The socially acceptable prejudice?
I didn’t believe it at first when I met Southerners who told me how they were routinely dismissed as unintelligent by Northerners the minute a drawl came out of their mouths — and mocked and infantilized for the same. I had never had that reaction myself, and never heard anyone talking about it.
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Interesting words, part 3
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Hot or not
Several weeks ago, while discussing the oncoming winter with my Southern-raised girlfriend, we reached an impasse over what exactly constituted weather cold enough to get alarmed about. Coming from Louisiana, she insisted that anything in even the 40s Fahrenheit was frigid, weather to cause people to stay indoors, bundled up in front of the fireplace. Myself, growing up in bitter Chicago winters, said you can’t start calling weather “cold” until the weather at least falls into the 30s — and that even then, extreme cold doesn’t start until the thermometer falls to the single digits.
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Real road-tripping: Southern swing
Weddings and battlefields in a 3,200-mile road-trip across the South.
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Board game review: "Power Grid"
The most important thing to know about a new board game is what role chance has in the play. To pick extreme examples, children’s classic “Candy Land” is entirely luck — you can’t be good or bad at Candy Land, you just draw randomly shuffled cards and do what they say. Chess, on the other hand, is pure strategy and no luck — both sides are perfectly balanced and there are no random elements.
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Emptivity
A question raised just now at work: if something can be preemptive, why can’t it just be emptive?
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Script-doctoring the Star Wars prequels
Hating on the Star Wars prequels is a favorite pastime among those of a geekier persuasion. They have their moments, but are also heavily uneven, tediously paced and largely lacking resonance. But what if the prequels were good — REALLY good? That’s the question asked by filmmaker Belated Media, whose name does not appear to be anywhere on his YouTube, Facebook or Tumblr. This nameless video auteur proceeds to answer his own question by sketching out changes to the prequel scripts that actually seem like they’d produce pretty awesome movies.
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When inefficiency is praised
When most people talk about “efficiency,” they talk about it in one of two ways. For some people, it’s an unabashed good thing, a goal in and of itself. For other people, it may be a good thing but is often used as an excuse to bring bad things — firing employees, or replacing traditional tasks with soulless machines, or the like.
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The paradox of red state Democratic success
In South Dakota, history suggests national Democratic victories are actually devastating for the party's hopes of winning local elections.
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My research on Egypt
I’ve been watching the political tumult in the Middle East with interest since before the “Arab Spring” first broke out in late 2010. After writing a research paper on the political economy of the United Arab Emirates for one college class, I decided to keep my research focused in the Arab world for my next class, on the “Diffusion of Democracy,” in the spring of 2008. I wrote a case study of three different Arab countries in different situations — oil-rich monarchy Kuwait, impoverished monarchy Jordan, and massive then-dictatorship Egypt.
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Interesting words, part 2
A continuing series. From The Reformation: A History, by Diarmaid MacCulloch, page 334:
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The real lesson of 'Jurassic Park'
“Jurassic Park,” the 1993 film*, is so misunderstood even the film’s writers (including source material author Michael Crichton) and director Steven Spielberg got messed up.
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Idle, belated thoughts on 'The Great Stagnation'
Has America eaten all its "low-hanging fruit"? A look at technology and the economic slowdown.
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Moral derpitude
In which overthinking helps me come to grips with a word to which I have a visceral dislike.
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The philosophy of taxation
How ancient perspectives on what kind of taxes were appropriate for free people to pay continue to shape 21st Century government.
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'Star Trek Into Darkness': To boldly disappoint
J.J. Abrams’ new film Star Trek Into Darkness has just enough thoughts floating around its unexceptional script to make the viewer conscious of what could have been, but not enough to make it interesting. Its visuals are flashy enough to entertain but not dynamic enough to transfix. It is a profoundly disappointing movie.
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'The show makes me feel inadequate': Differing degrees of fandom
The shifting nature of TV has helped redefine the level of commitment required to be a true "fan."
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Where I've been and where I ain't
I’ve traveled reasonably broadly, though far from thoroughly. As I plan how I’m going to use my vacation time this year, it occurred to me that there’s one vast region of the country I haven’t even touched: the South.
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Confession time: hipster edition
This is mildly embarrassing, but also amusing, so I thought I would share:
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Advice for reporters
Several years ago, then-ABC News reporter (and current CNN host) Jake Tapper tweeted out 13 pieces of advice for reporters — particularly young reporters covering campaigns.
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Shifting frontiers of adulthood
Fellow Sioux Falls journalist Kristi Eaton is writing a blog about “quarterlife crises” — the pressure and problems 20-somethings can feel as they grow into full adulthood. Her most recent post contained a passing anecdote that struck me:
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A Cumberbatch Canon
A little audio editing turns a haunting dirge into an even more haunting round.
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What if a single state actually did secede?
Back when secession petitions were dominating the public eye after the 2012 election, I moved past the Civil War references and political disputes to take a look at what to me was a much more interesting question: if a U.S. state did legally secede from the Union, what would be the impact? My analysis looked at currency, trade, immigration, budgets, taxes and Internet domain names.
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A different set of states
A look at how different state boundaries might change politics and everyday life.
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Interesting words, part 1
A continuing series. From The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity, by Richard Fletcher, p. 209:
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On the eve of 'The Hobbit'
Late tonight, I’ll be sacrificing my sleep along with some friends and coworkers at the midnight opening of Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.” It’s a film I’ve been anticipating for some time and have written about at length twice on this site.
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'On The Run': A mixtape
A themed mixtape uses assembled songs to tell the story of a tragic life.
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Blake's back?
This week, the network formerly known as SciFi announced it was developing a remake of the 1970s space opera “Blake’s 7.” A year ago or so, this would have meant nothing to me. But since then, as part of my periodic cultural catchup project, I watched the entire run of Terry Nation’s show.
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Simple decency in 'Downton Abbey'
Here follows a listing of the characters in season one of “Downton Abbey,” arranged in ascending order of fundamental human decency:
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More on taking ideas seriously
After publishing my prior post, a friend sent me a great long video of a discussion between astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and an out-of-character Stephen Colbert. One exchange in particular resonated in light of what I had just written. That’s embedded below, set to start at this exchange (rewind to 6:15 for the start of the interview). The part I bolded below gets at the core of what I posted earlier today: