Category: Review

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Analysis Review Science

Acropolis Now: The Rolling

As I detailed last month, my former residence, presciently nicknamed Acropolis, has been lifted into the air by hydraulic jacks and left to rest on wooden towers known as ‘cribs’. This was done for a reason: the house needed to be moved eight or nine feet toward the street in order to make room for townhomes in what was the house’s backyard. Heady stuff, I know.

Lifting the house up on stilts was impressive enough, but I couldn’t quite imagine how they were then going to move it thereafter. On the Tuesday before last, I found out.

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Analysis Foreign Policy Review

DOJ targeted killing white paper makes chilling mockery of sense, english

As is well known, American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki was killed by a drone attack in Yemen on 30 September 2011. He was alleged by the government to have been a “senior talent recruiter” for al-Qaeda, primarily by creating “radicalising” YouTube videos. The administration never charged or indicted him of him with any crime, much less tried him before an impartial tribunal, so his killing should offend the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. The Obama Administration doesn’t agree with that straightforward analysis, but was unwilling to reveal the legal basis for their assumption of the power to execute American citizens in secret with no charge, trial, or congressional or judicial oversight. Members of Congress begged the Administration for months following al-Awlaki’s killing for memos explaining the Administration’s position, and finally the Administration deigned earlier this month to yield a draft white paper dated fifteen months ago — not to Congress proper, mind you, but to two of its subcommittees.

That white paper has now been leaked publicly. While it is unclear whether it completely details the Administration’s thinking, the paper is sufficiently devastating that Democratic California Representative Barbara Lee said in an open letter to the Los Angeles Times that it “should shake the American people to the core.” But Obama’s a nice guy, right, so how bad can it really be?

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Analysis Review Science

Acropolis Now: The Raising

I was until recently among a crazy troupe of rag-tag whippersnappers who shared a dream: to live affordably on Capitol Hill in a free-love commune, throwing wild parties yet responsibly engaging with our community and the environment. We named our hilltop palace Acropolis, but our Gods did not demand sacrifice. We were starry-eyed lute-toting moon sailors with a heading fixed on paradise.

That utopian fantasy was not realized for at least twice as many reasons as you can imagine, and one of them is this: our landlords bought the house in order to literally lift and move it west about three meters in order to build a condominium in the backyard. Only in the GREATEST COUNTRY ON EARTH, right? We all cleared out as agreed when it came time to do this move, and I was lucky enough to witness and document the first phase of it yesterday: the Raising.

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Analysis Op-Ed Review

Al Jazeera buys Current, madness ensues

Al Jazeera has just purchased Al Gore’s Current TV cable network for an estimated $500 million. Al Jazeera, you may remember, is a rabidly anti-american news broadcaster whose headquarters George W. Bush considered bombing in 2005. Current has been around for most of a decade but I only heard of it after Keith Olbermann got fired from MSNBC, so I guess ‘struggling‘ is apt.

Anyway, what’s wild is the reaction. First, the most predictable blowhard, Rush Limbaugh, running at the mouth this afternoon: “I wonder does this mean Joy Behar and Jennifer Granholm are now going to have to wear burkas and veils over their faces? If they do, it might help raise audience levels.”

More surprisingly, Time Warner Cable immediately responded to the deal by dropping Current, claiming they “did not consent to the sale to Al Jazeera.” An odd play given the recent upsurge in visibility for Current and the worldwide popularity of Al Jazeera.

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Analysis Music Review

2012 Music Review: Top 10 Albums, 20-song Playlist

The year is nearly over and there were some notable record albums released in the music world. I don’t pretend to be able to weigh in like the Serious People at AllMusic and Pitchfork and Rolling Stone with shiny, definitive lists about what was really the best. For one thing, following and reviewing the music world is not my day job, but music discovery is a haphazard and often random process for me; I frequently discover the next year about an album that was out the year before that would have changed everything. But I can’t know everything and I never will, so in a move I’ll probably respect I’ve composed a top ten list I might laugh at upon review in the (not-so) distant future. When that’s done with, I’ll list a few honourable mentions without so much prose and present a 20-song, 20-band playlist for a little more variety.

