In last week’s rock-off we saw the biggest reader response of any match to date, with Paul Steel pulling away to post a convincing 75%-25% victory over Chris Corner and IAMX. Congrats to IAMX, who have one of the best CDs of the year to date. I feel certain certain they’ll turn up in our year-end best-of list. Meanwhile, Paul Steel moves on to the finals.
This week’s semifinal, which determines Steel’s final round opponent, features two very talented, but very different bands. First, the New York-based shoegaze artistry of Asobi Seksu, which dismissed Food Will Win the War in round 2. Exotic, swirling and intricate, Asobi Seksu is one of the very best of the current wave of shoegazers and dreampoppers.
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by Rich Herschlag
He was only fifty. He had dozens of upcoming appearances planned. His sudden death this past week sent shock waves around the world. There were warning signs, but in the end few people saw it coming. The exact cause of his death is the topic of endless speculation and will not be known for some time. Until that time, the rumor mill will be in full swing on cable news shows and blog sites as this tragic story increasingly takes on a strange new life of its own. Full Story »
 It’s an image most Westerners recognize immediately: A lone man standing in the middle of a five-lane street, blocking a line of tanks. Single-handedly, “Tank Man” prevented the tanks from advancing on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China.
Tank Man was one of more than a million Chinese students from universities across the country’s capital who converged on the square in April of 1989, demanding democratic reform. The resulting stand-off between students and the government lasted a month and a half and, eventually, led to a military crackdown. As many as 3,600 students died and more than twice that number sustained injuries.
The picture of “Tank Man”—taken by photographer Jeff Widener of the Associated Press—was one of the most famous stories captured during the confrontation. Now, issued to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, comes another compelling story: Lake with No Name by Diane Wei Liang. Full Story »
Sanford case shines a spotlight on the central paradox of marriage.
South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford not only played fast and loose with the institution of marriage, but with email. However, help keeping affairs secret has arrived for not only politicians, but all of us. AshleyMadison.com just released apps for mobile phones and the Blackberry. Jeremy Caplan reports for Time that because they’re “loaded up from phones’ browsers, they leave no electronic trail.”
For those unfamiliar with it, AshleyMadison is a matchmaking service for married individuals. That’s right: It facilitates affairs. To summarize the statement of a woman Caplan quotes who consults in the online dating field, AshleyMadison is infidelity “rebranded” and made “monetizable.” Though Ashley Madison has signed up over one million users since going online in 2001, she seems concerned that it harms the online dating business for singles. Full Story »
Cassava and sorghum are tubers that form the protein base for hundreds of millions of people. But while there’s a great deal of protein in the plant, there’s also cyanide in the plant’s leaves. Whether the leaves are poisonous or not depends partly on how much protein there is - more protein means that the cyanide is less toxic and the plants are safe to eat for man and beast alike. But according to a new study reported in Reuters, higher carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations means both less protein and more cyanide, a toxic combination. Full Story »
Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri is calling for a further weakening of the American Climate and Energy Security Act (ACES) that passed out of the House last week. Of course, that’s not what she calls it. Sen. McCaskill twittered last week:
I hope we can fix cap and trade so it doesn’t unfairly punish businesses and families in coal dependent states like Missouri. (emphasis mine)
I can’t help but wonder what happened to the Senator who dared mention that oil prices shouldn’t be allowed to fall too far at the Rocky Mountain Roundtable, Session 2, Part 3, during the DNC:
There’s a certain reality here that it is important that we don’t get gas too cheap again, and I certainly agree with what [Randy Udall] said. We will never see the days of… when people are pumping $1, $1.50 gas again. And that may not be an all bad thing because it will motivate the politics on this issue to the forefront so we have a sense of urgency.
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by Jennifer Angliss
My city, like many other municipalities these days, has a bit of a budget crunch. Expenses exceed income and so cuts must be made. One of the first things my city cut was the flower pots that decorate major intersections in the summers. To me, that seems like a reasonable cut. Yes, the flowers are beautiful. But they cost $20,000 per year (including water and labor costs). And at the same time, our library is struggling with its budget and has a hiring freeze, even with several open positions. In my opinion, if you’ve got an underfunded library it’s not wise to spend taxpayer money on flowers.
In the end, the Rotary Club took up the cause and donated money for the planters. Wonderful, I say. We get to keep the flowers without spending very much city money on them. They are still watered and tended by city workers who have been reassigned from jobs like weeding and picking up litter, but the bulk of the expense has been shouldered by the Rotary Club and private citizens.
However, (you knew there was a however coming, right?) I am a bit concerned about the attitudes of my fellow citizens on this. Full Story »
 Hate meetings? Who doesn’t?
If you’ve snooped around at all, you know that there are lots and lots of smart people with good advice on how to run effective meetings, but you may be thinking that none of those suggestions is really helping address what seem like deeper issues (and here, think “band-aid” and “sucking chest wound”). If so, let’s ponder the possibility that the problem lies not with the conduct of the meetings themselves, but with the culture in which they occur. Consider the following issues that I’ve encountered in various organizations through the years.
(Read the rest at the Exchange Blog…)
 We’ve had a Facebook page for some time, but now we’ve got our own vanity URL!
You may have noticed Facebook’s new feature that allows everything from big companies to lowly blogs like us to reserve facebook.com/YOURNAMEHERE, and thanks to Jennifer Angliss, who manages our Facebook account for us, you can now visit us and become a fan at facebook.com/scholarsandrogues. Thanks, Jen.
In addition, you may have noticed that little Tweet widget at the top of the right column, which means that you can also follow us on Twitter, if you like. We’re @scholars_rogues.
