December 2011
74 posts
“Aggressive or “pushy” bottoms are an example of this confusion....”
– Anyway, so this actually went out on PR Newswire. Thanks a fucking lot, username:JSMJR!
God help me, I'm using my iPad at Starbucks. So...
“Witnesses and American officials say that the Uzbek Army, law enforcement and...”
– This NYT story has the headline, “Uzbek units linked to deadly crackdown got U.S. training.” I guess it’s… sort of true. But buried in the body of the story is information that the units did not actually receive the training, just a few members did, and no one knows if they...
“Because there is little concrete data in the major human rights assessments—I’m...”
– This discussion of how we measure human rights abuses in closed countries has sparked a really interesting dialogue in the comments section to my day-blog.
My sister suffers from dysautonomia, which causes... →
Farida Nawa makes a good argument, because under... →
Foot in Mouth
I appreciate how much lead time you need for a published piece. Sometimes the timing is the worst it could possibly be, however. Poor, poor Martha Brill LOLcott:
On December 16, Kazakhstan celebrated the anniversary of its independence from the Soviet Union. In just 20 years, the Central Asian giant has made a smooth transition from a former Soviet republic to a middle income country. A top...
How a crap editor takes a story about shooting... →
Really, the devolution of EurasiaNet’s once-laudable professionalism is one of the most disappointing media events of the last year or so.
“Drawing from The Atlantic’s strong history and resources, Fisher has...”
– Seeing Real Clear World group me with those people, while lauding The Atlantic as one of the Top Five Political Sites in 2011, completely made my month.
No one should have to get out of bed when there's...
NASA discovers 2 Earth-size planets. Holy crap! →
“The riots in Kazakhstan are actually a localized labor dispute between some oil...”
– For The Atlantic, I try to talk down the apocalyptic talk about some rioting workers in Kazakhstan.
I'm trying to tell a coherent story about my...
Key quotes from this vegan's endorsement of eating...
The Atlantic ran this and I couldn’t be happier. Here are the essential information bits:
we firmly believe foods from animals can be healthful, environmentally appropriate, and ethical.
I learned that animals were essential to sustainable farms, which don’t rely on fossil fuels and chemicals. Animals can increase soil fertility, contribute to pest and weed control, and convert...
“Christopher Hitchens, my colleague for twenty years, was clever, hilarious,...”
– Really, it’s not possible to say something nicer about a person, even if you go on to complain that the Hitch was, basically, a misogynist asshole.
Declare Victory Or Go Home
So a few weeks ago in a piece that was much reviled by the closed circle-jerk of Central Asian expats, I called out Eurasianet editor David Trilling for using, in an article attacking the DOD for not fully disclosing the funding of a program he disliked, a member of his own board of directors as a source without stating the relationship:
Trilling also makes a curious omission in his discussion...
“I don’t see it. Both Putin and Nazarbayev are facing a situation where the order...”
– My attempt to unravel all the weird revolution talk you hear in the West about Kazakhstan and Russia, over at my day blog.
“…in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who...”
– Jerry Pournelle (via azspot)
hay like you know who Jerry Pournelle is, right?
(via jasencomstock)
He co-wrote some of my favorite books with Larry Niven!
All writers are by nature pathological liars. It's...
“Pubic hair is, however, evolving. Once upon a time, all vulvas were coated in a...”
– And that’s how I learned about this. Though she’s wrong — in this context I believe the camels had toes, not horses.
“The terror attacks of September 11 and subsequent invasion of Afghanistan seemed...”
– A brief history of great power competition in Central Asia, over at The Atlantic.
“The problem with the report is not the data is contains, but rather how HRW is...”
– Over at my day-blog, I wade into the politics of human rights advocacy and why it seems to be careening off a cliff in the last few months.
One bright side to living in a Vietnamese enclave is the abundance of cheap delicious pho when you’re sick and want to eat something life-affirming
Yay, another December another strain of penicillin resistant strep. Life is fucking awesome.
