politics

Article

100 most often mispronounced words and phrases

Can someone please send this list to the president? nucular nuclear The British and Australians find the American repetition of the [u] between the [k] and [l] quaintly amusing. Good reason to get it... READ ON

Article

Graffiti for the People?

This weekend I just finished reading Jonathan Lethem's Fortress of Solitude (which is messy, and poetic, and beautiful, and has a lot of great scenes featuring early hip-hop culture in Brooklyn in the 70s and 80s), and it made me think back on this clever/political British graffiti artist I read about in Esquire named Banksy. Anyway, this guy is too fascinating to ignore, so I figured I had to post about him. Some facts (from Wikipedia): "Banksy (born 1974) is a prolific graffiti artist from... READ ON

Article

Big Brother Wants to Chat

According to The Times of India, the Chinese government is reverting to the same PR tactics used by dot com's in the 90's. They've enlisted a band of carefully-selected undercover operatives to go into chat rooms, and basically defend and glorify government policies on any boards where there's dissent. But what's the value in turning The Peoples' frown emoticons upside down? Posing as "ordinary netizens," the special forces are expected to guide public... READ ON

Article

Republicans < Palpatine < Jesus?

The Chronicle of Higher Ed doesn't publish all its material online, but when it does, it chooses doozies like this: Jesus is Not a Republican ... Corporate interests are treated with the kind of reverence and deference once reserved for the deity. The Bible contains something like 2,000 references to the poor and the believer's responsibility for the poor. Sadly, that obligation seems not to have trickled down into public policy. ... I'm sure the author would be horrified, but this reminds me of nothing... READ ON

Article

Walruses: apparently NSFW

This blog is mostly written by guys, and I bet youÂ guys don't read the New York Times Styles section, and hey, I can understand that, because you're guys, but -- this isÂ the lede of the Times' current "Critical Shopper" column: The first time I ever came across the term "penis bone" — in JT Leroy's novel "Sarah," the main character wears such a bone on a necklace — I thought it was made up, a novelist's surreal fictional version of perma-Viagra. Later it turned out that JT Leroy was... READ ON