It is my extreme pleasure to inform you all that Full Story »
Posted on June 29, 2009 by Bonesparkle under Bush administration, Congress, Democrats, Dr. Slammy 2008, Green Party, Obama administration, Republicans, capitalism, conservatives, democracy, economy, education, environment, gay rights, government, health care, liberals, politics, progressives, race relations, religion [ Comments: 38 ]
 A modest proposal, perhaps.
It’s been entertaining watching American public “discourse” since the election. (I use that word in its broadest, most ridiculous sense, since nothing that hinges so completely on self-absorption, rank ignorance and pathological dishonesty can be accurately characterized by such a noble word. But indulge me. I’ve been working on my irony lately.)
On the one hand you have conservatives fainting dead away that we’re now in the clutches of a “socialist” president. Never mind that these folks wouldn’t know a real socialist if he was gnawing their balls off. Never mind that most of these folks think “socialist” is the French word for Negro. Never mind that Obama demonstrably is to socialism what Joe the Plumber is to brie-sucking Northeastern intellectualism. As arch-conservative TV pundit Stephen Colbert says, “this is a fact-free zone.”
On the other you have the righteous outrage of the progressosphere, which feels six different kinds of betrayed by a president who promised them the moon and stars and has now left them to what looks like at least a four-year walk of shame. If I might borrow from an old fraternity joke, imagine the following scene from the Oval Office: Full Story »
At the end of every summer, mom took my sisters and brother to town to shop for school clothes. She never took me. I was the favorite after all, with all the benefits and curses that entailed. Because I was the favorite, not just any outfit would do. I got special school clothes, and when I say special, I mean the types of outfits that either elicited fits of laughter from my siblings or got me sold to the pharaoh. Until the clothes were laid out and de-pinned and pressed, I never knew which. Full Story »
 The Deproliferator
Conventional thinking holds that deterrence has kept us safe. If, that is, you don’t mind a little brinkmanship like Berlin in 1961 and the Cuban Missile crisis. The history of the Cold War was also sprinkled with accidents such as the 1966 Palomares, Spain crash of a B-52 bearing four hydrogen bombs.
Nor has the Cold War’s thaw elicited the same sigh of relief from the disarmament community as from the public at large. One state or another always seems to be looking for an excuse to develop nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, non-state actors, such as al-Qaeda or Chechen rebels, make no bones whatsoever about their nuclear avarice. Full Story »
Michael Jackson’s death is having a strange resonance for me. The feeling I have is like the sound a spring reverb used to make when you bumped into somebody’s guitar amp.
I haven’t been able to work out for myself what it means yet. Of course it’s still early.
I keep hearing Patrick Star’s voice: there’s this Sponge Bob episode where Patrick cries in despair, “Why does this keep happening!?” And Sponge Bob says in a resigned, measured tone, “I - don’t - know.”
It’s like that, if you know what I mean, which I doubt.
Here’s some random information I’m sorting through:
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Last week’s quarterfinal matchup started out neck and neck, but in the end Rose Hill Drive stepped on the gas and pulled away for a resounding 88%-12% victory over Food Will Win the War. Congrats to the excellent FWWtW for making the quarters and best of luck in the future. We’ll be listening. Meanwhile, Rose Hill Drive moves on to the semis where they’ll square off with Asobi Seksu.
Now for this week’s first semifinal throwdown. Contestant #1 is 20 year-old UK Power Pop prodigy Paul Steel, who knocked off the dynamic and popular Gogol Bordello to reach the round of four. Paul recalls one of his greatest moments:
“I got in from college one day and there was a message from Andy Partridge. Full Story »
Well, I didn’t expect my return to Scroguedom after six months would be in the form of a personal screed, and on domestic topics no less (as in “household”). However, as the feminist mantra of the 1970s claimed, “the personal is political,” a statement as salient today as it was then.
I’d like to be writing about clean energy or debating health care policy. I wish I could add something astute to the discussion about the future of democracy in Iran. But to do so would mean investing the time to follow these issues closely enough to have something worthwhile to add. And then there’s the time needed to actually write something. I’ve already got four or five unfinished posts languishing on my laptop.
Yet, in the words of my 14-year-old son this morning, who is angry at my asking him to pitch in around the house prior to the arrival of weekend guests, and who can’t understand why I won’t just drop everything to pick him up from the lake with his friends later today, I don’t have a “real job” — so why can’t I be like a good stay-at-home mom and craft my life exclusively around his? Full Story »
It might be more difficult for Republicans to bash President Obama for being “timid” in his comments about the Iranian government’s violence against protesters if the U.S. media didn’t consistently censor US-Iranian history.
Take CNN’s recent Iran timeline, titled “A brief look at Iran’s history.”
According to the timeline, which begins in 1979, Iran has “been at odds with the West and some of its neighbors” since the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. It refers to the Shah as having been “pro-Western.” Yet in the mother of all omissions, CNN leaves out how the US government was directly involved in bringing the Shah to power in a 1953 coup that toppled the democratically elected Iranian government of Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh. Full Story »
UPDATE: It was a close contest for awhile, but now Rose Hill Drive has started to open up a bit of a gap. It’s not too late, though - polls remain open until midnight tonight. Your vote decides who moves on to the semifinals.
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In last week’s Tournament of Rock quarterfinal match we saw a close contest that was actually tied with just a few hours remaining. A late surge allowed Asobi Seksu to claim a 56%-44% victory over Black Mountain, however, and they now move on to the semifinals where they’ll face the winner of this week’s match. Congratulations to Black Mountain for an outstanding showing.
And now, let’s get this week’s quarterfinal match underway. First, from Boulder, Colorado, please welcome Rose Hill Drive. It’s no secret that RHD loves them some Led Zeppelin, but they don’t let that respect get in the way of forging their own hard-edged, yet tuneful sound.
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