “single.”