About a week ago, in a NYT article entitled “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” professor and provocateur Stanley Fish lambasted the Texas Public Policy Foundation and Texas Governor Rick Perry for proposing that the evaluation of faculty should move to a more “consumerist” (Fish calls it “mercenary”) model. The proposal would require college and…
Read MoreRecently, Blogger (the host site for this blog) began offering several new design templates to its users, which has resulted in a lot of aesthetic changes to the Blogger-blogs that I read regularly. (The design changes over Ideas Man’s and Chet’s blogs have been particularly noteworthy.) This site’s design has pretty much remained the same…
Read MoreAs I’m still not quite over my post-New-Orleans euphoric haze, I wanted to post one more thing about that city and its blessed horns before returning to more serious material on this blog. This time, however, the news is not good… One of the most fantastic and unique things about New Orleans is its street…
Read MoreI just returned from a long weekend in New Orleans, the second-greatest city in the U.S. South. One of my chief aims while in NOLA was to see Kermit Ruffins, an absolutely amazing trumpet player, co-founder of the legendary Rebirth Brass Band and, more recently, a regular star on the HBO series “Treme.” Before I…
Read MoreThe Nobel Peace Prize-winning organization, Physicians for Human Rights, has just released a White Paper entitled “Experiments in Torture” that documents medical professionals’ complicity with CIA human intelligence collection programs, which include the now-infamous “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs), in post-9/11 detention centers. There is, of course, a continuing (and, at least on one side, entirely…
Read MoreRead no further if you’re not willing to consider the possibility that “anti-Israeli state policy” claims are NOT tantamount to “anti-Semitism.” The recent deadly attack on an aid-bearing flotilla headed to the Gaza Strip has re-stoked the fires at home and abroad over Israel’s continued blockade of Gaza. That blockade has been in effect since…
Read MoreThis morning, in stereotypical egghead fashion, I tuned my radio to the Saturday NPR programming, poured myself a cup of coffee, and sat down to read the most recent (June 7) issue of the New Yorker. In the mini-essay section “Talk of the Town,” located near the beginning of every New Yorker, there was a…
Read MoreThe New York Times ran a story earlier this week entitled “The New Poor: Blacks in Memphis Lose Decades of Gains,” which painted a very grim picture of the recession’s effects on African-Americans in Memphis. According to most demographers, Memphis will soon be the first metropolis in the U.S. with a predominantly black population, which…
Read MoreStraight from the You-Gotta-Be-Kidding-Me Files, we have this update from the Supreme Court of the United States: if you want to invoke your right to silence, you better say so. OUT LOUD. Oh, SCOTUS, why do you hate Miranda so? As you may remember from Civics class, the 5th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees…
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