I will be going to Washington in a few weeks for a class on the interaction of history, politics, geography and architecture and, needless to say, I’m already awfully stoked. It has not been finally decided which places we will visit, but we will probably see the Capitol, the National Building Museum, the National Archives, [...]
I believe very strongly in artistic freedom, but in this case I call for immediate action on the part of the British government. This has to stop. James Blunt might be the king of mawkish music for desperate housewives, but he sure has no business covering a song from one of the most amazing bands [...]
My current read is Sinclair Lewis’ Main Street. The main character, Carol, has quite a different approach to small town values than popculture icon Sarah Palin (isn’t she a mixture of Madonna and Borat?): Doubtless all small towns, in all countries, in all ages, Carol admitted, have a tendency to be not only dull but [...]
I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of “conservative” government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought [...]
Since one of my professors suggested in a lecture on the future of conservatism a few months ago that Barack Obama might win over many conservatives who traditionally considered themselves Republicans, I have been on the lookout for indications whether or not this could be the case, but many people on the right still seem [...]
Some days ago, I recommended The Mojo Collection as a good reference book for record collections, but of course there are tons of such lists usually encompassing a selection of 50 or 100 best songs, albums, whatever. The Rolling Stone even has a list of the most important artists, which they named “The Immortals”. Yep, [...]
No, I’m not intending to give advice on such a thorny subject. This will be the title of the new Decemberists album according to Pitchfork Media!
I must admit that the favorable reviews Palin’s debate performance got truly shocked me. Since when is coming off as likeable, something I can’t agree on btw, and not making any major grammatical mistakes enough to qualify for an important political position? (Oh yes, I know, Andrew Jackson couldn’t even write properly. But I thought [...]
I was tipped off to this marvelous HowTo by Wired: How to bluff a music geek. Being a music geek myself, though of a less arrogant variety than High Fidelity’s Barry, I was highly skeptical this could work. Well, it does. True, the music geek’s universe revolves to some extent around real, unimitable knowledge, but [...]