Malcolm Gladwell uses the 50th of To Kill a Mockingbird to deconstruct the novel's meaning, specifically the role of Atticus Finch. He makes an asymmetrical comparison to Big Jim Folsom, an Alabama pol (who clearly evokes O'Brother Where Art Thou). His premise is focused on the idea that racism has personal elements (an area where Folsom and Atticus did just fine by Gladwell) and structural elements (a place where both failed miserably in their desire for accommodation an compromise).

Finch will stand up to racists. He’ll use his moral authority to shame them into silence. He will leave the judge standing on the sidewalk while he shakes hands with Negroes. What he will not do is look at the problem of racism outside the immediate context of Mr. Cunningham, Mr. Levy, and the island community of Maycomb, Alabama.

Folsom was the same way. He knew the frailties of his fellow-Alabamians when it came to race. But he could not grasp that those frailties were more than personal—that racism had a structural dimension.

Others are not so sure that Gladwell is on the right tact. Notably the folks at the New Republic
who point out the limits of comparing a real life politician with a fictional lawyer, but more importantly;

Gladwell has managed to recycle all the old criticisms of this novel, but somehow he has translated them in such a way as to make them appear less convincing, less serious, and less interesting than one would have thought possible.

I personally love this novel, and will use any excuse to revisit it. So excuse me while I pour an Arnold Palmer and take a gander once again.

One of the greatest football teams ever didn't compete in a bowl game. Their story and long awaited reconition is here.

The team was the school's best ever, but it never went to a bowl game, because the only bowl games that wanted the Dons were in the Deep South. It was an era of segregation, and the promoters let it be known they would invite USF only if the Dons left their two black players behind.

The team refused. "We said, 'Bull -- . If they don't go, we don't go,' " backup quarterback Bill Henneberry remembered. "There was never any question."

A truck driver blows a 7.27 blood alcohol level. That's just brutal.

Man may penetrate the outer reaches of the universe, he may solve the very secret of eternity itself but for me, the ultimate human experience is to witness the flawless execution of the hit-and-run.-Branch Rickey

Noam Chomsky famously criticized sport for its ability to distract the masses and foster a culture of conformity. Couch potatoes are routinely chastised for allowing a sports-fueled creeping inertia swallow their aspirations in a lazy frenzy of voyeurism and provincialism. Occasionally defenders will make allusions to the grander design of sport, but it's largely been considered a "lower" form of entertainment.

Now, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht has written a lively and thoughtful treatise on sport that argues it is few things if not beautiful. Largely a reaction to the fact that "most contemporary academic analyses of ''sport" as a cultural phenomenon tend to be socially patronizing, dismissive of sports fans as having fallen for a modern-day version of the old bread and circus treatment. Such thinkers, he argues, ''find it difficult to admit that the fascination with sports can have respectable roots in the realm of aesthetic appeal."

Throughout ''In Praise of Athletic Beauty" Gumbrecht anchors his position in Immanuel Kant's "Critique of Judgment" arguing that sport has "beauty" grounded in "purposiveness" and "subjective universality".

He also makes a novel defense of the banality of athletes as they struggle to convey the beuaty that is sport; they see the game they play in simple terms which allows them to understand it in fundamental ways. If a battery saw pitching with the complexity of, say, George Will, they'd create doubt and nuance, the enemy of effective action. But luckily we are not constrained, share with me the most beautiful acts of sport you have ever witnessed.

"There is overwhelming evidence that urban sprawl has been beneficial for many people."

So starts Robert Bruegmann in his lively, and far reaching, defense of sprawl.

He starts by telling us all the good that sprawl brings (better material standard of living, lower crime, decrease in pollution and traffic) and then goes on to deconstruct that ire directed towards "the 'burbs".

When asked, most Americans declare themselves to be against sprawl, just as they say they are against pollution or the destruction of historic buildings. But the very development that one individual targets as sprawl is often another family's much-loved community. Very few people believe that they themselves live in sprawl, or contribute to sprawl. Sprawl is where other people live, particularly people with less good taste. Much anti-sprawl activism is based on a desire to reform these other people's lives.

At the core of anti-sprawl sentiment is overriding snobbiness that is as much a reflection of our aspirations as our accomplishments.

Class-based aesthetic objections to sprawl have always been the most important force motivating critics. It seems that as society becomes richer and the resources devoted to securing basics like food and shelter diminish, aesthetic issues loom larger.


So while some battles against sprawl wrap themselves in warm and fuzzy environmentalist language, Bruegmann argues it's really little more than an adverse aesthetic reaction to "the others"

The Time Distortion Paradox. How do we harness time through technology (e.g. through Tivo and OnDemand technologies) and at the same time speed it up as same said technology wants to do?

blogs come at us with information layered ontop of yesterday's info cycle quicker than you can blink, but what happens when you haven't had the chance to digest what happened yesterday? It can be as simple as an online review of a South Park episode you haven't seen yet, or as complex as a deconstruction of major policy speech that you haven't read. Time is changing. It's moving in both directions, at the same time.

Apparently Bush was warned about Katrina. Imagine that!

The Connie Rice workout. Coming this week to your TV!

So fans of Sean Hannity have their own dating site. (A place where even folks like this guy can hook up.)

Wow. That's all I can say. Donald Rumsfeld's handwritten notes drawing a line straight for Iraq. I'm not going to jump onto any conspiracy theory bandwagons, but this clearly shows a rush to judgment. Wow.

A Wayans tries to cash in on...something. He wants to trademark "Nigga".

A woman has twins. One black. One white. One in a million.

One of the best (i.e. most reasonable) articles about the port fiasco. Not as fun as ignorance-fueled hysteria, but common sense still has a place...

Frank Fukuyama's mea culpa (sort of) is getting a ton of press in the blogsphere and beyond. Not only a public lamblasting of the misguided wanderings of the neo-cons in this administration, a tight and meaningful prescription for American foreign policy post-Iraq.

He's most dead on when he talks about the cognitive dissonance between neo-cons abhorance for social experiments domestically but their almost gleeful willingness to radicalize foreign policy.

Bin Laden offers a "truce". This is a fascinating and important development. It will be interesting to see how the United State's policy of not negotiating with terrorists will be held to this new situation.

It appears Chinese mariners may have beaten Columbus to the New World. Interesting.

The NY Times with a cheat sheet describing Alito's position on major issues.

Fresh on the heels of our discussion about veterans making peaceful politicians (and thanks for all the great feedback btw) Slate weighs in with the notion that drunks are the best leaders.

Here's a human face made completely by computers. Amazing.

Interesting piece about why the Supreme Court tends to make justices liberal.

(short answer: “fundamental attribution error”)