A new book released today takes a look at the CIA’s shifting role from that of intelligence gathering (aka “spying”) to more direct action through targeted killings, through drone strikes, hit squads, or other clandestine action. The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth by […]
Archives for April 2013
G is for “greatest British peacetime prime minister”
April 8, 2013 by
Unless you’ve been under a rock today, you’ve heard the news that Margaret Thatcher, former British Prime Minister, has died. She was eulogized by current U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron as “the greatest British peacetime prime minister.” Rest in peace, Margaret Thatcher. Since I’m no expert on Britain’s “Iron Lady,” here’s a few hits from […]
Fear on the rise in our literature
April 6, 2013 by
Could we be using fewer words associated with happiness and joy and more associated with fear in recent decades? With Google digitization of hundreds of years of literature, British anthropologists are mapping the rise and fall of “emotion” words through history, says an NPR story. This effort began simply with lists of “emotion” words: 146 […]
Review | The Emperor of all Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
April 5, 2013 by
In the author’s note to The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, Siddhartha Mukherjee notes that “Cancer is not one disease, but many diseases.” It anticipates Mukherjee’s history, a look at cancer starting in the ages and proceeding forward to the modern-day. It’s a 4,000 year history, and Mukherjee tells it well. The tale, […]
Review | Debt: The First 5,000 Years by David Graeber
April 4, 2013 by
By all accounts, anything written by David Graeber is about as far from typical “conservative” fare that you might expect to find featured on this site. Graeber is an anthropologist and anarchist, an early member of the Occupy Wall Stree movement. He’s so “out there” that even Yale decided not to renew his contract as an assistant […]
B is for Bankruptcy of Stockton, California
April 2, 2013 by
It’s a running joke around these parts (Utah) that a successful business plan for a California company starts with leaving California. The cost of living, rising taxes, and increased government regulation are all combining to make California less attractive, the beaches not withstanding. Now comes this: Stockton, California, a city of around 300,000, has declared […]
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