all: morning roundup

Disturbing new video for M.I.A.'s single "Born Free."  So disturbing in fact that I'm not going to link to it.  It was taken down from YouTube, I presume because of content.  It's a scathing critique of American military action and British anti-redhead sentiment, which seems odd to type but works shockingly well in the video.  But it's horrifically violent and decidedly not safe for work, and I really shouldn't have watched it with breakfast.

On a happier, brighter note: Charlie Davies might be able to play for the USMNT in the World Cup.  He was in a terrible car accident back in October that we all thought put him out until after South Africa.  But apparently he's made excellent progress.  Here's the Gray Lady's Q & A.

And Chuck is back!

politics: chickens

Sue Lowden, GOP political candidate for the Nevada senate race, has suggested that an effective form of payment for health care services would be a barter system.  Her example was, like, you know, we could exchange a chicken for an annual check up or something.  The good folks over at TPM have been tracking this story, and Josh Marshall has just provided this great link to the Lowden Plan. It takes common medical procedures and calculates how many chickens you'll need.  Get breast cancer, no worries, just bring 3494 chickens.

One or two questions though, since Tyson processes 41.4 million chickens per week, are we going to run them out of business now that we'll be diverting chickens from food processing to health care?  Do we need to raise more chickens?  And what about city dwellers and those pesky no livestock within the city limits ordinances? And, what are those doctors going to end up doing with all that livestock?  Sell them on to Tyson at an inflated price?  Just thinking this through to its logical conclusion here.

epistemic closure

So, a mini-battle about epistemic closure has emerged on the conservative side of our political conversation.  Essentially, some conservative pundits--most notably Ross Douthat--have been arguing for an increased willingness among conservative thinkers to self correct, to call bad arguments and fallacious statements among their own as well as among liberals.  The idea is that conservative thinkers--all thinkers really--need to hone their ideas through rigorous debate between and among others.  Epistemic closure occurs when everyone nods and goes along with ridiculous arguments for the sake of supporting an overarching ideological movement.

Taking up the gantlet, as it were, is Jim Manzi at the NRO's the Corner.  He essentially fisks Mark Levin's chapter in Liberty and Tyranny on global warming.  It's, well, gloriously sharp, witty, and absolutely skewers Levin's misuse of facts and information.  Well, not everyone else over at the Corner was too terribly pleased to say the least; wagon circling has ensued.  Andrew Sullivan, of course, has all the links.

the victorians in the digital age

I'm currently working an a talk I'm giving on Thursday called the Victorians in the Digital Age.  It's, as the title implies, about the circulation of Victorian periodicals in cyberspace, but it's also tangentially about the ways we re-conceive the Victorians today.  It's a massive deep think piece really, and I'm afraid it's utterly geeky in many ways.  Taking what I do and explaining it to an audience completely unfamiliar with the whole concept of a Victorian periodical or even a field called periodical studies is a daunting task.  Plus, I'm trying to put together a power point presentation that will make the whole thing at least visually relevant.

Since my brain is currently on overload and highly under caffeinated, I won't discuss the larger project yet--more to come.

forms traced by light

Despite the almost year absence, I have missed this space. So, here I go tentatively restarting this blog.  I blame Kate Flint.  She's a scholar at Rutgers who I heard speak at BWWC in College Station a few weeks ago.  She's, for lack of a better term, the scholarly equivalent of a rock star.  Her talk on reading practices and the kinds of book nineteenth-century travelers took with them was fascinating, multi-layered, and far reaching.

We also all discovered that Professor Flint has a blog called forms traced by light.  I've now added it to my RSS feed, and I figure if she can maintain a blog, then I should be able to as well.  Or at least do so with more continuity and dedication.