The American Studies Association Endures a Backlash for Its B.D.S. Resolution

More soon.

Links added as I find them.

My statement on ASA boycott http://t.co/p78lw3Z50p

— Alison Byerly (@alisonbyerly) December 29, 2013

@MaxBlumenthal @AliAbunimah Univ. of Ind. Pres. bypasses Dept. of Am. Studies and withdraws ASA membership. http://t.co/HYmzMUDY3j

— Kirk K. (@Kirk__K) December 23, 2013

Tax-Exempt Status of ASA Challenged Because of Boycott.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/inside_higher_ed/2013/12/israel_academic_boycott_american_studies_association_joins_the_fight.html

Brandeis Withdraws from ASA.

http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-lobby-launches-fierce-counterattack-against-american-studies-association

Max Blumenthal, keeping up with this matter, as always:

@DianaValerie @ThaddeusRussell academic institutions in US are in deep with Israel, not North Korea or Zimbabwe or Syria.

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) December 22, 2013

http://ranchdressingwithearthakitsch.blogspot.com/

The Kaleidoscopic Tones of Christmas

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/12/20/the-kaleidoscopic-tones-of-christmas/

Various Things

Another Kunstler column on financial hijinks.

If I entertain at home, I'd make sure to serve fresh and tasty food kept at the proper temperature. One can never go wrong with crackers or Melba toast with tapenade, pesto, etc. An array of drinks, and so forth.

Being Poor, What It's Like

Here.

20 December update: POOR Magazine.

BAD Plans

Wednesday's Tribune-Herald had a front-pager about the Naniloa Resort and its new owners' plans for it, including a three-story-high sculpture of a whale! Because a lot of art and artifacts will be on display throughout the hotel, the owners want to play up the museum aspect, to the point where visitors can't tell whether it's a hotel or a museum. To that end, bellhops will be called "curators", and instead of keys, guests will open their doors with so-called "museum passes." If Ken Fujiyama turned the Naniloa into a bad hotel, the new owners will turn it into a BAD* hotel.

(*See Paul Fussell's BAD: Or, the Dumbing of America, which in fact deals with BAD hotels.)

22 December update: The 5 February 2012 edition of the Tribune-Herald had an article titled, "Rebirth: Can Naniloa Reclaim Former Glory?" splashed across the front page. It began: "With a little imagination, the Naniloa Volcanoes Resort has the potential to be great." The article reveals that only one of the hotel's three towers, the Mauna Kea, was fully refurbished.

Brian McKnight, "Christmas Time is Here"

Can the Print Magazine Survive?

Can the Print Magazine Survive?"

I should hope so. More later.

Kunstler on the Federal Reserve, etc.

Another Kunstler column on the Federal Reserve and financial shananigans.

Belatedly posted because Kunstler.com was down Monday, I was busy cleaning Tuesday, and had a molar extracted on Wednesday morning, from which procedure I had to rest the remainder of the day.

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I got the December issue of Harper's, which wasn't that special. There was a good "Easy Chair" column by Thomas Frank on Chicago: once a gritty working-class city that is now "home to the largest concentration of hipsters outside Brooklyn." But "beyond the perimeter of the nicer neighborhoods ... Chicago now leads the nation in homicides; just before my last visit, the crime wave crested in a South Side park, where a gunman unloaded his semiautomatic rifle into a group of kids playing basketball, hiting thirteen of them. Similar acts were occurring almost daily." (Frank doesn't mention that many Chicagoans refer to their city as "Chiraq", pronounced like eye-rack.) And a somewhat interesting account by Colson Whitehead of a 1991 road trip to Las Vegas he and two friends took. The best part of the article was the comparison of Vegas to a jellyfish flopping on the desert floor. Otherwise a standard contrarian piece proclaiming that the best thing about Vegas is its tackiness.

Compared with Joyce Carol Oates's recent story, "I Can Say Many Nice Things" by Ben Marcus was a letdown: a workshop-fiction kind of story about a fiction workshop held on a cruise ship. The author's new book will be published by Knopf next month. Based on what I've read, I don't think I'm missing much.

With the end of The Oil Drum, its bloggers have started or joined other sites. Euan Mearns, of Energy Matters, points out a report on the future of the oil supply.

Goliath and Free Speech

An Atlantic article on Goliath and its place in the canon of polemics.

Not Yet in the Christmas Spirit

We're still catching up on work but I hope to start preparing for Christmas this week. It takes work, and doesn't just happen.

Banger of the Year

Packed room at the National Press Club to hear me discuss Goliath. @cspan is here to film. pic.twitter.com/iOUAszSymx

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) December 2, 2013

Kunstler: "Between a Rock and a Squishy Place"

Kunstler: "Between a Rock and a Squishy Place."

A Belated Acknowledgment of the Thirtieth Anniversary of the Broadcast of The Day After

The Day After first aired nationally on 20 November 1983, on the ABC network. (There was a special screening a few days earlier in West Germany, for an audience of dignitaries.) I was in the second grade and the teacher said we ought to watch it. My mother said no, so I didn't. When I saw it a few years later (1989?) I'm glad I wasn't allowed to watch it as a seven year old.
















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Interesting article on jet fuel.

A natural-gas pipeline exploded in Missouri.

Talking Heads, "Nothing But Flowers"

Century's End

Five writers, including Kunstler, predict the state of things at the end of the century.

H.R. 2728

http://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th/house-bill/2728