On HU
Kailyn Kent points out that the New Yorker recycled a gag and no one noticed, cared.
Chris Gavaler on Nicholson Baker and superpowered sex offenders.
Featured Archive Post: Matthias Wivel on comics and classical art.
Jones, One of the Jones Boys on Jack Kirby and the visual logic of superhero fight scenes.
Richard Cook on the unexpected awesomeness of Breaking Dawn 2.
Kristian Williams on means and ends in V for Vendetta.
Me on Gwyneth Jones’ White Queen and reading as science fiction.
Chris Gavaler on transhuman eugenics.
Chris Connor asks what you’ve been listening to this week.
Utilitarians Everywhere
At Reason I review Alex Sayf Cummings’ new book on the history of music piracy.
At the Atlantic I talk about:
—the benefits of overpraising Dads.
—childishness in Romeo and Juliet.
— the amazing crappiness of the Band Perry’s new album.
At Splice I talk about:
—Steven Landsburg and the freedom to rape.
—Jimmie Rodgers vs. Brad Paisley, Louis Armstrong vs. LL Cool J.
Other Links
Johnny Cash and Joni Mitchell.
Johnny Cash and Louis Armstrong.
Conor Friedersdorf on the cost of the stigma against nudity.
Jesse Walker on integration and Southern music.
Susan Faludi on Shulamith Firestone.
Eric Berlatsky on love triangles and homosociality in the early Superman.
Isaac Butler defends Romeo and Juliet.
Madison Moore on the downsides of grad school.
Female geeks spoil everything.
This Week’s Reading
Finished Gwyneth Jones’ White Queen; read James Tiptree’s collection Ten Thousand Light Years From Home, which is pretty mediocre. Started rereading Shulamith Firestone’s Dialectic of Sex. Oh, yeah, and reread Romeo and Juliet…which is great!
That article about the stigma of nudity is really good. Makes me sick that some commenters approve of the stigma. Get me off this planet!
That Faludi article about Firestone is number one with a bullet at this address since I read it aloud at the breakfast table yesterday.
Noah, my overzealous websense blocks those t.co links, so I can’t read them when I’m supposed to be working. Any chance you could link to the full url instead?
I’ll try to remember for the future….
I’m reading Gerard Genette’s Bardadrac. As someone put it in overblown mode, this is like Kant publishing a book of Belgian jokes.
Heavens, Noah, I’m agreeing with you again!
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In his book Debt, David Graeber argues that our conception of property rights derived from the Romans. The Roman conception of property rights, in turn, was derived in large part from their experience with the institution of slavery. Liberty for them was the property right of absolute control over what was yours, and that absolute control occurred in the context of control over slaves. The idea that you can own your body, that you can be absolutely free, is in fact intended as a way to make it possible for you to transfer that ownership—either legally or, in Landsburg’s extreme example, simply by being unconscious.
Landsburg’s decision to use rape as an example, then, is not quite as arbitrary as he seems to think. On the contrary, our language of liberty and rights is intrinsically tied to notions of slavery, and asserting power over others…
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http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/freedom-to-rape
Excellently put and solidly argued in the article; but let’s not give the Romans all the credit. As just noted in another HU thread, the Bible is loaded with pro-slavery stuff… (details at http://www.evilbible.com/Slavery.htm )
That was a great article by Faludi; I loved her “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women”…
Oh, and as for my reading, just finished “No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner” by Robert Schrum ( http://www.amazon.com/No-Excuses-Concessions-Serial-Campaigner/dp/1400154987 ) and am repeating my nonfiction books alternating with classic-style murder mystery reading pattern by starting on P.D. James’ “The Black Tower,” featuring the angst-ridden, aristocratic Scotland Yard sleuth Adam Dalgleish…