It’s a simple enough object: a pencil box that looks like a smartphone. The box’s lid looks like a smartphone screen decked out with app icons, the ones that all of us smartphone users are used to: the phone, the messages, the various entertainments, the calculator, and so on. Pencil boxes have been decorated andContinue reading “Of Children’s Pencil Boxes And Ersatz Smartphones”
Category Archives: Politics
Nations, Nationalisms, And The Natal Crime
Patriots and nationalists of many stripes are often committed to the view that a certain kind of nation-building violence was inevitable, and written into the very idea of the nation, into the national fabric as it were; the sanguine acceptance of such violence is ostensibly worth taking on as the price to be paid for theContinue reading “Nations, Nationalisms, And The Natal Crime”
The School Drop-Off And Social Trust
Three or four times every week, I drop my daughter off at our local public school. We leave, on almost every occasion, in a bit of a rush. My daughter’s school is close by, a mere ten minutes walk, but the window for her to eat breakfast school is quite narrow–thirty minutes–so I’m keen toContinue reading “The School Drop-Off And Social Trust”
Trump Till 2020: A Republican Vision
This presidency’s end stage has been talked about ever since the election results came in on that depressing ninth day of November, 2016. There has been much hopeful talk of impeachment, and of ‘the final days of the Trump presidency’ as each administration official resigns, is indicted, or is implicated in some sordid scandal or theContinue reading “Trump Till 2020: A Republican Vision”
James Baldwin On The Non-Existence Of The American Worker
In The Fire Next Time (Vintage International, New York, 1993(1962), p. 88), James Baldwin writes: People are not, for example, terribly anxious to be equal…but they love the idea of being superior. And this human truth has an especially grinding force here [in America], where identity is almost impossible to achieve and people are perpetually attemptingContinue reading “James Baldwin On The Non-Existence Of The American Worker”
Robert Mueller And The Cruise Missile: Ready To Be Fired
All–especially my fellow American citizens–praise the cruise missile. This marvelous weapon, “a guided missile used against terrestrial targets…remains in the atmosphere and flies the major portion of its flight path at approximately constant speed.” It is “designed to deliver a large warhead over long distances with high precision.” It can be launched off-shore from a ship, orContinue reading “Robert Mueller And The Cruise Missile: Ready To Be Fired”
Rereading Native Son
I’ve begun re-reading a book (with the students in my philosophical issues in literature class this semester) which, as I noted here a while ago, made a dramatic impact on me on my first reading of it: Richard Wright‘s Native Son. Thus far, I’ve read and discussed Book One with my students (on Wednesday lastContinue reading “Rereading Native Son”
Space Exploration And The Invisible Women
Yesterday being a snow day in New York City–for school-going children and college professors alike–I spent it with my daughter at home. Diversion was necessary, and so I turned to an old friend–the growing stock of quite excellent documentaries on Netflix–for aid. My recent conversations with my daughter have touched on the topic of spaceContinue reading “Space Exploration And The Invisible Women”
Leaving Facebook: You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide
I first quit Facebook in 2010, in response to a talk Eben Moglen gave at NYU about Facebook’s privacy-destroying ways; one of his most memorable lines was: The East German Stasi used to have to deploy a fleet of undercover agents and wiretaps to find out what people did, who they met, what they ate,Continue reading “Leaving Facebook: You Can Run, But You Can’t Hide”
Dear Legal Academics, Please Stop Misusing The Word ‘Algorithms’
Everyone is concerned about ‘algorithms.’ Especially legal academics; law review articles, conferences, symposia all bear testimony to this claim. Algorithms and transparency; the tyranny of algorithms; how algorithms can deprive you of your rights; and so on. Algorithmic decision making is problematic; so is algorithmic credit scoring; or algorithmic stock trading. You get the picture;Continue reading “Dear Legal Academics, Please Stop Misusing The Word ‘Algorithms’”
Samir Chopra 