I love articles written by savvy insiders taking sloppy journalism to task. For an example on the topic of adjunct faculty, a click on the headline takes you to yesterday’s Confession of a Community College Dean at InsideHigherEd.com.
Category: Uncategorized
Is the iPad a Child’s Best Friend?
A grandmother just referred me to this NYT piece on the iPad as toy. I’m starting a list of whole new markets for this thing that no one thought of until after it showed up. There will be many more.
Will anyone take on the filibuster?
President Obama just reminded Senate Democrats: “You had to cast more votes to break filibusters last year than in the entire 1950s and ‘60s combined. That’s 20 years of obstruction packed into just one.”
Jim Fallows cited this quote in a recent series on the topic, including a couple of exchanges with a knowledgeable DC reader who believes bipartisanship can’t work. Those posts are here and here. Fallows’ own thoughtful mini-essays are here and here.
They’re all worth reading if you believe the filibuster is one of the central problems of American democracy today.
Tom Geoghegan made a solid case for the unconstitutionality of the procedural filibuster in a Times op-ed last month. In a longer piece in The Nation last year, he made it clear how difficult the fight would be to end it.
If the President eventually tires of calling for real governing bipartisanship, we’ll know it when he and Vice President Biden start campaigning against the filibuster.
I’m not holding my breath, but I’m hoping the day will come.
McCain’s Hypocrisy, Mullen’s Integrity
John McCain’s hypocrisy on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is stunning.
Here’s Maureen Dowd today: “Three years ago, McCain told a group of college students that he would drop his objections on the issue ‘the day that the leadership of the military comes to me and says, "Senator, we ought to change the policy.”’“ That day arrived yesterday and the Senator from Arizona was having none of it .
Andrew Sullivan sums up yesterday’s testimony by the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The integrity of Admiral Michael Mullen’s statement is the real news of the day: "He said that requiring servicemembers to lie as part of their duty to their country violated their integrity as soldiers and the military’s integrity itself. He said, in other words, that the current policy is dishonorable. I agree with him.”
Me, too.
More reactions to yesterday’s Senate hearings here from the first paragraph of The Daily Wrap of The Daily Dish.
I was especially glad to hear Mullen say that he had served with gay service members since 1968. At that time, I was in the U.S. Army learning Russian in Monterey. While there, I got to know soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen who were openly gay, but only with people they trusted. On the whole, they were smarter, funnier and far better language students than average. I learned then that a fearful reaction to homosexuality was both stupid and wrong.
Our military will be stronger when we finally recognize that Canada, Israel and the United Kingdom solved this problem long ago – and we’ve hurt ourselves by being so late in catching up.
Revealing
The CPBB, using CBO estimates, analyzes the projected federal budget deficit and in one key graphic reveals the sources of the problem (h/t to Brad DeLong at UC Berkeley).
Groundhog Day – Dreaming of spring and summer sailing
3 Billion Apps, 6 Questions
There was no iTunes before the iPod, no iApps before the iPhone.
Of all the amazing Apple statistics, perhaps the most remarkable is three billion apps downloaded. That’s three billion transactions.
What kind of ecology of apps, books, magazines and other media will iBooks on the iPad develop?
How many tens of millions of iPod, iPhone and MacBook users already know how to use this device? And how many scores of million credit cards does Apple have on file? Has there ever been an audience better primed to try a new product?
People who know for sure they’ll buy it – designers, architects, photographers, ad reps – say they’ll use it to show portfolios to potential clients. In all the run-up to the event, did anyone ever talk about it as a hip presentational product for business?
And because one really has to hold it to truly appreciate it, I’m wondering if there will be a few comfortable chairs in the Apple Stores for people to sit down and relax with it in the palm of their hands? Folks at Broadway and 67th St., please take note.
Feb. 8 update – This post is corrected here.
California: Golden Dreams
The Times Literary Supplement has a fine essay on contemporary California. Michael Saler of UC Davis reviews Kevin Starr’s and William Vollman’s new social histories.
No other state has ever had a biographer like Kevin Starr, and his ’Golden Dreams: California in an age of abundance 1950-1963’ shows just how much has been lost in what Saler calls “the extravagant dysfunction of its current government.” Vollman’s ’Imperial’ examines that southeastern-most county and finds pungent metaphors for the entire state.
Apple gives every other reader reason to be nervous with iPad
Andy Ihnatko at the Chicago Sun Times is one of the early reviewers to get the iPad right.
Apple gives every other reader reason to be nervous with iPad
First test…
… has been a long time coming.
Bali Arts 