On And Remember to Tip Your Waiters Real Good Tonight, Wall Street
Annual military pay raise was 1.6%, which is about a $60/month increase as a Captain.
On the plus side, they recalculate BAH (housing allowance) for every zip code each year, and mine went up about $250/month (over 20% increase), which was definitely a surprise.
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On Harvard Prof Mounts a Defense of Teaching "The Wire"
Dammit, I knew I couldn't get through a comment that long without a typo.
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On Harvard Prof Mounts a Defense of Teaching "The Wire"
I feel as though I'm missing something with the backlash here. I recall taking a number of "nonfiction" courses in history, poli sci, sociology, etc., during college, in which a syllabus of largely academic and nonfiction works was complemented by a novel or other work of fiction. These fictional works added to my understanding of the subject matter. A few people have already made this point quite well.
How is this so different? Is it really because The Wire was a television show, and, if so, are people arguing that visual media cannot produce powerful insights about society and aid as an educational tool in the same way that books can?
I would agree that most popular television doesn't meet this standard, but I think that is a failing of popular television rather than necessarily a failing of the medium. Personally, I think The Wire holds it's own against any written works that seek to show describe contemporary life in American cities.
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On Britain's Number Two School Beats America's Number One
This! And now having read that I feel extremely nostalgic.
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On An Insanely Detailed Guide to the 2010 NBA Draft
This article has tremendously high upside potential.
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On Real America: Guess BP's Stock Price on Christmas Eve, Win One BP Share
$54.13
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On More Evidence To Support The Fact That Chimpanzees Are Horrible Monsters
And I just spent 15 minutes chasing links all the way through the Travis story to the pictures and OMG!
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On You've Learned Helplessness
Despite having grown up in south Mississippi and living the previous three years in New Orleans, my response to this disaster has been not anger, not sadness, but a sort of cynical resignation.
It was some of those same photos, when I saw them last week, that finally produced an emotional response within me - one of visceral anger - but the resignation soon took back over.
And this piece explains why perfectly. Excellent.
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On Now You Should Put the Children Outside
Serious nostalgia of summers growing up in Mississippi. Ah, the heat.
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On A Drynuary Diary: Week Three, The Bargaining
This has all been fascinating and more than a little amusing, as I am now 5 MONTHS into forced sobriety (military deployment) which is easily the longest I have gone without a drink since appx age 16. Positives: I shed 10 pounds almost immediately. Negatives: Ironically picked up smoking again. But I have enjoyed sharing the pain for this month at least!