A great Chicagoan is no more. My one story about Studs Terkel involves the blues and Romila Thapar – as she told us, about being hosted by Studs in the mid 60s in Chicago and being introduced to blues and jazz at the Checkerboard Lounge. So, here is Studs: Despite all the above misadventures, I [...]
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Last night, from Sarah Palin, Keith Olbermann, Rachel Maddow (♥!) and Jon Stewart, I heard about “yet another radical professor from the neighborhood who spent a lot of time with Barack Obama going back several years”, “Rashid Khalidi”. It is a startling realization; one that has caused me to reassess my impression, and my feelings [...]
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Dennis Perrin, whether he knows it or not, is in contention with Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi in a contest of nuclear indignance–which of the two will assume the mantle of America’s clear-thinking, hyper-independent conscience, left unshouldered since Hunter S. Thompson’s slide into obscurity, and lamentable demise? Taibbi has the lead. He occupies a chair close [...]
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At Madison, Ram Guha gave a thoroughly entertaining talk on contemporary history. It was filled with nice anecdotes, pointed criticisms of “establishment” histories and historians, and a genuinely felt call for new directions in history writing. It was also overly broad, had outdated generalizations, mis-characterized historiographical developments and seemed a bit too caustic. I didn’t [...]
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90′s nostalgia makes the best campaign commercial [Via Samip]
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Via Rohit, I read Vinay Lal’s excellent, “The Gandhi Everyone Loves to Hate”, Economic & Political Weekly, Oct 4, 2008 [pdf]. I wanted highlight this footnote which discusses Gandhi’s historiography in the Western academy (with a nod towards his memory in Delhi) and his discussion of why the subaltern studies (or postcolonial studies, in general) [...]
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More brilliant hate: [via, boingboing] Below the fold, lies the best.
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The South Asia Madison conference is such a pleasant, communal affair. Every one is in good spirits and any testiness of panel Q&As never spills out into the lobby. It is the biggest gathering of practitioners of the South Asian intellectual trades – though, some disciplines are more gathered than others. (pre-modern folks are few, [...]
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Colin Powell finds WMD – Upload a Document to Scribd
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and, dare I say, two early faves:
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Am off to the conference. Holla, if you see me. I will post pictures, reports, when I return Sunday.
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via Dawn, Oct 14, 2008: LAHORE, Oct 14: Ulema of all major schools of thought have declared suicide attacks ‘haram’. “It is a unanimous decree of the ulema that suicide attacks in Pakistan are haram and illegitimate. But it seems as if the government is covertly backing these attacks so that patriotic citizens may not [...]
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“I was in Australia and New York and here in England, I was at Oxford for a few years. At least two of those places were very egalitarian, and this was Sydney and New York and when I came back I had to a large extent forgotten what it had been to be well off [...]
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This past weekend, I visited Troy, Ohio. Besides farangi, the duo from the excellent fivethirtyeight.com were along for the ride. They were shadowing my attempt to convince just ONE ohio voter to cast her ballot for Obama because he is a Muslim. There really is nothing wrong with being a Muslim, man. I am telling [...]
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[via Sean @ 538.com, image by Brett.]
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I will have some pictures up tomorrow of Ohio, including the fivethirtyeight.com road crew in situ, on the road. I can report that nearly every single ad I have seen on tv from McCain has been a negative ad – including some delectably served hate from NRA (check out gunbanobama.com, if you must). And everything [...]
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“I make no claims that I can comprehend the mind of a terrorist, but as a Muslim I think I have a handle on bin Laden’s twisted view of Islamic eschatology.” – Rany Jazayerli at 538.com. Why? Why is the fact of being a Muslim qualify any one for anything? Seriously. I would really like [...]
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