“Don’t touch my junk”
Will John Tyner become the latest American folk (mass media) hero for uttering those words?
As you will learn from this video, Tyner refused to be scanned by one of the new, full-body Advanced Imaging Technology machines at San Diego airport. He then ...
Anti-religious holiday messages are not humanistic
The American Humanist Association (AHA) and similar groups will soon be launching an anti-religion advertising blitz to coincide with the holiday season.
The AHA’s campaign will contrast violent and sexist passages from the Bible and Koran with quotes from non-believers like Albert Einstein and Katharine Hepburn. It differs from last year’s ...
This week’s articles of note
“Live by the movement, die by the movement,” The New Republic, by Sean Wilentz
“Inside the Gates Foundation,” Financial Times, by Gideon Rachman
“Let’s banish nudges and bans,” Huffington Post, by Alan Miller
“Dirty coal, clean future,” The Atlantic, by James Fallows
“My endless New York,” New York Times, by ...
G-20 in Seoul: real conflict, but not a return to the 1930s
Conferences like last week’s G-20 gathering usually produce bland communiques and not much change. But the Seoul summit took this to an extreme: it involved real conflict which the final statement could barely conceal.
As I recently described in spiked (here), the ostensible issue has to do with currencies and monetary ...
Take the A train
One of my favorites. Duke and his orchestra, from Reveille with Beverly, a 1943 movie.
This week’s articles of note
“Heartland headache,” National Journal, by Ronald Brownstein
“The myth of charter schools,” The New York Review of Books, by Diane Ravitch [review of the film Waiting for "Superman"]
“Liberal paternalism gets public and private the wrong way around,” Reuters, by Frank Furedi
“Conflict or cooperation? Three visions revisited,” Foreign ...
Buffalo: New York’s Midwest city
This video about Buffalo, produced by tourist and preservation groups, is quite impressive and reminded me of a few broader issues.
First, we often forget that New York State encompasses what we ...
A protest vote not a Republican revolution
The real lesson of the US midterm elections was that voters have little faith in either party to solve America’s problems.
Read my spiked article in full here.
Trendy vs. real innovation
In the Financial Times on the weekend, Gillian Tett wrote about her attendance at a meeting called “Reboot America!”, organized by Daily Beast editor Tina Brown. The event was full of big names, among them economist Joseph Stiglitz, venture capitalist Vinod Khosla and regulator Sheila Bair. Tett reports that a major theme was ...
