An old friend I hadn't caught up with in a long time emailed me earlier to say she was worried by the election result, and to ask if I had any reassuring thoughts. This is a lightly edited version of what I sent her:

( CW: politics )

I've been reading a history of the English Treasury (by Roseveare) And I am starting to understand why treasuries and treasurers matter, and what government finance is really about, outside western democracies ( Read more... )

Amnesty International has [finally!] put out a report about health care in North KoreaThere's a lot of interesting content in it. The report is nominally about health care, but the first half of it is really about food. There isn't enough of it. The report has a lot of details and personal narratives about how bad things are. They're very bad. And ( Read more... )

So apparently everybody is buzzing about general McChrystal's improvident interview with Rolling Stone. I read the whole piece ( Read more... )

The craziness continues. Students have been occupying Wheeler Hall, the English Department building, all day, and have barricaded themselves on the second floor. Large crowd around the building (500+ people I think). Earlier today, UC called in the sheriff's deputies to help control crowds and handle arrestees ( Read more... )

Several of you asked for an update/summary of the labor turmoil we're having. Here's my take ( Read more... )

Some chap has taken over Pat Buchanan's website and posted a parody essay arguing that World War II was really all Poland's fault, and that Germany never wanted war. . . . It is a parody, right?

[Originally by Jonathan Adler]

The other day, I mentioned that Orwell essay "Wells, Hitler, and the World State" to a friend. So today I wound up rereading it. It's really fabulous. Crisply written, artfully phrased, and devastatingly pointed. I don't understand why it isn't better known or more commonly quoted ( Read more... )

So I'm up in Benicia, visiting ramik,greatmanly, and emmerific watching the sun set behind the Carquinez bridges. It's good.

When I was in SF a while back, I picked up a copy of "Challenge: Revolutionary communist newspaper of the internatinoal progresive labor party [sic]". I think I've said this before, but I'm astonished how anachronistic it feels. Their mission ( Read more... )