by Charli Carpenter | 21 Aug 2009 |
I have just finished reading Malcolm Gladwell's latest book Outliers. For those who haven't picked it up, yet, the key thesis is that extraordinary individuals are actually not extraordinary as individuals, but simply happen to be the lucky beneficiaries of chance, opportunity and social structures that unwittingly favor some over others by accident of birth - in ways we seldom recognize and even more seldom legislate to balance out.Bill Gates?...
by Charli Carpenter | 21 Aug 2009 |
I was proud to get home from a five-week, 18-state trip without a single speeding ticket. Then I opened my mail to find a stern letter from the Arizona Department of Public Safety, with this photo and a citation for going 6 miles over the speed limit on the interstate:My first response was to feel a little freaked. Clearly the robot menace has moved from the battlefield to our highways a modest revolution in roadside camera technology has...
by Peter | 21 Aug 2009 |
During any Presidential Administration, there are heated debates, accusations of horrible mismanagement, and political intrigue, but they are actively papered over and downplayed by a powerful White House communications operation dedicated to protecting the image of the President. Once everyone leaves office, however.....It seems the floodgates of insider accounts that "make news" and tell heretofore unknown details about the good old days of...
by Charli Carpenter | 21 Aug 2009 |
GUÉNAËL METTRAUX, a international criminal defense attorney in the Hague, published a modest proposal regarding the Guantanamo detainees in today's New York Times: instead of trying the detainees in military commissions or US courts, set up an international tribunal under UN auspices:Trying these men stateside would necessarily require the compromise of long-cherished principles of American law. Yet continuing to hold them without the prospect...
by Drew Conway | 20 Aug 2009 |
Today much of the world will be focused on Afghanistan, as that country embarks on its second attempt at a democratic election. With a constant threat of violence from the Taliban, the level of participation has been limited. Also, early reports state that police have been cracking down on journalists so information coming out of Afghanistan has been limited. There are, however, several good sources still operations, and I have put together a...
by Charli Carpenter | 20 Aug 2009 |
Afghans head to the polls today.Christian Brose at Foreign Policy's Shadow Government blog outlines a few worst case scenarios. One worst case outcome is the Iran scenario -- a disputed election result, allegations of fraud, and a drawn-out political fight laced with street protests and sporadic violence. This could be set off by either a narrow Karzai win or a suspicious Karzai blow-out (Ahmadinejad style). One could imagine days, even weeks,...
by Charli Carpenter | 20 Aug 2009 |
After posting on prison reform last night, I opened the NYTimes this morning to find Nicholas Kristof agrees with me.: "At a time when we Americans may abandon health care reform because it supposedly is “too expensive,” how is it that we can afford to imprison people like Curtis Wilkerson?"Wilkerson is the man to whom I referred serving a life sentence for stealing socks. I outlined a variety of problems with our prison system including...
by Charli Carpenter | 19 Aug 2009 |
The US needs prison reform as badly as it needs affordable health care. I haven't written about this before. Because America does such an excellent job of compartmentalizing its incarcerated population from its elite, those of us living in eastern urban areas rarely need to think about our prisons. Traveling across the wastelands of Kansas and Nebraska and Utah, however, where one is as likely to see a chain gang as an elk, and where the signs...
by Charli Carpenter | 19 Aug 2009 | Featured
OK, I'm officially back from hiatus after a long summer on the road plus the requisite settling-in period. Getting off the grid for a month and grounding one's experience in the practical aspects of life in a clunker with two kids gives one some perspective. I spent the summer aloof from some of the major news stories of the season: Michael Jackson's death and the charges against his doctor, the media spectacle's supposed knock-on effects on...
by Laura Sjoberg | 19 Aug 2009 | Featured
I have been largely absent from the blogosphere over the last week or so, and will remain so for the next week or so, as my energy is split evenly between moving hassles and getting lost on campus at my new institutional home ... but I couldn't resist this one.I was just reading the Google News headlines to feel like I still had a pulse while I haul boxes and yell at builders, and I found this gem ... "Obama Optimistic About Mideast Peace"....
by Charli Carpenter | 19 Aug 2009 |
The American Political Science Association is offering a short course at this year's conference on "Coding the Blogosphere," which will introduce some new tools for capturing and annotating large text datasets such as those generated by Web 2.0 technologies.
by Charli Carpenter | 18 Aug 2009 |
Courtesy of Tom Tomorrow @ Salon.com:Surely, surely there is a middle ground strategy.