Category: Politics
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Class and Web Design, Part 2: What Class are You?
As I discussed in my previous post, class is one of the few things Americans simply don’t like to talk about. Paul Fussell discusses this reluctance in the introduction to his excellent Class: A Guide Through the American Status System (a classic book I read many years ago and just picked up again to help…
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Class and Web Design, Part 1: The Class Struggle
Three ugly ducklings by zefrank. In the last year or so, hundreds of articles, blog posts, and conversations in the web design world have revolved around the question of “Why does bad design succeed?” MySpace, eBay, Google, and craigslist are usually cited as examples of “bad design” (or even “ugly design”) that works. And everyone…
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The Team is Integral to the Strategy
You can’t compensate for incompetance with prayer, luck, stubbornness, or waiting until your presidency is over, either. Demotivational poster from despair.com. I read an article recently that pointed out that when members of Congress voted in 2003 to authorize Bush to invade Iraq, they were voting not just for war with Iraq, but specifically for…
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Trusting the Arsonists to Put Out the Fire
During the 1800’s (before the formation of today’s FDNY) there were some private New York City “fire departments” who would deliberately set fires then demand payment from property owners to put them out. This is how the Bush Administration is treating America regarding Iraq today: “We set the fire, so you should trust us to…
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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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I Thwarted the NYPD’s “Terrorist Tactics” this Morning
One year ago, the New York Police Department started a program to randomly search the bags of commuters as they enter New York’s subway stations. The program basically puts a couple of police officers next to the turnstiles, where they randomly select passengers to subject to a search. My subway station seems to be an…
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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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TimesSelect: Dead to me, so far…
Have you seen me? I haven’t ready any of the New York Times Op-Ed commentators in at least six months, ever since they put them behind the pay-only TimesSelect wall. I have no idea what any of them are saying these days. I think I saw that they’ve got Ted Koppel in there now, too.…