“The Facts of Life,” by Black Box Recorder

It’s Friday night and we’re among friends here. Anybody up for a nice game of Gender Cards?

I’ve been reading a lot of dense material lately for a piece I want to write on the social, technical, and historical origins of the Internet (if I ever have the time to write it).

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad faced appropriate scorn when he told that audience at Columbia that “we don’t have homosexuals in this country … we don’t have this phenomenon.” Now he’s saying that he was the victim of bad translating, and that he meant to say that “compared to American society, we don’t have many homosexuals.” Like so many other politicians, he sent his press person out to make the excuses.

It’s far

Trailer for “Screamers,” a history of genocide and the Armenian tragedy*

Sometimes the news of the day seems random. At other times it seems to display a pattern, an outline of something that can be seen only dimly. Something … haunting. The star-crossed past of the Armenian people, driven from their home by an act of genocide, surfaces in two news stories today.

A House Commitee voted yesterday to affirm

While soldiers and civilians die, the National Review says “Stay.” In retrospect, it was inevitable: Conservatives have finally articulated a policy position so simple-minded it can be understood by a dog. First these “intellectuals” told us that there were WMDs. Then they said Iraq was linked to 9/11.

(We’re pleased today to welcome Allan Ornstein for a discussion of his book Class Counts: Education, Inequality, and the Shrinking Middle Class. Please welcome him in the comments — JH)

Allan Ornstein, a Professor of Education at St. John’s University, has written fifty books and more than four hundred articles.

Anointing the GOP as the “National Security Party” makes about as much sense as choosing Ulysses S. Grant to lead the “Temperance Party.” Their record at protecting the nation from terror and military threats is one of ignominious failure, and the next attack – if and when it happens – may well be a preventable horror.

Dear Mr.

Video: “Money For Nothing/The Beverly Hillbillies,” Weird Al Yankovic

Frank Zappa once said that government was “the entertainment division of the military-industrial complex,” but that was in the good old days. Nowadays, Presidential campaigns are the in-flight entertainment of the traveling press corps. Bore them and your career is over.

Merle! I’m not as isolationist as this song gets, but word to the GOP: When you’ve lost Merle Haggard, you’ve lost America. In fact, the only thing that can save the Republicans after today’s fiasco is a Democratic Party too timid to do its job. As I’ve said before, Hag and a lot of other swing voters aren’t “bipartisan” – they’re antipartisan.