Wanderers Still

Climate Change is Simple - We’re headed for a catastrophic...

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 14:02:47 -0500

Climate Change is Simple - We’re headed for a catastrophic end to civilization, that’s a fact. We must change course, now.

Star Talk Radio and The Science of the Mind

Tue, 20 Nov 2012 23:46:33 -0500

Star Talk Radio and The Science of the Mind

That dip. That beautiful dip.

Sat, 15 Sep 2012 14:28:06 -0400

That dip. That beautiful dip.

This dog is a Gooner.

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 11:24:41 -0400

This dog is a Gooner.

God I love these Spaniards.

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 10:47:43 -0400

God I love these Spaniards.

The original Dutch wonder.

Mon, 02 Jul 2012 15:35:46 -0400

The original Dutch wonder.

Watching this before the Euro matches today. Can’t wait to...

Sat, 09 Jun 2012 10:12:28 -0400

Watching this before the Euro matches today. Can’t wait to see Prinz Poldi in action for Germany and for Arsenal next season.

"A cripple or a consumptive in the eye fo the law is equal to the strongest athlete or the deepest..."

Sat, 19 May 2012 12:16:57 -0400

“A cripple or a consumptive in the eye fo the law is equal to the strongest athlete or the deepest thinker, and the same justice should be shown to a woman whether she is or is not the equal of man….As regards the laws relating to marriage, there should be the most absolute equality preserved between the two sexes. I do not think the woman should assume the man’s name…. I would have the word ‘obey’ used not more by the wife than the husband.”

- President Theodore Roosevelt’s senior thesis, 1880. Strange to think this is controversial over 130 years later.

I know van Persie is our main concern - but Arsenal, let’s...

Sat, 19 May 2012 12:06:27 -0400

I know van Persie is our main concern - but Arsenal, let’s get this man a new contract as well!

Historical Revisionism

Sat, 19 May 2012 11:44:04 -0400

Thomas Jefferson was basically an agrarian socialist, Thomas Paine thought religion was for idiots, and Lincoln, T. Roosevelt, and Eisenhower would all be anathema to the modern Republican Party. Can we stop pretending otherwise?

This makes me so happy and sad at the same time.

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 18:54:58 -0500

This makes me so happy and sad at the same time.

Captain Vantastic

Sat, 03 Mar 2012 10:30:54 -0500

Captain Vantastic

Class acts, all around. What a team.

Sun, 26 Feb 2012 18:17:52 -0500

Class acts, all around. What a team.

Love and Love and Love

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:35:27 -0500

Today Miss T., owner of the JuJu Bag Cafe in Gentilly, gave us a wonderful history lesson on free people of color after the Louisiana Purchase. Though for me, her real lesson came from the story of the JuJu Bag and what Miss T. went through during The Storm.

“I had to get a city ordinance passed so I could build a fence high enough so people here couldn’t see the destruction around them.”

Miss T., a former professor at Southern University, came back to Gentilly after visiting a dying friend in New York, only to find she was the only person left on her block. Her home, three blocks from the JuJu Bag, took on 9 ft. of water (despite being elevated 4 ft. already) and many of her elderly neighbors were killed in the floodwaters.

Miss T. and her partner Phyllis purchased the house that would become the JuJu Bag so Phyllis would have somewhere to ply her trade as a master barber larger than the dimensions of a FEMA trailer. They intended to use one side as a barber shop and the other as a bookstore, but as someone said to Miss T., “Who in the hell has time to read?”

With the reputation of “the only place open in Gentilly” about six months after Katrina, the JuJu Bag quickly became a meeting hall/community center/coffee shop/music hall. But deep down, what it really turned into was a labor of love.

Today is a day that all the marketing in the world tells us we’re either supposed to show our love for others or for ourselves by buying things. By making grand statements that may or may not mean what they say. But what I really reflected on today was the true power of love, the power that rebuilt an entire city.

Because that’s what drove it all, really. New Orleans continues to be rebuilt by love. The love of home and the bonds of love that brought families back to what really was total devastation. The love of oneself and one’s community that made crowds stand up and say, “We won’t let it die.” The love of strangers for people they’ve never met that brought those strangers down here and caused them to give and give and give - without a second thought.

It was not mere charity, nor stubbornness, nor pride that brought this place to where it stands now. It was love and its labors, like the JuJu Bag, that did it.

But looking at this violence breaking out on our streets, it’s going to take a lot more love and a whole lot more labor to build the city we all want for each other.

Envy the Tourist

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 18:38:26 -0500

So many here deride the tourist. The walkers of Bourbon Street, the drinkers of Hand Grenades, Spring Breakers, Mardi Gras Dayers, the Jazz Fest crowds, the ‘Bama fans. They don’t know our city, our love - they only want it for the sexy, easy exterior. A Big Easy one-week stand.

But, I thought, maybe we should envy the tourist. Their love is a simple, uncomplicated one. They come here, enjoy themselves, and get to part ways with it - telling those at home how they “love that city.” And they do, as much as love means for them.

They get off easy. The tourists’ love requires none of the grief, heartache, fear, unease, anger or confusion that ours does. Hardly does a tourist see a man gunned down in front of them and never are they forced to walk home through certain danger. They don’t live with the fear that they might murder #28 this month. Tourists have a whole police force looking out for them.

And less seriously, tourists don’t live with how small this place really is and how interconnected we all really are. They don’t go to Frenchman Street only to run into an ex-lover they parted with poorly, or an old friend they let fall by the wayside. Tourists know no one, form no attachments, and leave none the wiser.

But then I think, I’m something of a tourist. My home lies far from here and I can go back when I please. Or I can move on to somewhere else. Despite the tendrils this city snaked around me, I can come and go at any time. My pain is self-inflicted and others before me have answered the call of a distant home. But do I want to be a tourist - or do I take the high-risk, high-reward path of Calling New Orleans Home?

Photo

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 20:52:48 -0500

Video

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 19:19:45 -0500

"As Tottenham’s digital clock stopped on ninety minutes, Rocky picked up a loose cross, chested..."

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 19:11:41 -0500

“As Tottenham’s digital clock stopped on ninety minutes, Rocky picked up a loose cross, chested it down, and hit it through Clemence and into the net; and almost immediately the referee blew the final whistle, and the rows of people disappeared and were replaced by one shuddering heap of ecstatic humanity.”

- Nick Hornby, Fever Pitch. Also, the most beautiful sentence I read today.

Alex Songinho

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 10:50:11 -0500

Alex Songinho

JSTOR opens limited free access option non-subscribing scholars

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:51:12 -0500

JSTOR opens limited free access option non-subscribing scholars:

ragelikeadog:

infoneer-pulse:

Now JSTOR is getting ready to go one step further, by cutting a small window in its paywall for visitors who are not affiliated with any subscribing institution. The new program, called Register & Read, will soon let anybody read back filed JSTOR content at no cost.

Under the new program, unsubscribed visitors will be allowed to check out three “items” from the JSTOR archive every two weeks, which they will be able to read for free. In order to prevent piracy, the texts will be displayed as image files (so that text cannot be copied). Users will not be able to download the files.

The depletion of the traditional professoriate has produced a new demographic of unmoored scholars who might not have “the consistency of access that they want,” says Heidi McGregor, a spokeswoman for JSTOR. The goal of Register & Read would be to better serve that population — as well as others that the organization might not have even known about.

Seventy journals are participating in the pilot, including Ecology, American Anthropologist, PMLA, the Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of Finance, and the American Historical Review.

» via Inside Higher Ed

Never gonna have to be without scholarship agaaaaaaaaaaiiiiin!