prize
One of the best blogs on the net is up for a literary award. The book Baghdad Burning, a collection of entries from the blog of the same name, is on the long-list for the BBC Four Samuel Johnson Prize. This is an honour richly deserved.
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the great weed of 2015?
You will not be surprised to learn that Allan and I own a lot of books. And CDs. And even LPs! Many, many hundreds of each. We have culled our collection a bit over the years, out of necessity, but living in houses for the past 10 years, we expanded again without much thought. Now here we are in an apartment. It's a large apartment, to be sure, but we no longer have extra rooms where we can stash as much stuff as we like. And neither of us wants to fill up every inch of wall and floor space with books and music. Thus we are contemplating weeding our own library. And this is very strange. Books are us. Or are they? When I was in my 20s, I wanted to own every book I'd ever read. I was one of those people who believed that my personal library was a statement about myself. I needed to proudly display my politics and my tastes through my bookshelves and records. I loved seeing other people's libraries, and loved when people perused mine. I can recall that when we found our...
11 things you should know about u.s. presidential elections
Here are some facts about US elections. There are mountains of evidence to support each of these. If you have doubts, do some homework. This is merely a summary of facts. 1. The Electoral College. Up to 50% of votes in any state are wiped out. Canada has first-past-the-post voting based on ridings (Parliamentary seats), but imagine if all of Ontario was one riding -- 51% and winner take all. 2. Partisan oversight. Elections are governed on the state level, and the person in charge of them represents a political party. There is no equivalent of Elections Canada. Imagine, for example, if Jason Kenney's party ran elections in Alberta, and oversaw vote-counting and potential recounts. 3. Voter suppression. This takes place on a dozen different fronts. In many states, registration is complex and very limited. There are onerous ID requirements. Voters can be and are disqualified based on any number of arcane laws. Voter list are "purged" -- hundreds of thousands of voters dro...
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