Category: History
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I am large, I contain multitudes.
Emily Dickinson’s totally awesome MySpace page In which half-baked connections are made between American poetry and Internet social networking. Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” is like an 19th-century personal homepage, in which the poet constructs his profile/identity with the stuff he sees in his neighbors, peers, family, friends, and countrymen. He gives shout-outs to his…
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The Island in the Center of the Center of the World
Watch the video to get a sense of perspective about how truly alien Governor’s Island is. In the middle of New York City — literally, in the very middle of the 5 boroughs — there is a little island that most New Yorkers know nothing about. Within a couple hundred yards of the skyscrapers of…
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Condescending Cultural Critique
When we evaluate movies, TV shows, and other media products that are intended to be seen by a large, mass audience, we often take two positions at the same time: What I really think of this What will Someone Else think of this? (where Someone Else is a social demographic different from your own) We…
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What is a Civil War?
Is Iraq in a state of civil war? When most Americans think of a civil war, we think of the Civil War. The American Civil War. We think of literally millions of soldiers marching against each other and dying by the thousands every day. We think of cities on fire, blockaded ports, and thousands of…
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NSA Data Mining 4: Total Information Awareness, Resurrected
A slight change of focus… (also check out Part 1 Part 2 and Part 3) You may recall that a nefarious global spying program called “Total Information Awareness”, spearheaded by convicted Iran-Contra criminal Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, was exposed in 2002 by the New York Times. After this program was made public, there was…
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NSA Data Mining 3: Wiretaps? Maybe not. Stakeouts? Definitely.
I honestly don’t know which is worse. (also check out Part 1 and Part 2) The press and Bush’s supporters make a big deal out of the fact that the NSA’s phone records program does not actually involve wiretaps. I think that’s a red herring. My argument is that the program is effectively a massive…
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NSA Data Mining 2: So you think you have nothing to hide?
(also check out Part 1) Most people who say that they would give up their liberty for temporary safety justify their opinion by saying “innocent people have nothing to hide”. But I wouldn’t be so sure. There are lots of ways a perfectly law-abiding American can get swept up by this program, both accidently and…
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NSA Data Mining 1: If you aren’t against it, then you don’t really understand it.
The NSA phone records program doesn’t seem quite so bad, at least not when it’s described this way. “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!” – Sir Walter Scott The NSA’s recently-revealed program to scour through and analyze the phone records of millions of normal and innocent Americans is…
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A Tale of Two Libraries 2: The Morgan Library
I’m no architecture critic, but when I read the New York Times review of the just-reopened Morgan Library & Museum a few weeks ago (with words like “dazzling”, “mesmerizing”, and “triumph”) I knew I had to visit as soon as I could. So immediately following my class field trip the other day, I dismissed my…