As President George W. Bush’s time draws to a close, he will be spending some of his time (while he’s not dodging size 10’s, that is) deciding how to exercise his right to extend pardons and commutations. Just this past Friday, Bush awarded federal forgiveness to 17 “minor” criminals, 16 of which were pardons and…
Read MoreAs promised in my earlier post on this topic (which you can read at Blogging in the Classroom, originally posted in September), I’m back to report on my pedagogical experiment with blogging this semester. You can go back and read the earlier post if you want to know my justifications for trying this, so I…
Read MoreA mere 37 days before leaving office, our Lame-Duck-in-Chief President Bush was all the news yesterday. During a press conference in Baghdad with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki, a Shiite Iraqi journalist (Muntadar al-Zeidi) stood up and threw one of his shoes– and then the other– at President Bush’s head, missing Bush by a hair…
Read MoreWhile just about everyone else is full of yuletide joy, this is a dreaded time of year for philosophers. It’s Job M**ket time. (The very word conveys so much Sturm und Drang that it feels like a profanity.) I imagine that this year is even more ulcer-inducing than years past because of the depressed economy…
Read MoreMany of you probably read Daniel Drezner’s recent Chronicle of Higher Education article about the decline of public intellectuals (“Public Intellectual 2.0”), in which Drezner wants to contest the presumed Götterdämmerung that many–like Francis Fukuyama, Russell Jacoby and Daniel Bell— believe began in the 1950’s and has yet to abate. Specifically, Drezner takes to task…
Read MoreA friend of a friend who is a student at MCA (Memphis College of Art) made this “promotional” video for our fair city. I love it.
Read MoreOne of the things that I miss in this insanely-busy-semester of mine is my regular Sunday night gig as the hostess of “Americana the Beautiful” on Rhodes Radio. When I was in grad school, I had a lot of music-loving friends with whom I could endlessly talk about and trade tunes. (Miss you, Kyle!) Now…
Read MoreI’m back. I’m also clearly making regular payments on some karmic debt these days. I can’t exactly pinpoint what I did to merit the utter mayhem of this year, but I suspect it has something to do with my remarking one too many times last year about how happy I was with my life back…
Read MoreThere are plenty of nut-jobs out there who dominate the news for a brief time, then sort of fade away. While they’re laying low, it’s easy to forget about them– until they raise their ugly heads again and show up on something like VH1’s The Surreal Life. Such is the case with David Duke (pictured…
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