Politics
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The Rumpus International Rivers Interview #2: Dubravka Ugresic on the Danube
Born in the former Yugoslavia (present-day Croatia), Dubravka Ugresic began her career writing children’s television programs and books. In nearly four decades of writing and editing, she has published books on Russian contemporary fiction, edited anthologies of Russian avant-garde writing,…
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A Cold Business
The New York Times has caught clothing giant H & M (and, to a lesser extent, Wal-Mart) in the act of literally cutting and dumping unsold clothing instead of donating the garments to desperate charities. “It is winter. A third…
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The Catchphrase of the Decade is…
Ron Rosenbaum over at Slate, has been chronicling catchphrases for a while, and now at the dawn of 2010, he picks the catchphrase of the decade, and also does away with the awful ones by “throwing them under the bus.”…
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Politics Sunday
Is there a connection between immigration (both legal and otherwise) and lower crime rates? Oh, National Review. Sigh. “Sergei Magnitsky was our attorney, and friend, who died under excruciating circumstances in a Moscow pre-trial detention center on Nov. 16, 2009.…
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Julianna Baggott on “the Invisible Prejudice”
“What are the best books? The answer is always subjective, and I’m not a literary arbiter. But the message I received from this year’s lists was painfully familiar. It forced me to explain to my students — the next generation…
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Photocopied and Stapled
I’m not sure if 2009’s quality crop of zines was a reaction to the sad state of print media, but it would hardly surprise me if that was indeed the case. Through casual observation, a thumb-through of the Microcosm Publishing…
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Lie to Me
The latest memoir of the 2008 Presidential campaign is a fake book about fake events by a fake political operative.
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Paul Bowles, Travel and the Non-Christian World
“With few exceptions, landscape alone is of insufficient interest to warrant the effort it takes to see it. Even the works of man, unless they are being used in his daily living, have a way of losing their meaning, and…
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What Buildings Would You Ban?
“Fear, on one side, of watching Europe turn into “Eurabia” —even if the demographics don’t justify such worries—and, on the other, of seeing centuries’ worth of social liberalization—including women’s suffrage and gay rights—fall apart in the face of religious conservatism,…
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Water Causes Cancer And Other Truths
Time Magazine has already called it “The Decade From Hell.” (Couldn’t have been worse than the 1940’s?! Could it? I mean the 40’s had Hitler AND Stalin.) And if you have survived the “aughts” reasonably intact as we caterwaul our…
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Sunday Political Links
Hi all, I’ll be out the next few weeks to finish up school, but I’ll return in the New Year. In the meantime, Michael Berger will be taking over for me on Sundays. He’s a good guy, that Michael Berger.…