Archives

Archive for April, 2008

Dousing the Dream

The Olympic Torch relay has turned into a fiasco.
In London yesterday, protesters tried to grab and put out the torch, and 37 people were arrested. Today in Paris, it seems that officials had to temporarily extinguish it — twice – and put it on a bus. Via Bloomberg:
The Paris leg of the relay […]

Boys and wolves

Last week, I wrote about the near-abduction of an 11-year-old boy in north Houston, and how the largest news organization in this area omitted any reference to the at-large suspect’s race or ethnicity (and incidentally? clothes).
The Chronicle’s stance was, and is, a problem… but so is this:
An 11-year-old boy who claimed he was nearly abducted […]

Ashley Morris: the ties that bind

Not long ago, I was talking to my mother about blogging. She’d recently started a blog of her own — at age 70! — and was worried about comments… commenters… privacy… all the natural concerns someone might have who’d never ventured online.
I told her that through the comments, by reaching across to other […]

Rice, ghosts, and icons

Yesterday, I got all caught up in a global economy story.
Evidently, while Americans are yelping about $3/gallon gasoline, there have been food riots in places as varied as Uzbekistan or Mexico, and rice farmers have taken to guarding their fields in Vietnam.
Like all supply and demand equations, there will be winners and losers. […]

Big Oil Singing? Must be Spring… (Updated)

Update: Since I was free and easy with the smacks on the Houston Chronicle yesterday, it’s only right to mention that the Chron’s editorial on this topic is bang on. You can read it here.
* * *  
Ah yes… the lovely sounds of spring. There are birds a-chirpin’, bees a-buzzin’, blossoms a-burstin’, […]

The Houston Chronicle’s PC problem

As a general rule, I agree with how Houston’s only local newspaper handles race and ethnicity in its reporting.   But every now and again, they’re flat-out wrong.
Like this time.

Who Knew?

Thanks to Jazz Shaw’s excellent post at TMV, I finally understand the scandalous Bowling-Gate. Turns out that there are millions of Americans who define masculinity in terms of bowling. Hunh. Who knew?
We want our president to be a REAL man. Even if it turns out to be Hillary Clinton. (And on […]

“The most dangerous and effective Negro leader”

Some years ago, while researching something else entirely, I stumbled across the accusations that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr was a Communist. Strange that I’d never heard that, in retrospect. Then again, I didn’t hear much about J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI while growing up, either.
Viewed through an historical lens, though, […]