Well, the summer got away from me and I didn't keep up with this blog as much as I hoped.  Did you miss it?  I didn't think so.  But if you did, here are a few things I've been reading, that you might like:

Interested to learn about this thinker, whom I’ve never, I think, heard of. I will check out his work.

Very cool, though studies like this also raise the question of how our relatively new science of DNA tracking is going to be understood in relation to the ugly history of science endorsing racism in the past.

Hannah Arendt’s entire archive, housed at the Library of Congress, is now available electronically.  This is a nice piece reflecting on exploring that archive.

“Fan fiction” gets the best case possible for its value here, arguing that it’s a kind of crowd-sourcing of literature.  I think it’s still a disaster and that the solitude historically necessary for real creation is what goes missing.  Another aspect of the challenge of social media today, in fact.

Great interview with Wes Studi, Native actor in many of my favorite movies, including a couple Michael Mann films (Last of the Mohicans and Heat).  Very much worth your while. 

This is an interesting article. Does the way we organize academic research actually make it harder to discover new things, and to generate new ideas?

Very good review by Elizabeth Anderson of Michael Sandel’s The Tyranny of Merit: 

“There is a close connection between respect and power. For workers to regain respect, they need the power to exact it from their employers. This requires strengthening and expanding labor unions, as Bernie Sanders has proposed, and empowering workers to elect board members at top corporations, as Elizabeth Warren has urged. But it also means directing more of our attention not only to meritocracy but to capitalism itself. Without an empowered working class, democratic institutions will remain in the grip of disdainful elites—not just the highly educated elites whom Sandel criticizes, but also the wealthy business elites who promote populist authoritarian politics to escape accountability for the damage their actions inflict on everyone else. To move forward, we need to build on the ideas of Sanders, Warren, and younger Democrats and radicals to reconstruct social democracy for the 21st century.”

Be well, everyone.