This news, about Lara Logan’s rape in Egypt on Friday, stole my sleep last night. As I tossed, my mind flipped between thinking of the horror she must have felt pressed into that crowd, recalling bits of stories my female friends have told me about their experiences on the streets of Cairo, feeling guilty for […]
Sigh. I love Jon Stewart. I think he’s hilarious. I spent considerable money, and time I should have been using to write papers, to go to DC last month for his rally. But after watching this video of him with Maddow I’m starting to think he’s drinking too much of his own kool-aid. I really […]
Peter Beinart wrote a breathtakingly un-self aware piece about the Stewart/Colbert rally this past weekend, which, however misguided, allows me to write a few words about my experience there. Beinart lists three points on which the rally was off base: 1) that Americans are unnecessarily fearful; 2) that we’re much less divided than the media […]
When I moved to Boston twelve years ago, I was a child. Literally. I was seventeen and too dumb to realize how scared I was. Once I figured it out, I had a crippling case of homesickness that lasted almost a year. I almost gave up several times, and there’s almost nothing in my life […]
Over the last couple of years (let’s pick a random title and call it “The Obama Era”) we’ve seen a movement develop, spearheaded by groups like the Sunlight Foundation and enabled by some innovative thinkers in the White House, around open government data and transparency. The movement has been wildly successful in publishing reams and […]
I know, I know. This is a tired conversation. But my friend John Bracken tweeted a link to a post on Alan Mutter’s blog bashing the idea that non-profit business models would save journalism. While he’s probably right, I had a couple of problems with his argument that ultimately helped shape what role I think […]
For the first two-thirds of this book, I felt immensely guilty that I didn’t feel more compelled by the story. The recounting of the colonization of the Belgian Congo shouldn’t be that hard to ache over. Maybe it was the mass scale—I just couldn’t get my head around it? Maybe it was that the picture […]
David’s got a characteristically brilliant follow-up on the theme I discussed below about western appropriation of non-western cultural artifacts and authenticity (a theme I originally “appropriated” from him–see how that works?). Ever since I wrote that post, I’ve been meaning to revise/clarify in the comments, but now that he’s called me out, I figured I […]
You know that feeling you get when you finally, after many attempts, get the thread to go through the g-d’ed needle hole? At 29, I feel that way. I spent my twenties approaching the needle from every which way, poking my fingers, getting really frustrated, threatening to give up. On the cusp of my thirties […]
There was a debate over lunch in the Berkman Center kitchen today over whether white people (or Asian people, for that matter) should wear dreadlocks. I’m of the opinion that it’s a terrible idea, though at the time I couldn’t really articulate why without sounding like I was being snotty and judgmental. My gut reaction […]