In May 1990, (more precisely, during the Memorial Day weekend) I went whitewater rafting on the Cheat River in West Virginia. A fellow graduate student talked me into joining a group expedition that went every Memorial Day; it was run by a husband and wife pair and was described in suspiciously glowing terms. I hadContinue reading “Whitewater Rafting on the Cheat River: A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”
Author Archives: Samir Chopra
Young Lady, You Too Can Strap On An Ammo Belt
It’s official: American women can now kill strange people in strange lands, put themselves in harm’s way and die for their country. The Pentagon’s announcement that women in the US military will now be allowed to serve in combat zones finally brings to an end a discriminatory policy that had looked increasingly ludicrous as women continuedContinue reading “Young Lady, You Too Can Strap On An Ammo Belt”
Better Living Through Chemistry, Part Deux: Aristotle on Drunkenness
A couple of weeks ago, I made a note here of my stepping onto the decaffeinated wagon in an attempt to prepare myself for the sleepless nights of fatherhood. That bout of abstinence began shortly after Thanksgiving. Besides the caffeine-free wagon, I have also been riding the alcohol-free wagon for about six weeks now, alsoContinue reading “Better Living Through Chemistry, Part Deux: Aristotle on Drunkenness”
Please, Can We Make Programming Cool?
Is any science as desperate as computer science to be really, really liked? I ask because not for the first time, and certainly not the last, I am confronted with yet another report of an effort to make computer science ‘cool’, trying in fact, to make its central component–programming–cool. The presence of technology in theContinue reading “Please, Can We Make Programming Cool?”
Martin Luther King Jr.: Menace II (Racist) Society
As a callow boy, I used to confuse Martin Luther and Martin Luther King Jr. Fortunately, that ignorant conflation didn’t last too long and I soon got the two of them sorted out. The first one complicated my understanding of Christianity, the second that of my home for twenty-five years, the United States of America,Continue reading “Martin Luther King Jr.: Menace II (Racist) Society”
A Beating, Dimly Glimpsed, Poorly Understood
Many years ago, I saw a terrible beating and didn’t realize I was looking at one. Till much later. No experience is unmediated; without membership in a linguistic community, without a background theory, there is no immediate experience to speak of. There is no ‘given’; to ‘experience’ is to know how to deploy a certainContinue reading “A Beating, Dimly Glimpsed, Poorly Understood”
David Runciman is a Little Confused About the Power of Confusion
In reviewing Ferdinand Mount‘s The New Few, or a Very British Oligarchy: Power and Inequality in Britain Now (‘Confusion is Power‘, London Review of Books, Volume 34, Number 11, 7 June 2012), David Runciman writes: James Burnham, author of the The Managerial Revolution (1941) envisaged a post-democratic order in which power was concentrated in the hands of an eliteContinue reading “David Runciman is a Little Confused About the Power of Confusion”
The Emperor Has No Clothes Ritual
In ‘Expect to be Lied to in Japan‘ (New York Review of Books, 8 November 2012), Ian Buruma writes: I decided to go on a little trip to Matsushima this summer because I had never seen this particular “Great View,” even though I had in fact been there once before, in 1975. Then, too, IContinue reading “The Emperor Has No Clothes Ritual”
Sneak Preview: Lance Armstrong to Redefine Douchebaggery
I do not yet know if I have the stomach to watch the Lance Armstrong interview tonight on the Oprah Winfrey show. Not alone at least. If I do, it will be in company so that we can turn it into spectator sport. That’s the least that Lance and Oprah deserve, a chance to beContinue reading “Sneak Preview: Lance Armstrong to Redefine Douchebaggery”
Gun Control, Propaganda, and the Susceptibility of Man to ‘Unreason’
In An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), William Godwin wrote: Show me in the clearest and most unambiguous manner that a certain mode of proceeding is most reasonable in itself, or most conducive to my interest, and I shall infallibly pursue that mode, so long as the views you suggested to me, continue present toContinue reading “Gun Control, Propaganda, and the Susceptibility of Man to ‘Unreason’”
Samir Chopra 