This issue of Chinese sovereign jurisdiction assertion into the East China Sea is interesting on numerous levels form UN Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) angle to the broader significance in terms of U.S. power projection in the Pacific. The Washington Post reports just now: "The U.S. military has flown two warplanes over the East China Sea on a training exercise, the Pentagon announced Tuesday, blatantly ignoring a recent edict from China that it must be informed in advance of any such flights over the region."... Japan and the United States immediately protested the move. The Pentagon, which frequently conducts naval and air exercises in the East China Sea, said it had no intention of bowing to China’s demands, calling them “a destabilizing attempt to alter the status quo in the region.” On Tuesday, the White House blasted China’s imposition of the air defense identification zone, but urged Beijing to address territorial conflicts diplomatically instead of militarily."...
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W eare reading this worthy book Drug War Zone in my borderlands class this week. Light holiday week reading... This film Narco Cultura has been getting a lot of press , I think it looks like it will be worth seeing. The director Shaul Schwartz's photography of the drug violence is really quite striking and working seeing. (not for the squeamish) Though your time would best be spent reading 2666 .
Every house needs one of these: " The Laib Wax Room , lined with fragrant beeswax and illuminated by a single bare light bulb, is the first permanently installed artwork at the Phillips since the Rothko Room in 1960. German artist Wolfgang Laib (b. 1950) installed the work in a space he helped to select in the original Phillips house. The Phillips Laib Wax Room is also the first wax room that Laib has created for a specific museum. Accommodating one to two people at a time, it offers a personal, meditative encounter. To install the work, Where have you gone – where are you going?, Laib melted approximately 440 pounds—at a constant temperature to achieve a uniform golden hue. He used tools such as a spatula, spackle knife, electric heat gun, and warm iron to apply the wax, on the walls and ceiling of the 6-by-7-by-10-foot space. For Laib, The Phillips Collection was a logical choice for the work because of its intimate, experiential character. Laib visited the Rothko Room for ...
This article about Korean literature is worth a look, especially once you wade through the filler intro (can we at last dispense with the phrase "neon-saturated"?) and the sweeping generalizations about Korea which litter it. Nevertheless, it makes some observations about the relative invisibility of Korean literature in the U.S. and the globe more widely, and presents the directed Korean state response to the problem. This is a telling section: "Still, when it comes to American recognition, Korea has a ways to go. Charles Montgomery, a California native who’s now a professor in Seoul and the proprietor of a lively literary blog, puts it this way: “Imagine, we’re drinking martinis with a bunch of educated people, and I say, ‘Who is your favorite Japanese author?’ You can say one of ten names. ‘Who is your favorite French author?’ One of ten names.” Montgomery continues: “But ‘Who is your favorite Korean author?’ Everyone will run to refill their drinks.” When...
This was amusing. A prosecutor in Tennessee moved that the defendent's lawyer could not refer to the prosecution as "the government," and this was the lawyer's response: via Volokh ..."Should this Court disagree, and feel inclined to let the parties basically pick their own designations and ban words, then the defense has a few additional suggestions for amending the speech code. First, the Defendant no longer wants to be called “the Defendant.” This rather archaic term of art, obviously has a fairly negative connotation. It unfairly demeans, and dehumanizes Mr. D.P. The word “defendant” should be banned. At trial, Mr. P. hereby demands to be addressed only by his full name, preceded by the title “Mister.” Alternatively, he may be called simply “the Citizen Accused.” This latter title sounds more respectable than the criminal “Defendant.” The designation “That innocent man” would also be acceptable. Moreover, defense counsel does not wish to be referred to as a...
I am fairly well behind posting pictures to Nunal and likely will never catch up with all the stuff from the summer I had intended to put here. Oh well. A couple of weeks ago I was in Texas working on a project with Texas Folklife (and particularly its visionary director, Cristina Ballí, who launched the effort) on helping to foster sustainable cultures of young musicians in Texas Czech polka music. I got to meet a bunch of musicians and cultural workers involved in the Czech polka scene, which was a marvelous experience. I've been working on sustainability issues in Conjunto music, which is a real model for developing programs for teaching young musicians and vibrant traditional transfer (I've written about it here ). I am currently collaborating with Cristina on a full book on sustainability in Conjunto music culture, so you can look forward to that. This polka project is an important one and a lot of fun too, not least because it means spending time with musicia...
Michael Lind does a good job contextualizing and historicizing the Tea Party movement. He demonstrates how this moment has some deep continuities with longstanding political realities in the South, which won't be at all surprising to anyone who has studied the region and especially its politics (see below). I liked this line "By using a semi-filibuster to help shut down the government rather than implement Obamacare, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas is acting rationally on behalf of his constituency—the surburban and exurban white local notables of Texas and other states, whom the demagogic Senator seems to confuse with “the American people.”" and "While each of the Newest Right’s proposals and policies might be defended by libertarians or conservatives on other grounds, the package as a whole—from privatizing Social Security and Medicare to disenfranchising likely Democratic voters to opposing voting rights and citizenship for illegal immigrants to chopping federal ...