Life has been quite busy, so I don’t even have that big of a backlog of links, but there’s been some interesting things afoot and I’m way behind on some of this stuff. So, without further ado. . . .
The trailer to Paul Thomas Anderson’s forthcoming adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice (2009) should be required viewing:
Logan Hill, “Pynchon’s Cameo, and Other Surrealities: Paul Thomas Anderson Films Inherent Vice.”
And a reflection on the trailer from some of the people at Grantland.
Leigh Phillips, “Four European States Host US Nuclear Bombs, WikiLeaks Reveals.”
Gregory Fried, “The King Is Dead: Heidegger’s ‘Black Notebooks.'”
Cory Doctorow, “Stephen Harper Sells Canada: China Can Secretly Sue to Repeal Canadian Laws.”
boundary 2 has made available Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht’s “The Future of Reading? Memories and Thoughts toward a Genealogical Approach.”
Maya Rhodan, “Nearly 5 Million Google Passwords Leaked to Russian Site.”
Simon Parkin, “Zoe Quinn’s Depression Quest.”
Podcast: Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey.
And Carolyn Kellogg on Alison Bechdel and Terrance Hayes receiving MacArthur Fellowships.
As predicted, I have been quite busy indeed and have not had a chance to post anything over the past couple of weeks. A bunch of fascinating stuff has been happening, a bunch of interesting books are coming out, etc., so I’m sad that I’ve been remiss in my duties. Hopefully this large batch of links will make up for that.
Apocalypse and After
George Dvorsky, “Have Humans Already Conquered the Threat of Extinction?”
Or not. Graham Turner and Cathy Alexander, “Limits to Growth Was Right: New Research Shows We’re Nearing Collapse.”
Jessica Corbett and Ethan Corey, “5 Crucial Lessons for the Left from Naomi Klein’s New Book.”
Eric Holthaus, “New Study Links Polar Vortex to Climate Change.”
And who knows where to put this one: Alison Flood, “Margaret Atwood’s New Work Will Remain Unseen for a Century.”
Environment and Apocalypse
Hamilton Nolan, “Doom Draws Nearer.”
Daniel Cech, “How the Apocalypse Would Happen if Heaven Were a Small Nonprofit.”
Robert O. Self, “Cataclysm in Suburbia: The Dark, Twisted History of America’s Oil-Addicted Middle Class.”
Emma Hansen, “From Nuclear Bombs to Killer Robots: How Amoral Technologies Become Immoral Weapons.”
Tomorrow I return to the classroom at the University of Pittsburgh for another semester. As I imagine that this will also mean I’m about to be considerably busier, and that this will mean a bit less posting on the ole blog (links or otherwise), some links to mark the occasion.
Disaster and Environmental
Daniel Politi, “Napa Valley Earthquake Is the Strongest to Hit the Bay Area Since 1989.”
Ferguson
Douglas Williams, “Love Me, Ferguson, I’m a Liberal.”
Alexandra Schwartz, “On Being Seen: An Interview with Claudia Rankine from Ferguson.”
Matt Apuzo and Michael S. Schmidt, “In Washington, Second Thoughts on Arming the Police.” Continue reading
Ferguson
The running blog from Ferguson‘s latest: Ben Mathis-Lilley and Elliot Hannon, “Officer Who Stopped Michael Brown Did Not Know He Was a Robbery Suspect.”
Robert Stephens II, “In Defense of the Ferguson Riots.”
An open letter from David Simon.
Rembert Browne, “The Front Lines of Ferguson.”
“This Time, For Once, What It Is, It Is.”
Daniel Politti, “After a Day of Calm, Ferguson Reignites: Looting, Clashes with Police and Tear Gas.”
Jack Mirkinson, “Police Threaten to Shoot, Mace Reporters in Ferguson.”
Dylan Scott, “Mayor Defends Police: I Can’t Second-Guess These Officers.”
Jamelle Bouie, “The Militarization of the Police.”
The militarization of US Police.
Sahil Kapur, “House Democrat Unveils Bill to Demilitarize Local Police.”
Rand Paul, “We Must Demilitarize the Police.”
“There’s a Police Coup Going on Right Now in Ferguson, MO.”
Matthew Yglesias, “Enough is Enough in Ferguson.”
Mychal Denzel Smith, “The Death of Michael Brown and the Search for Justice in Black America.”
LaDoris Hazzard Cordell, “Policing the Police.”
Joe Coscorelli, “Obama Treads Lightly, Again, on Ferguson: ‘Listen and Heal,’ Don’t ‘Holler and Shout.'”
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, “The Coming Race War Won’t Be About Race.”
And a must see: John Oliver on Ferguson.
In a little over a week I start teaching three classes at the University of Pittsburgh that I am greatly looking forward to: two sections of Narrative and Technology (ENGLIT 0399; class blog here), and a brand new upper-division course that I designed for English Majors that fulfills an historical period requirement: Postmodern Literature (ENGLIT 1350). I am quite excited about both classes.
Nuclear and Environment
Sarah Stillman, “Hiroshima and the Inheritance of Trauma.”
McKenzie Wark, “Critical Theory After the Anthropocene.”
International
Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley, “Ebola and the Fiction of Quarantine.”
Leigh Phillips, “The Political Economy of Ebola.” “Ebola won’t be solved, because it isn’t profitable to do so.”
I’ve finally given in and created a Twitter account. You can follow me @BradleyFest.
In other news.
Nuclear
The diary of Mike Kirby, who worked with atomic weapons for years.
Iraq and International
“To the defense of Erbil: this was the main cause that drew President Obama back to combat in Iraq last week, two and a half years after he fulfilled a campaign pledge and pulled the last troops out” (Steve Coll, “Oil and Erbil”).
Rod Nordland and Helene Cooper, “Capitalizing on US Bombing, Kurds Retake Iraqi Towns.”
Conor Friedersdorf, “President Obama Risks Misleading Us Into War.”
Michael Tomasky, “Why Liberals Should Back Iraq Intervention.” Hmm.
On Putin’s current stance toward the US: David Remnick, “Watching the Eclipse.”
And boundary 2 has just made this fascinating article from their newest issue available: “Democracy: An Unfinished Project” by Susan Buck-Morss.
There have been many responses by notable people to the Steven G. Salaita issue. Corey Robin has a ton of links on the issue, including a tweet by Glenn Greenwald, and a piece by Peter Schmidt in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Former president of the MLA, Michael Bérubé, has written an open letter to Chancellor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Phyllis Wise. Cary Nelson, former president of the American Association of University Professors, has written a piece defending Wise’s decision. Some background on Nelson. John K. Wilson has criticized UIUC in “Fighting the Twitter Police.” Sarah T. Roberts, “Steven Salaita: The University of Illinois is not an Island.” And here’s a recent piece by Salaita himself on academic freedom, “The Definition of Academic Freedom, for Many, Does Not Accommodate Dissent.”
In other news:
Dwight Garner seems to think that David Shafer’s Whiskey Tango Foxtrot may be the book of the summer in “Maybe There’s a Whole Other Internet.”
In hyperarchival news, Monte Reel reports on “The Brazilian Bus Magnate Who’s Buying Up All the World’s Vinyl Records.”
And I’m starting to get the itch for the new semester:
Joshua Rothman, “What College Can’t Do.”
“Rogeting: Why ‘Sinister Buttocks’ Are Creeping into Students’ Essays.”
And, just breaking, President Obama has announced that he has authorized airstrikes and humanitarian aid in Iraq. The Washington Post has a transcript of the announcement.
The Hyperarchival Parallax 