From Colloquy, a special issue on Bad Cinema, including Phoebe Fletcher (Auckland): “Fucking Americans”: Postmodern Nationalisms in the Contemporary Splatter Film; Mark Steven (Sydney): Their Time Has Come: Bad Cinema Nerds as Late-Capitalist Paradigm; essays on a scatological gaze in trash filmmaking and gender in 70s/80s slasher films; and on the films The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Snakes on a Plane. Bowen vs. the Bureaucrats: Iraq IG Stuart Bowen has an ambitious plan to overhaul reconstruction oversight, planning, and contracting. The first chapter from The Brain and the Meaning of Life by Paul Thagard. Craig Morgan Teicher on Contemporary Experimental Poets: Many of the most off-the-wall poets are actually writing about the same things as their more straightforward contemporaries but have chosen to describe experience using untraditional means. From Design Observer, Jessica Helfand is obliged to conclude that she's not a logical person. A mind of crime: How brain-scanning technology is redefining criminal culpability. Democrats and Republicans have become identified with two quite opposite economic theories: A primer on supply-side vs demand-side economics. Google may be earning an alleged $500 million a year via companies and individuals who register deceptive website addresses. A review of Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy by Stephen C. Angle. A look at how the recession has encouraged many to reconsider the joys of playing with cardboard and plastic pieces. Martyrdom, Interrupted: The former head interrogator in Iraq goes undercover in Indonesia to learn the secrets of their top-notch interrogation program. Sources in libertarian socialism: An essay on poetry and the mystique of the self in John Stuart Mill.
