Category: Cultural critique
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Fuck the Superbowl
Orgiastic display of heternormative dominance and commercialism that it is. A longstanding, annual tradition, in fact. Though if memory serves I celebrated “it” last year by studying. This year I celebrated by drinking a lot of coffee and watching both Meet the Press and This Week, both worthwhile, especially because of Cristianne Amanpour’s foreign expertise…
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The new Egyptian revolution
Sunset over Cairo, from the Citadel, looking towards downtown Cairo may well be the greatest city in the world. The combination of deep history and thronging, chaotic modernity is special, perhaps unmatched. Of course, I’m not enough of a traveler or a historian to really say such things, but with the events of the past…
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(re)Defining Lightweight Backpacking
The difference between lightweight backpacking and ‘normal’ backpacking is obviously the gear. Winter has reached that point where we talk about summer. After a long weekend of rain, a bunch of us found ourselves in the Northern in Whitefish after an avy meeting last night, discussing not skiing and snow, but sunshine and fly fishing…
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Cases for and against Armstrong
Call it “physiologically believable” (which many don’t like, but I use it with its obvious intention), or call it signs of change, I do believe that the Tour is slower, and that the days of 6.3W/kg for 40 minutes are now the stuff of highlights and commemorative DVDs. -Science of Sport, 7/23/10 For a…
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Structural Violence (and a prediction)
President Reagan said, “We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.” Acts of monstrous criminality stand on their own. They begin and end with the criminals who commit them,…
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Disregulation
Since I began doing social work post-undergrad, in 2003, it hasn’t been unusual for my work to adversely influence my sleep. Either the quantity, in the form of insomnia, or more commonly the quality, in the form of peculiar dreams and nightmares. There are many reasons to not blog, and a number of the classics…
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A note on blogging
It’s amazing that blogs even exist any more. Facebook and Twitter are the Fast Food Nation of thought. Who wouldn’t rather take 15 seconds to spout something off instead of the hours it takes to write a decent blog entry? Bloggers are the resistance, and before they get taken into custody in the name of…
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The question of laziness
After getting my ass kicked the last 4-5 times out skiing (or at least not feeling like a powder slaying god), moral has been low. One result is that I’m going through a period of nostalgia for summer. Thinking about mountain biking on dry dirt, or catching trout in clear water. The other result is…
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2010: in review
Running through all these Christmases is the sense of an emotional cadenza at the end of the year, a braiding of feelings like hope, renewal, nostalgia, love, joy and exhaustion. Yet in the stories about this holiday, it’s surprising how often we’re reminded of a darker life, full of isolation, penury, greed, despair and the…
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In praise of the mundane
I started taking blogging seriously this summer. One conspicuous byproduct of this is that I began gathering/paying attention to statistics associated with my work here: who reads what, how often, when, and so forth. Some of it isn’t surprising: Monday and Tuesday are by far the biggest traffic days, Saturday and Sunday the least. Some…
Bedrock & Paradox 
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