Subscribe to Excerpts
Subscribe by Email
This semester I laid on a freshman seminar about Art and Despair, partly because I was already offering Arts and Cultural Policy, partly because Cal had set up a program to encourage freshman seminars about art and promised Oakleys for any art event on campus. And partly because at that point in the fall I [...]
Archive for the ‘Struggle Between Good and Evil’ Category
May 1st, 2011
Category: Arts and Cultural Policy, Music, Politics and Leadership, Popular Culture, Struggle Between Good and Evil, Unions and organizing
February 11th, 2011
Mark’s cold shower is entirely correct. But I think he may be insufficiently pessimistic. The pieces haven’t been all thrown up in the air to fall back randomly; the system has a lot of structure and the dice are heavily loaded in favor of the army, which is the only institution to come out of [...]
February 6th, 2011
I don’t care much about pro football, but I care about American values, and this afternoon American values are under attack as never in the last, um, few days or something. The Steelers are what made America great, a profit-making company that sells TV eyeballs to advertisers and fan chotchkes to all and sundry. Their [...]
October 20th, 2010
Nancy Pelosi v. George W. Bush in the World Series? Maybe.
August 7th, 2010
Category: Gay marriage, Handbasket, world going to hell in, Struggle Between Good and Evil, Woolgathering
Occasionally my training as an engineer prompts me to ask, “why aren’t conservation laws more useful in social science?” In economics, everything is held together with bungee cords (which is OK, all physical mechanisms are more or less elastic) but the quantities of everything, including money, seem to be spongy as well. Analysis of gay [...]
March 29th, 2010
The 600,000 Israelites freed in the exodus are a drop in the bucket compared to today’s 27+ million slaves.
August 18th, 2009
Category: Democrats in Congress, Good news, Health Care, Permanent campaign, Struggle Between Good and Evil
From the NYT, posted 7 minutes ago: Democrats Seem Set to Go Alone on a Health Bill Now all we need to do is get rid of the “seem,” and we’re set.
June 4th, 2008
Category: Sports, Struggle Between Good and Evil
I suppose that Hillary Clinton is doing us all a favor by waiting until Friday to declare her campaign suspended. That way, over the next 48 hours, we can focus on the real business at hand: the NBA Finals. I grew up in Los Angeles and have been a Lakers fan for as long as [...]
May 8th, 2008
Category: History, Literature, Music, Religion and Politics, Spirituality and Religion, Struggle Between Good and Evil
The Battle Hymn of the Republic as an exemplar of jihadist feeling.
September 20th, 2007
henry Kissinger wheeled out to defend sticking it out in Iraq.
