The joys of online noise [Rerun Sunday]
Facebook gets a lot of abuse. And it’s earned most of it. They routinely make privacy an opt-in feature, and then compound that problem by making it hard for people to find the right settings to change if they do, in fact, want to opt in. They mine our friends’ profiles for pix and prose […]
More found haiku (more grad seminar reading) [Rerun Sunday]
must have money and a room of one’s own if she is to write fiction — Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own You can find a brief explanation of “Rerun Sunday” here. The post above originally appeared on 26 January 2012.
Found haiku of the day (grad seminar reading edition) [Rerun Sunday]
to uphold basic human justice you must do so for everyone – Edward Said, Representations of the Intellectual, p. 93 [And I know I’m sorta cheatin’ the syllable count in the last line a bit, but no one really enunciates that second E in “everyone,” do they?] You can find a brief explanation of “Rerun […]
Lies we tell our students [Rerun Sunday]
It’s the start of another semester, so I thought it would be a good time to share what has become a standard part of my Day One spiel for my undergrads. I’ve taken to giving some version of this, no matter what the course actually is, partially because Day One is a good time for […]
La plus ça change . . . [Rerun Sunday]
Going through some old magazines that should have been clipped and recycled long ago, I found the following tidbit (time-sensitive details omitted for effect): The public, as usual, is in a fog. If the [political party] and the media cooperate, the fog won’t be lifted until [. . . .] after [the President’s] reelection, [when] […]
We are all criminals
Odds are good that you don’t think of yourself as a criminal. Odds are even better that you’re wrong about that. I have no doubt that you believe yourself to be a good, upstanding, law-abiding citizen. You’re not a murderer. You’ve never mugged anyone. You don’t steal cars or break into people’s homes. You’re not […]
“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Film”: Version 2.0
Freshly online at Jump Cut, a reprint — with additional images — of an essay by Heather Ashley Hayes and myself on Django Unchained. PDF of the original essay can be found here.
But if not
In honor of Martin Luther King Day, a “video” of King’s sermon — “But If Not” — at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on 5 November 1967. The whole thing is well worth a listen, but the real takeaway moment comes at 18:25: I say to you, this morning, if you have never found […]
Accidental haiku of the day [Rerun Sunday]
Mother– “Shut yo’ mouth!” But I’m talkin’ about Shaft! “Well, we can dig it.” You can find a brief explanation of “Rerun Sunday” here. The post above originally appeared on 4 January 2012.
All the news that’s fit to ignore [Rerun Sunday]
As I type these words, there’s a story about the ongoing Occupy Wall Street protests sitting near the top of the front page of the Guardian‘s website. The Guardian, of course, is based in London. Wall Street, of course, is in New York City. As I type these words, at the very top of the […]