All Thoughts Being Equal

The New Yorker piece on the Cascadia Subduction Zone, provocatively titled "The Earthquake That Will Devastate Seattle," sent tremors through the Internet recently. (Oh yes, I will make all the quake puns I want, thank you very much.) It also happens to be a pile of hot street trash doing irresponsible things with some actual facts, but this is the New Yorker and they spell cooperation as "coöperation" so they're obviously untrustworthy. Who does the New Yorker talk to? Chris Goldfinger, a paleoseismologist at OSU Kenneth Murphy, director of FEMA for the Oregon-Washington-Idaho-Alaska region Jay Wilson, chair of the Oregon Seismic Safety Policy Advisory Commission Ian Madin, director of Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries  Kevin Cupples, city planner for Seaside, OR  Doug Dougherty, superintendent of schools for Seaside That's six sources, two of whom are people whose freaking jobs involve planning for the absolute worst, one...

Can't remember how I came across this post— We Are Not Things: Mad Max versus Game of Thrones —but I think it's worth talking about at some length, if not a full post length. Two portrayals of a world where women hold dubious power and are seen as “things.” One of these is roundly criticized for it. One of them is roundly celebrated for it. Game of Thrones catches hell for its portrayal of women and this subject. Mad Max is wreathed in a garland of bike chains and hubcabs for it. What, then, is the difference? Here we go. I'll just come out and say that I think the article misunderstands how the themes of Mad Max and Game of Thrones are different: Max Max is about liberation , while Game of Thrones is about the nature and abuse of power. The article focuses on frequency and point-of-view as two points of contrast between MM and GoT . I'm not sure of the author believes that sexual assault should never be depicted, or if depicted, only once? Frequ...

This post is a follow-up to Diagnosis of an overwhelming fear, pt. 2 , and a partial-follow up to Rhetorical imperialism I. The new hotness in this micro-epoch of the Age of Outrage is at Vox, where a pseudonymous professor touts his liberality but claims that his liberal students are terrifying . "I'm a liberal college professor," cries the headline, "and my liberal students terrify me": I'm a professor at a midsize state school. I have been teaching college classes for nine years now. I have won (minor) teaching awards, studied pedagogy extensively, and almost always score highly on my student evaluations. I am not a world-class teacher by any means, but I am conscientious; I attempt to put teaching ahead of research, and I take a healthy emotional stake in the well-being and growth of my students. Things have changed since I started teaching. The vibe is different. I wish there were a less blunt way to put this, but my students sometimes s...

This was provoked by Scott Alexander's wonderful story "... And I Show You How Deep the Rabbit Hole Goes." I decided to take the original Tumblr meme and put a pessimistic, Needful Things-esque spin on it. Comments and critiques are welcome: I wrote this all at once in a mad haste of inspiration (thus my earlier word choice) so it may or may not be rough. "Let's just say you don't pay... with money. " — Mr. Needful *** YELLOW "Gives you the ability to read and search the minds of anyone you can see, even if it's a picture. You can also turn their minds 'off' to put them into a coma." Yes, now everyone's mind is an open book to you. But alas, the man never said whether you'd be able to understand these books. The first time you attempt to use this power, on a photograph of the President, it felt like that time you had to read Immanuel Kant in college, except that now "A Critique of Pure Reason" was co...

I.   My friend Jon Bash is a very talented musician/composer , so it's safe to assume that he thinks very seriously about music in general. Recently he posted this article ( "How Popular Music's Lyrics Perpetuate American Idiocy" ) from a site called The Anti-Media, about a study examining the "reading level" of Billboard Top 40 songs. Stories about the study were passed around other places too, including The Guardian ( "Hip hop ain't top: new study reveals reading levels behind music lyrics" ) and The Onion 's A.V. Club ( "Popular songs are dumb and only getting dumber, says dumb study" ), with varying levels of skepticism and/or snark. Before getting in to any substantive discussion, however, I will first make fun of The Anti-Media for writing a really dumb article. Claire Bernish (Twitter handle: @ subversive_pen — Twitter bio: a Julian Assange quote) opens her turd-de-force with the following incredible paragraph-and...