David Thompson politely examines philosophy professor Jere Surber’s “argument” that academics in the Humanities naturally trend “liberal” because their nuanced understanding of the “complexities of history” — to which they lay claim as a function of having made it all the way through Georg Lukács’ History and Class Consciousness without once stopping to purchase a Diet Coke, presumably — leads them to an obvious intellectual endpoint: progressivism. That progressivism —

“Prosecutor, Charge Thyself,” WSJ: Before he pursued statewide office in New York, Andrew Cuomo was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during Bill Clinton’s second term. And lest you think his tenure is forgotten, the HUD Web site has an instructive item in its Archives section. Entitled, “Highlights of HUD Accomplishments 1997-1999,” the document chronicles the “accomplishments under the leadership of Secretary Andrew Cuomo, who took office in January 1997.”

And the people, they rejoiced! Crittenden hits the right note in response: Anyway, Obama’s half-day televised bipartisan makeup session sounds more like a gimmicky setup. Something between a Survivor Tribal Council and a Hail Mary pass. After that back-and-forth with GOP House newbies, he figured out he scores more points with vapid showiness than he does when he actually tries to accomplish something. The GOP would be well-advised to dismiss

…And how it applies to you. Yesterday, I linked to a few pieces exposing what is an ongoing fraud within the submission grappling community. I noted at the time that the entire affair has limited appeal to most of the readers here, but today I want to walk that back a bit: it turns out that what we are seeing is “consensus history” in action — a manifestation of Chomsky’s

The truth about “scientific wrestling.” (Also posted on Pro Wrestling Reborn, “Jake Shannon and Kris Iatskevich: Catch Wrestling’s NEWEST Newest Crisis of Confidence” )

Jules Crittenden and the anti-Salingerites double down on their criticisms of Catcher in the Rye as an “angst-ridden wankfest” (with some of the criticism this time even coming from those who’ve read the book), and offer what they are calling an “adolescent angst-free curriculum” in its stead: That was fun yesterday, speaking ill of the dead with a shout out for angst-free education and common sense vs. commie sensitivities. Here’s

Looks like I won’t be up and running until March. So. If you didn’t contribute earlier this year and want to contribute for February, there’s no time like the present. (Ordinarily I’d wait until the first of the month to post something like this, but for February, the first of the month happens to be my birthday, and so I’ll be busy trying to drink myself back to, say, 23

Unless, you know — you do. Which, hey, it happens. I’m just not so sure I’d go about advertising it, though.

[The recent death of Howard Zinn put me in mind of this old interview I did with Noam Chomsky, originally published here April, 2004 – jg] Noam Chomsky is Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy at MIT. He is the author of dozens of books, including Power and Terror and Middle East Illusions. His book 9-11 was an international bestseller. protein wisdom: “To borrow a question from

Piece of protein wisdom, 8, dies along with him. (h/t bh)