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Analysis Book Foreign Policy History Nonfiction Review

Book Review: “Drift” by Rachel Maddow

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power is frank analysis by MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow of the recent rise in American militarism. Fans of her television show will immediately recognize her snarky voice and can-you-believe-this incredulity, which translate effectively to the page. Maddow’s stated goal is encouraging a genuine debate about the role of the military in American life and foreign policy, the usefulness of which is echoed by many of the journalistic elite whose reviews grace Drift‘s covers, including Ira Glass, Tom Brokaw, and even Roger Ailes. I seriously question whether she’s laid on the disdainful snark a bit too thickly for this purpose — skeptics might be turned off rather than engaged — but the book is well researched and smoothly written. At the last, Maddow is hopeful rather than dejected. This creeping militarism, she concludes, is not the result of a conspiracy, but rather the cumulative effect of boneheaded but generally well-meaning politicians and officials doing their inadequate best to try to protect us. And as a result, the damage is reversible. We just need to frankly discuss what has happened.

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Book Faith Nonfiction Review Science

Book Review: “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins

The God Delusion is a fairly recent nonfiction work by the prolific evolutionary biologist and militant atheist Richard Dawkins. Published in 2006, 30 years after he rose to prominence with the work for which he is best known and which I highly recommend, The Selfish Gene, there is only a little biology to be found on the pages of the The God Delusion. Drawing from well-documented anecdotal evidence and swelling with reason rigorously applied, the book is an orderly and unapologetic assault on belief in God, organized Abrahamic religion, and a culture that sheepishly looks the other way when confronted with either.

A common criticism of Dawkins is that he’s just so nasty when he dissects religiosity; why, ask the faint of conviction, can’t he just leave well enough alone, or at least be respectful when he can’t? Having read several of his books, I can safely declare that Dawkins is actually eminently reasonable. He is deferential to individuals he respects, admits when he’s at risk of speculating more than analyzing, and draws distinction between harmless naivete and menacing intent. He successfully identifies real harms derived from faith-based world views and religious institutions and makes a case for his politely and eloquently expressed incredulity and outrage at them. A careful reading of the The God Delusion should convince the thoughtful believer, explicitly his target audience, not only of atheism but of his brand of powerful evangelistic atheism. Rather than respecting faith, we should all become foot soldiers in the war to eradicate it.

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2012 Analysis Economics Election Foreign Policy Review

The Final Debate, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Israel

(Update)

The third and final presidential debate of this election cycle was to be about foreign policy, just as the first (and the only other which wasn’t a Town Hall format) was to be about domestic policy. That didn’t really come to pass in earnest, and it also happened that this final debate was pretty flat. I think the main reason for that was the broad agreement that both candidates have on their approach to foreign policy: both love Israel, both fear and want to look tough on Iran, and both think America is the greatest thing to have recently happened to the world. This is obviously a bad position for Romney to find himself in as he attempts to convince us that we need a leadership change, which explains how much the debate pivoted back to the economy in variously clever and tired ways. A few interesting things happened, including a few zingers from Obama, but the tone after the tension of the second debate — and the last one before the election — was one of measured caution.

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2012 Analysis Domestic Policy Economics Election Review

Prez Debate II: The Wrath Of Mitt

If there was one conclusion most of the pundits drew from the first presidential debate, it was that Obama was functionally asleep and let Romney walk all over him. If there was a second conclusion, it was that Jim Leher was functionally asleep and let Obama and Romney walk all over him. So it isn’t surprising, especially after announcing that it would be the case, that Obama was much more aggressive and challenging for this match-up,  the first and only Town Hall-style debate we’ll see this election. Romney must have known this, so he upped his game as well, and tensions ran high. Obama won the debate by being engaged, articulate, and right on the issues. But he got help from Romney, who emphatically lost it by over-correcting and quite frankly embarrassing himself.

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2012 Analysis Election Foreign Policy Review

Nothing Even Matters: VP Debate 2012

I hesitate to say anything at all about the one and only Vice-Presidential debate of 2012 which happened last Thursday. Full disclosure: I was sloppy drunk while watching it, and I missed some of it while moving among rooms for reasons I don’t need or care to elaborate. I took some notes of what I could hear while many of us were talking over it at an impromptu viewing party that changed venue twice, but they’re mostly illegible. So I’m about to phone this in and I recommend you just stop reading right now. Really. There’s a lot of porn on this internet thing, and if for some reason that isn’t your bag, there are pictures of cats too. So a lot to do. Then again, maybe Biden and Ryan will kiss?

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