Feministing’s Samitha fumes about the latest entry in the Grand Theft Auto series:
What I can’t get down with is justifying blatant misogyny by calling it art.
I know this is a crazy, crazy thought, but perhaps something can be both misogynistic and art. It can even be misogynistic and… good art.
Now, maybe GTA-IV is misogynistic; I [...]

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Yuval Levin writes:
Senator Obama’s sudden turnaround on the flag pin seems like an astonishing (and frankly very surprising) bit of cynicism. But if he is actually cynical enough to do it for West Virginia votes, having criticized those who wear the pin when more urbane cosmopolitan votes were up for grabs, how could he not be clever [...]

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Normally, I’m as big a cheerleader as anyone for the whole peer-produced / wealth-of-networks / here-comes-everybody idea. But I’ve just seen what happens when you try to crowdsource the production of a novel via wiki, and my eyes are still burning. By harnessing the power of the Internet’s distributed intelligence, Penguin produced something orders of [...]

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Thoreau’s post on the potential pitfalls of advertising our presence to aliens who may be unfriendly reminds me of Robert Nozick’s morbidly delightful short story RSVP. It’s behind the subscription wall at Commentary, but can also be found in the collection Socratic Puzzles.

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The Templeton Foundation has discovered that if you want to create the appearance of a lively exchange of divergent views, just ask a dozen people to answer a short question so insanely vaguely worded that you can be assured no two of them will actually be answering the same question. For instance: Does science make [...]

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Via PJ Doland, you really cannot make this stuff up:
Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of “French narrative theory” that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well [...]

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Well, I’m sold:

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It’s got to say something about the hypersensitivity of the contemporary American right that Iron Man—Iron Man fer chrissakes—can be cast as a piece of anti-American leftie propaganda. For those unfamiliar with the plot—which nobody should be, because the movie is awesome and ought to be viewed immediately—let me sum up without, I hope, [...]

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