Author Archives: Samir Chopra

An Ode to the Squat

There is simply no other exercise, and certainly no machine, that produces the level of central nervous system activity, improved balance and coordination, skeletal loading and bone density enhancement, muscular stimulation and growth, connective tissue stress and strength, psychological demand and toughness, and overall systemic conditioning than the correctly performed full squat. So what elseContinue reading “An Ode to the Squat”

Newt Gingrich Extends The Republican Primaries: Hallelujah!

Like wildfire, news of Newt ‘The Philandering Professor’ Gingrich’s victory in the South Carolina primary has spread through the arid grasslands of the American political landscape, bringing relief to those of us who are still grumpily and bitterly kvetching about being denied Sarah Palin’s candidacy in this election year (Mixed metaphors are called for whenContinue reading “Newt Gingrich Extends The Republican Primaries: Hallelujah!”

Occupy Wall Street And The Police: Why So Estranged?

Last year, as OWS kicked off, and as New York’s Finest (and later California’s) began their usual heavy-handed crackdown on any dissent that might threaten the ruling classes, I was struck by the absurdity of it all. Once again, the plutocratic class had found a sub-class of workers–underpaid and overworked–who ostensibly should have been inContinue reading “Occupy Wall Street And The Police: Why So Estranged?”

FOSS Licenses: Hackers As Legal Maestros

Over at Concurring Opinions, Biella Coleman writes a very good post on her anthropological work on hackers. In it Biella states what many of us who have looked at the world of free and open source software think: [M]any developers are nimble legal thinkers, which helps explain how they have built, in a relatively shortContinue reading “FOSS Licenses: Hackers As Legal Maestros”

Jaron Lanier and the Web’s “False Ideals”

Jaron Lanier’s Op-Ed in the New York Times today is a classic piece of muddled Lanier writing that allows him to train his sights, yet again, on his favorite bugaboo and strawman: ‘free content.’ And in persisting with this notion of the demand for ‘free content’ being the true threat to the ‘Net, Lanier showsContinue reading “Jaron Lanier and the Web’s “False Ideals””

Fiction, Non-Fiction, Essays, Posterity

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post disagreeing with Katha Pollitt’s claim that (roughly), Even the best non-fiction writers only get read by future generations if they are lucky enough to have written some quality best-selling fiction. Pollitt had referred to “columnists and essayists and book reviewers” in her original post, but inContinue reading “Fiction, Non-Fiction, Essays, Posterity”

John Wycliffe And Academic Freedom

I’m an academic; quite understandably, one of my concerns is often academic freedom. Mine, and that of my colleagues. My employer, the City University of New York, has had a mixed relationship with academic freedom over the years (this ambivalent attitude was perhaps best on display during the Tony Kushner flap last year). But myContinue reading “John Wycliffe And Academic Freedom”

Essays And Expiry Dates

My post yesterday on reportage and war porn, in which I quoted from a 1999 essay by Sebastian Junger, prompted a thought related to my December post on fiction and non-fiction and writing for posterity: How well do reportage-style essays hold up to the demands of time? (I ask this question as someone who, havingContinue reading “Essays And Expiry Dates”

Sebastian Junger, AK-47 Bullets, and War Porn

Reporters on war’s frontlines often produce great investigative journalism (this was truer in the days before embedded reporters.) They also, sometimes inadvertently, sometimes not, produce “war porn,” writing that vividly, graphically, sometimes almost joyfully, details the carnage of war and weaponry, of organized violence, and the men who live and die by its rules. TheContinue reading “Sebastian Junger, AK-47 Bullets, and War Porn”