Month: June 2010

Habermas and Europe — Crooked Timber:

A very considerable part of Habermas’ intellectual project over the last few years has been exactly to come up with a form of patriotism which is distinct from nationalism. Habermas dubs this “constitutional patriotism” – and while it is not intended to overcome existing forms of nationalism, it is intended to temper them, and to make them non-exclusive.

& back to Henry F as himself:

he moment when (if) an actual European polity will be created, will not be the moment when European publics, led by their elites, realize that they are actually Europeans. It will be the moment at which self-interested political parties, rather than arguing and picking petty squabbles about whether ‘we’ should all be Europeans or not, start arguing and picking petty squabbles about what kind of Europeans ‘we’ should be.

Reddit longform seems bizarrely invisible to search engines. Search ‘reddit longform’ anywhere and you won’t reach it; wonder what happened?

WaPo:

Like Washington’s go-go, Baltimore Club exists as a regional sound relatively unknown outside the mid-Atlantic. The music blends the repetitive boom of house or techno with hip-hop’s aggressive posturing and full-frontal frankness (one of the most popular B-More singles is DJ Booman’s “Watch Out for the Big Girl”). What B-More lacks in subtlety it overpowers with shouted hooks, uncleared samples and chest-rattling bass patterns that induce dance-floor euphoria. Baltimore Club allows hip-hop heads to get their rave on.

Still can’t figure out if I like bmore at all, or if it’s just Donna Summer. Suspect the latter

For the record: there are few corners of the internet that I loathe as completely as I loathe twitter. If I love you very much, it’s possible I may still read your tweets. But it’ll be through gritted teeth, with constant frustration at the impossibility of having a decent conversation there, and I’d much, much rather follow you to almost any other online forum.

Diaspora politics is identity politics in its purest form. Struggling to maintain and demonstrate identity in a foreign land, migrants adopt symbols and political doctrines from their hoemland. These are exaggerated to fill the gaps left by other forms of identity, and lack the pragmatic restraints that could come from actually living in a place.

A long article in the New York Review of Books considers the growing division betwen Zionists and liberal Jews, both in Israel and the US. It touches on the diaspora politics overall, but also connects to the impact of personal experience, memory, and generational divisions:

When he probed the students’ views of Israel, he hit up against some firm beliefs. First, “they reserve the right to question the Israeli position.” These young Jews, Luntz explained, “resist anything they see as ‘group think.’” They want an “open and frank” discussion of Israel and its flaws. Second, “young Jews desperately want peace.” When Luntz showed them a series of ads, one of the most popular was entitled “Proof that Israel Wants Peace,” and listed offers by various Israeli governments to withdraw from conquered land. Third, “some empathize with the plight of the Palestinians.” When Luntz displayed ads depicting Palestinians as violent and hateful, several focus group participants criticized them as stereotypical and unfair, citing their own Muslim friends.

A bit of Debian lore I always forget: finding which package is responsible for a certain file:

$ dpkg -S filename

e.g:

$ dpkg -S /usr/bin/lintian

lintian: /usr/bin/lintian

Often I hate the hoops we jump through in order to provide the illusion of security:

Amazon CloudFront HTTPS delivery can be used to transfer inherently sensitive objects to your users,

to avoid security warnings that some browsers present when viewing a mix of HTTP and HTTPS content

, or for anything else that needs to be encrypted when transferred. [email from Amazon today, announcing the new service]

Yes, I know that every step along the way here is reasonable. It just feels wrong, y’know?