Here’s a snippet of conversation from last night’s combination barbecue, birthday party for a poet friend of mine: Birthday Boy: “…So let me ask you this… Say I was pronounced quote unquote dead, right? If I were to opt for cryonic preservation, a performative act suggesting that I don’t accept the dominant contemporary narrative defining death, but rather that I’m willing to flash-freeze myself to await the next scientific paradigm

“Um, I’ll go with jobs I wouldn’t mind having for $500, Alex…”

“A prominent civil libertarian sued the U.S. government and two major airlines Thursday, claiming that security requirements that compel U.S. citizens to show identification before flying are unconstitutional,” CNN reports [via Reuters]. “In a lawsuit filed in federal court in San Francisco, John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said that requiring ID from travelers who are not suspected of being a threat to airport security violates several amendments

“Former Baywatch star and Playboy model Traci Bingham stopped traffic in Berlin by wearing a lettuce bikini to promote vegetarianism,” Reuters reports. “Bingham, who played the life-guard Jordan in the hit U.S. television series, spent more than half an hour Thursday posing for the cameras wiggling between a famous steak restaurant and Berlin’s Kurfuerstendamm shopping street.” The protest was organized by the animal rights group PETA. Bingham’s bikini of fake

“Authorities say Miami Dolphins linebacker Derrick Rodgers kicked and punched his wife and hit a man with a metal chair at a Miami Beach restaurant. “Rodgers is [c]harged with aggravated battery and other crimes after yesterday’s arrest. He’s still in jail, pending a bond hearing today,” the AP reports. Miami Beach police say Rodgers was arrested yesterday afternoon. Witnesses say they identified the 6-foot-1, 235-pound Rodgers as the man who

Armed Liberal has been hosting an interesting discussion of postmodernism’s role in shaping political culture — included in which is this latest post, wherein A.L. argues that […] in a world where competing narratives are ultimately equally valid�in Stanley Fish�s world�Israeli soldiers might as well have dragged women and children from their homes and shot them. Because that is the Palestinian truth. And no �fact-checking� or �investigation� could materially change

“One Hundred Albums You Should Remove from Your Collection Immediately.” With explanations for why you should remove them. From Jaguaro.org. A cursory glance at the titles suggests that the compiler of this list is a know-nothing bastard. Either that, or that I’m so uncool that I may as well take to calling people “sport” and wearing socks with pastel-colored shorts and open-toed sandals. Sport. [via Subaverage]

“Thirteen members of a family are suing the operator of a [Chesapeake, VA] Pizza Hut for $2 million, alleging they were refused service because they are black,” Newsday reports. “Colonial Foods LLC maintains that employees tried to explain to the family that they couldn’t be served because the restaurant had run out of cheese and couldn’t make any more pizzas.” ‘It was a cheese issue, not a race issue,’ said

In response to growing criticisms leveled against the academy’s Middle East Studies establishment, MESA president Joel Beinin sent along an email to certain members of the Middle Eastern Studies Association urging them to fight to regain public credibility. The text of that email is recounted by Beth Henary, writing in The Weekly Standard: ‘You are probably aware that the public attack on American Middle East studies and MESA in particular

Writing in the Washington Post today, Republican Senator Chuck Hagel pulls his head out of his own ass long enough* to announce that negotiating for peace with a bloody, butchering, ratfaced terror monger is in everybody’s best interest: Young Palestinians need to see their future in a peaceful, fully functioning state with economic opportunities and democratic institutions. If they do not, and instead see violence and destruction as the only