Nuclear and Environment

US War Department’s Archival Footage of the Bombing of Hiroshima.

 

H. Bruce Franklin, “Hiroshima, Nagasaki, American Militarism,” a review of Paul Ham‘s Hiroshima Nagasaki: The Real Story of the Atomic Bombings and Their Aftermath.

Mark Strauss, “Federal Employee Gets Fired After Writing an Article Criticizing Nukes.”

Lindsay Abrams, “Researchers: Warming Responsible for Siberia’s Mysterious Hole.”

Politics

Paul Krugman, “Knowledge Isn’t Power.”

 

International

On the road to World War III. Roger Cohen, “Yes, It Could Happen Again.”

George Packer, “A Friend Flees the Horror of ISIS.”

Aaron Bady, “Is Genocide Right for You?”

Adam Withnall, “Ebola Outbreak: Emirates Becomes First Major International Airline to Suspend All Flights to Virus-Affected Region.”

Lenny Bernstein, “Why You’re Not Going to Get Ebola in the US.”

 

Science and Technology

The new impossible engine. Robbie Gonzalez, “Don’t Get Too Excited About NASA’s New Miracle Engine.” And more on NASA impossible engine.

 

Literature and Culture

The end of civilization as we know it: “literally” now also means “figuratively” according to Merriam-Webster.

On Haruki Murakami’s most recent. Patti Smith, “Deep Chords: Haruki Murakami’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage,” and Laura Miller, “Murakami’s Understated Triumph: What Japan’s Most Celebrated Writer Knows that Most American Novelists Don’t.”

n + 1, “The Free and the Anti-Free: On Payment for Writers.”

Nathan Reese, “The Golden Age of Comics Is Now.” I am tempted to agree, man their are some good books out there right now.

Rob Horning, “The Silence of the Masses Could Be Social Media.”

Noah Gittel, “Scarlett Johansson’s Vanishing Act.”

Gerry Canavan, “Guiltpiercer.” (A response to Aaron Bady’s fantastic article that I posted last time.)

Prachi Gupta, “Inside Junot Díaz’s Class at MIT: What the Writer Wants His Students to Read.”

Colin Mcenroe, “Ira Glass ‘Shakespeare Sucks’ Redemption: Fixing TED Talks, Public Radio, and Dystopia for Millennials.”

The archaeology of Atari.

On the Game Changer Chicago Design Lab.

And if you’re in Pittsburgh: A Conversation with Terrance Hayes and Lynn Emanuel.

 

Humanities and Higher Ed

According to Inside Higher Education the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has rescinded a job offer to Steven G. Salaita for comments he made on Twitter about Israel. And it is blowing up the academic internet. Corey Robins on Cary Nelson. The Illinois AAUP Committee on Salaita. David Palumbo-Liu, “Return of the Blacklist? Cowardice and Censoship at the University of Illinois.” And a petition demanding corrective action that has received ten-thousand signatures.

Richard Gunderman, “Is the Lecture Dead?”

Abigail Walthausen, “Don’t Give Up on the Lecture.”

Nick Romeo, “Are Great Teachers Born or Made?”

Max Nisen, “What Happens When an Elite American University Kills Grade Inflation?”

Carlo Rotella, “Adjuncts Should Unionize.”

On the itinerant academic life: Nate Kreuter, “When Friends Leave.”