Bulletin Board
- My J-school buddy Tom Lawrence has started a blog called Prairie Perspective, which will provide “news, commentary and history on politics, life and culture in South Dakota and the Upper Midwest.” (Must say I like the name.)
Interesting Reading in the Interweb Tubes
- Who is the Real Enemy of the State? (“In essence, the [National Defense Authorization Act] seeks to designate the United States as an active war zone in regards to allegations of terrorism, or support of terrorism, wherein our most cherished all while putting your basic Constitutional Rights subject to the President’s whim.”)
Blog Headline of the Week
Blog Lines of the Week
- “If you’re thinking [a federal statute] seems to mean the feds can charge anyone with use of a Weapon of Mass Destruction based on the use of anything that can be described as a “bomb,” you’d be right. However, as an American, I live in confidence that the government would never exaggerate the existence of WMDs.”
Batshit Craziness of the Week
- Couple on probation in child’s death has another die after prayer used instead of doctor (via)
Legal Inanities of the Week
- A Houston first-grade teacher cites her racial prejudice against black students in denying allegations she fondled a girl in her classroom last month.
- Doing what they “sometimes have to do,” a police officer has sex with prostitute, then arrests her
- A Japanese woman in her 20s is suing Google, saying her psychological condition worsened after discovering that a search for her address brought up a photo of her underwear hanging out on her veranda
Bookish Linkage
- Author James Patterson talks about the full page ad he bought in the NYTBR urging the government to “save” books, libraries and bookstores
- A self-proclaimed book snob on first looking into the public library (via)
- Is it easer to give away a book or a flower?
- Cli-fi, a new genre?
- Are you as well read as a college sophomore? (I got a “nice job”)
- Don DeLillo wins the first Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction
- Ten essential novels about insanity
- Divergent by Veronica Roth and Girl, Stolen by April Henry won the high school and middle school categories, respectively, in the 2012 Teen Choice Book Awards of the South Dakota Young Adult Reading Program
Nonbookish Linkage
- I know you’ll be shocked but once again the richest Americans get richer and everyone else gets poorer
- What is a terrorist? (via)
- How much does Google know about you?
- Where the hell is hell?
Even in a country with constitutional guarantees of freedom, something more is needed to resist fear and its manipulators. That is courage.
Anthony Lewis, Freedom for the Thought That We Hate
