anotherpanacea

Tag: Beings and Doings

  • Democracy: The Game Show

    Democracy: The Game Show

    I’ve been thinking about a game show version of Ackerman and Fishkin’s “Deliberation Day” or David Estlund’s “Queen for the Day.” In both cases, they asked: why not let ordinary folks take a shot at solving our nation’s hardest problems? My question is: why not let them do it on national television as a form…

  • Walmart Coming to DC

    Walmart is planning to open several new “urban” stores in the District, and I’m pretty excited about it. (via) One of them will be just two blocks away from me, and I plan to shop there. Right now, I do most of my shopping at the rundown, overpriced Safeway or at the Costco off the 495…

  • Books that Have Changed My Mind

    Here’s a question: what books, stories, or essays have changed your mind, and how? (via) It’s pretty common to talk about the books that influence us, but I tend to think that these texts make us more ourselves or cement already existing biases: anti-authoritarian teenagers read Ayn Rand, young people of faith read C. S.…

  • “Americans don’t live here or on cable TV.”

    I didn’t hear Jon Stewart’s speech from the Mall, so his quote about where real Americans live didn’t hit me until today. I’m guessing his claim was designed to set up the old, tired prejudice that the 495 Beltway is some kind of line that separates real Americans from the DC punditocracy. Given his various criticisms…

  • The Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear

    It was a policy wonk’s rally. People who know too much to think activism can be effective in the current media environment. People who spent the last decade protesting the war or Gauntanamo to no avail, only to watch the Tea Party become a major force with minuscule numbers because of a television network’s support. I think some are confusing the…

  • Claude Lefort 1924-2010

    He died October 3rd. He had a robust theory of bureaucracy and he worked throughout his life to conceptualize the fundamental disconnect between democracy and totalitarianism. He is perhaps most famous for his book on Machiavelli (Le Travail de L’Oeuvre Machiavel) which tried to recuperate  the political theory from the secular image of “machiavellianism” as scheming or…

  • The Walking Dead

    Last year, I wrote: I’d like to see what a surviving-a-day-at-a-time hero looks like. Whatever collection of writers can come up with that story and characterization will make a lot of money breaking with the current anti-hero conventions. More to the point, it might be good for us. Though we may [not] have had too…

  • Modest Sites

    My latest experiment is to try to write my public policy posts at a new collaborative blog Modest Sites and preserve this blog for more philosophical fare. The title comes from Sheldon Wolin’s classic work of political theory, Politics and Vision: The power of a democratic politics lies in a multiplicity of modest sites dispersed among…

  • A Poster

    This is from a poster session I did at Penn State University last Sunday. It’s incredibly simplistic, as all posters probably end up being, but it was kind of a cool experience so I’m sharing it here. Click on the image to get a closer look: I now support the use of posters to display…

  • Creative Philanthrophy?

    What would you do with $100 and a case of altruism? How about giving away umbrellas during a rainstorm: David Ibnale had no idea how tough it would be to give away umbrellas on Market Street the other day. He figured that he and his free umbrellas were going to change the world. The world had…