A video that’s been making the rounds about a clueless super-wealthy plutocrat who compares America’s treatment of the rich to the Holocaust and brags about his wristwatch that’s worth “a six-pack of Rolexes” has got me to thinking. The most revealing thing about this video is the boyish excitement this … Read the rest
Legendary book editor and publisher Andre Schiffrin died last weekend at the age of 78. Years ago, I read his memoir/broadside The Business of Books
As some of you may remember, I spent 2009 writing a memoir about my experiences in New York City’s “new media” industry from 1993 to 2003. I’ve often wondered if I would ever write an update.
I might someday, and I might even write about the work I’ve been … Read the rest
Every once in a while, a pacifist blogger gets to yell “stop the presses”.
There was a Philosophy Weekend blog post all ready to go up this morning — till I heard that the United States of America, Britain, China, Russia, Germany, France and Iran have suddenly reached a preliminary … Read the rest
Slovenian philosopher and Litkicks favorite Slavoj Zizek has been exchanging letters with Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot, who is in jail for staging this protest in a Moscow cathedral:
The letters have now been widely published, and are well worth reading for their vivid energy as well as for … Read the rest
Today’s Philosophy Weekend is a question: what is the meaning of the extreme alienation that seems to be growing between two loosely defined political opinion groups in the United States of America?
Of course, the division between conservativism and liberalism is nothing new. But the emotional intensity of the split … Read the rest
The pointing finger in this photo belongs to Jeremy Paxman, a British journalist. The pointee is Russell Brand, a brash and popular comedian who has guest-edited a new “Revolution” issue of the New Statesman, in which he says things like this:
… Read the restApathy is a rational reaction to a system
Here’s a timely one, to cap off a week of truly bizarre politics in my country, the United States of America. An Illustrated Book of Bad Arguments
I wish I could love Noam Chomsky, the American political philosopher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of important books about revolutionary politics like Hegemony or Survival
