The Swarthmore College Bulletin interviewed Victor Navasky (Class of '54), publisher emeritus and former editor of The Nation, a man interested in controversy but also interested in civility, and a man who thinks one caricature may be worth 10,000 words (though make sure to see Ted Rall's comments at the bottom of that page). Back in 2005, Conversations with History interviewed Navasky as he published A Matter of Opinion.
"What does it mean to be cool?" Thorsten Botz-Bornstein, an assistant philosophy professor at the Gulf University for Science and Technology in Kuwait, links the ancient Greeks' Stoicism and hip hop, offering this chic summary: "In spite of the ambiguity, it seems that we remain capable of distinguishing cool attitudes from uncool ones. So what is cool? Let me say that cool resists linear structures."
Search and Destroy: The New Yorker's Ben McGrath on Gawker founder and "gossip monger" Nick Denton’s idea of journalism, and a recent New York magazine profile of Denton, the "Demon Blogger of Fleet Street." The people behind Blogger and Blogspot.com look back at how they accidentally changed the Internet and the world. Brandon Scott Gorrell thinks the blogosphere is sort of raping you. "Bugger the bloggers," writes Georgie Williamson in The Australian, "old-world critics still count." Karine Barzilai-Nahon's tale of political blogs and content and on the place of blogs in the life cycle of viral political information, and in Quadrant, Edwin Dyga tells the story of conservative dissent in the blogosphere (and part 2). Carl Anders writes that "those who scorn blogs for their highly agenda driven information ignore that the traditional media has had to mirror this to survive. That is the greatest proof of just how important Web 2.0 has become in shaping and influencing society." Jacob McArthur Mooney writes in defense of blogging. In the science blogosphere, men significantly outnumber women — is this evidence of discrimination? Common-place profiles Kevin M. Levin, a blogger who is trying to open new fronts in the historical profession. In First Monday, Sara Kjellberg of Lund University writes about the "motivations for blogging in a scholarly context" in I Am a Blogging Researcher; there's also a review of Scott Rosenberg's Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It’s Becoming, and Why It Matters. "Opinionating" is cheap: The strange, poignant logic behind Mayhill Fowler's decision to quit blogging for HuffPo.
A look at what the Economics Nobel says about the US unemployment crisis.
The Economist profiles a Himalayan rivalry: Asia’s two giants, China and India, are still unsure what to make of each other, but as they grow, they are coming closer — for good and bad — and that is the contest of the century. While the industrial policies pursued by both countries up until the 1980s led to mistakes and inefficiencies, China and India would not be as successful as they are now without them. The Globalist describes the Battle of the (Population) Billionaires. Time magazine looks at how China and India displaced the West in Sri Lanka, and in Foreign Affairs, there's a review essay on India, China and the West. And from Outlook India, a review of India and China: The Battle between Soft and Hard Power by Prem Shankar Jha (and more at Asia Times) and a review of Superpower? The Amazing Race Between China's Hare And India's Tortoise by Raghav Bahl.
