For some reason, I've been wanting to make a list of every rock concert I've ever attended. Not that there have been a lot. I was never a big concert goer, which makes the handful I've been to all the more interesting to see listed. (Yet, as I start thinking about this list, I keep… Continue reading Long Live Rock (Be It Dead or…)
Author: Mark Sample
The Origins of Totalitarianism
The same thought trajectory that brought me to Le Bon's work on crowds has led me to something I should've read a long time ago: Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism. The Origins of Totalitarianism is Arendt's thoughtful and relentlessly critical dissection of totalitarian movements and nations. In a later chapter called "Totalitarianism in Power,"… Continue reading The Origins of Totalitarianism
Don’t Hug that Tar Baby
It's been widely reported (and not just on the Daily Show) that new Presidential Press Secretary Tony Snow used the racist term "tar baby" in his first televised press briefing. Responding to a question about the NSA's secret wiretapping program, Snow answered: I am not going to stand up here and presume to declassify any… Continue reading Don’t Hug that Tar Baby
The Crowd
I discovered a gem tonight in Gustave Le Bon's classic 1895 study of crowds, La Psychologie des foules. "Civilisations as yet," Le Bon writes, "have only been created and directed by a small intellectual aristocracy, never by crowds. Crowds are only powerful for destruction." I like the tone of this. All fire and brimstone and… Continue reading The Crowd
Evel Knievel (not dead yet)
It must be a slow news day at the Associated Press. There's an article on Evel Knievel, who's apparently racked with pain, not to mention short-term memory loss. Not sure if this story really is newsworthy, but at least it's written with a sense of irony: Evel Knievel has trouble now just walking from his… Continue reading Evel Knievel (not dead yet)
Immigration and National Security
Two implications of Bush's proposal to beef up border security with National Guard troops: The first is practical: it's another instance of the militarization of civil society, which I had criticized in an earlier post. The second is symbolic: by policing the border with troops trained for combat, Bush masterfully conflates two entirely distinct issues:… Continue reading Immigration and National Security
D.C. Area Humanities Forum on Video Games
Taking Games Seriously: The Impact of Gaming Technology in the Humanities Monday, May 15th from 4-6pm Location: Car Barn 316, 3520 Prospect St. NW, near Georgetown University Overview and Participants: Please join Michelle Lucey-Roper (Federation for American Scientists) and Jason Rhody (National Endowment for the Humanities) for a discussion moderated by Mark Sample (George Mason… Continue reading D.C. Area Humanities Forum on Video Games
Total Information Awareness, Reprise
A few more thoughts on the massive NSA database of every domestic phone call, ever, in the United States... The database actualizes what was once only theory: DARPA's defunct Total Information Awareness project, which sought to "counter asymmetric threats [i.e. terrorism] by achieving total information awareness." Awareness of everything, godlike omniscience. Is this the only… Continue reading Total Information Awareness, Reprise
Can You Hear Me Now: The NSA, Me, and Papa John’s
The big surprise in today's USA Today story about the NSA building a staggering database of every single domestic phone call in the United States is not that such a database exists, but that the NSA waited until after 9/11 to begin building it. I think we had always assumed that the government was already… Continue reading Can You Hear Me Now: The NSA, Me, and Papa John’s
The sky is falling, but my phones are tapped, so I’m okay and you are too
I caught snippets of the Diane Rehm Show today, and there was a panel of experts discussing the domestic war on terror. There's the predictable apologist for the Bush administration, spouting the standard refrain that because there's been no terror attack on the U.S. since 9/11, all that illegal wiretapping and surveillance and profiling and… Continue reading The sky is falling, but my phones are tapped, so I’m okay and you are too
The Last Jihad
Okay, so today I venture halfheartedly to Starbucks, because it's the only coffee shop within walking distance (though there must be 8 billion within driving distance in Northern Virginia), and at the table across from me, there is some guy going on and on about how there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and… Continue reading The Last Jihad
The Best Spam. Ever.
Yesterday I received this bizarre spam, from someone "named" Solly Brit. The subject heading was "time card celibacy" and this nonsense phrase only hints at the random strings of English in the message, which reads like some methed-up computer-generated poetry slam: zest, detect pronoun imperfection and lens radically, in as historian disposable of rest home… Continue reading The Best Spam. Ever.
Fall 2006 Courses
For a lack of anything else intelligent to say at this hour, I'm posting descriptions for two of the undergrad courses that I'm teaching next fall: 21st Century American Fiction (ENGL 429:001) What innovative directions is American fiction taking in the new millennium? How have novelists and other writers reacted to the dominant events of… Continue reading Fall 2006 Courses
A Return to Sesame Street (Fisher-Price Style)
Since Elmo was (regretably) such a success with our son, we've rescued a bunch of old-style Fisher-Price "Little People" from my parent's attic, including a few Sesame Street characters. Here we've got Bert and Ernie (circa 1974) tooling around town in a garbage truck. Whose garbage truck? I'm not sure. I don't recall Oscar the… Continue reading A Return to Sesame Street (Fisher-Price Style)
Professors, students, and emails
A recent article in the New York Times details some of the changes that email has wrought upon professor-student relationships in higher ed: At colleges and universities nationwide, e-mail has made professors much more approachable. But many say it has made them too accessible, erasing boundaries that traditionally kept students at a healthy distance. I… Continue reading Professors, students, and emails