August 2008
14 posts
dan albert
A too-little-known fact about n+1 is that we have a car correspondent, Dan Albert, the “Scott Hamrah of the automobile.” This week he explains the volatile cocktail—as we say in the news business—of class rage, high gas prices, and the shifting ideological valence—as we also say in the news business—of the car in the city, and why it caused that cop to knock...
celebration
Dear Readers,
With your help and prayers this tumblr has finally scrambled to third place on my Google, at long last beating out the Gawker post “Keith Gessen Will Be Sad,” which claimed (incorrectly) that Russia! magazine was “furiously scrubbing” “all mentions” of my name from Emily’s article about Russian-American writers, and also topping the Gawker...
conspiracy theory winner
Everybody, we have a winner in the conspiracy theory contest—commenter BenH:
I begin to wonder whether a very clever US administration didn’t deliberately sell Georgia down the river. The US faces a resurgent, petroconfident, irridentist Russia. A Russian that has managed to use its energy resources and its diaspora to gain influence in its near-abroad; that might use those same...
escalation
Oy oy oy. As commenter Not Paolo points out, this tumblr seems to have led to the escalation of the Georgia-Russia-US conflict. I’m sorry about that. And the worst of it is, I violated one of the core principles of this site in the process—I’ve always argued that when you write something online, you should keep in mind that it’s very easy to find and that there’s a...
readings
Dear Readers—Did you by any chance go to high school with me? Do you still live in Boston? Because I’m doing a reading at Brookline Booksmith on Monday (the 18th) at 7pm. Sana Krasikov will also be reading. If you went to high school with me but then moved to New York, tell your parents to come. Parents are big book-buyers, I’ve noticed. Also, tell Ali Dehestani to come, if you...
satellites
Here’s the answer to the question of why we keep getting so many conflicting reports about Russian troop movements. I mean, don’t we have satellites? And Google Maps? A very useful post at the Times explains:
While American spy satellites would seem to be an obvious place to turn for “concrete information,” Pentagon officials told The A.P. that most of the satellites were focused on...
cossacks
Александр Ломая заявил, что российские военные за 13 августа несколько раз бомбили Гори и «запустили в город казаков, которые грабят дома, магазины».
That says:
According to Alexander Lomaya [head of the Georgian NSC], Russian troops bombed Gori several times on August 13, and “released Cossacks into the city, where they are robbing homes and stores.”
ok
That last post was just too long. My fault.
Here are some things I found on the internet while I was looking up Georgia stuff.
Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner on Democracy Now:
The Russians learned at the end of the first Gulf War that they couldn’t—they didn’t think they could deal with the United States, given the value and the quality of American precision conventional weapons. The...
my commenters
A few weeks ago, when I enabled comments, I declared hopefully that every site gets the commenters it deserves. But the commenters I’ve gotten since then have gone well beyond my just deserts. My commenters are the best. They have included such notables as 99, Kurt Andersen, Caterpillarheart, Danisch, Sarah Douglas, Emily Gould (!!), Molly Lambert, Paolo Papapazzo, who promised to eat an...
batman review
Readers of this tumblr know that I get most of my information on movies from the World Socialist Website. Lately though I’ve found their movie criticism to be so socialistically haughty as to be not altogether useful to your average moviegoer. Anyway, it’s probably too late to stop Americans from seeing this evil movie (it’s too late for me, for example), but here’s a shot...
