While one can argue that there are several good songs about July 4, there's no question that Dave Alvin's "Fourth of July" is the clear best. And by no question, I mean that anyone questioning this is going to get on my fightin' side.
I see this time the inevitable "contrarian" Michael Bay revisionism has been left to Bill Simmons Web Enterprises Inc.* rather than Slate, although it's been written before and you knew.
Edward Copeland with an absolutely fantastic discussion of Hitchcock's superb Strangers on a Train, especially Robert Walker's titanic work as the uber-creepy Bruno. Copeland concludes: Finally, there's the climax on.
In a post where there's only a 99% chance he borrowed the link from me without giving credit, Yglesias comments on the same Guardian post on indigenous education in Oaxaca that I did. Except he really doesn't seem to understand the larger forces at work here:...
How the hell does Phil Cuzzi keep his job? [Some more highlights.]
This is the third of an eight part series on the 2011 Patterson Summer Reading List. Paul Collier, The Plundered Planet Greg Mortenson, Stones into Schools Jason Stearns, Dancing in.
The contrast with NFL owners so comically evil that even the most ludicrous lickspittles won't defend them seems to have caused some sportswriters to defend the NBA lockout as the moderate, reasonable, thinking-man's union-busting. But this is nonsense, and journalists who take league-distributed profit-and-loss figures as...
Oh South Carolina, have you ever elected decent politicians? I will try to counter one clear criticism of this list. I know that there are a few state-level people who.
Building on the discussion of indigenous poverty in Oaxaca from a couple of days ago is this Guardian piece on indigenous children not going to school in rural Oaxaca, thus.
Neil Genzlinger has a thought provoking piece on the dark side of Ellis Island and American immigration, which he rightfully says is underplayed at the museum: But there’s another side to our national welcome mat that doesn’t get so much attention, even though these days it...
Reading CJ Chivers' The Gun, which is more of a history of automatic firearms than of the AK-47 itself. He mentions this advertisement, which is just 95 kinds of awesome..
Damn. “I can’t remember a more exciting series against the Mets coming up just because they’ve been playing so extremely well,” Rodriguez said before the game. “I mean they’ve been.