As I prepare to hunker down in the path of both my first hurricane and my first Nor’easter, you can enjoy some reading:

• U.S. Intends to Keep Adding Names to Kill Lists.
• Solitary in Iran Nearly Broke Me. Then I Went Inside America’s Prisons.
• 2008 Called. It Wants to Know What Happened to Barack Obama.
• As Local Governments Shrink, Private Consultants Reap Rewards.
• What It’s Like Being a Teen Girl.
• The Shooting in Brookfield and Domestic Violence.
• Cutting the British Empire Down to Size.
• Apocalypse Now for California’s Public Higher Ed?
• From Master Plan to No Plan: The Slow Death of Public Higher Education:
• Ronald Reagan may not have seen this coming when he first set out to destroy what he saw as the creeping communism of master-planned and state-funded public education. His vision at the time was essentially negative, reactionary. But the conservative project he put in place in California in the 1960s remains with us today. Reagan was the trendsetter in making higher education into a problem to be solved with fee hikes and police. Other governors approached this problem in different ways, but the decision Reagan made to begin the destruction of the Master Plan hangs over all of them. Today, we can clearly see the results. Limiting the ability of the government to plan for the education of its citizens has left us with the worst of both worlds: students and families with too much debt and too few options.
• The Corporatization of Higher Education.
• What It Was Like to Be a Telephone Operator on the Night ‘War of the Worlds’ Was Broadcast.
• Nineteen Species of Fern Now Named After Lady Gaga.
• Getting the Lowest Score Possible on the SAT (read sections 13 and 14).
• Emily Nussbaum on “Parks and Recreation”:

Leslie finds that, now that she’s been elected, her job requires literally dealing with the shit of fellow-politicians. When she tries to increase the hours at a public pool, a councilman blackmails her for access to her private bathroom; she has to eat “racist salad” with a Dixiecrat to find an ally. This is a network sitcom: no matter how corrupt things get, Leslie is unlikely to lose her soul (we wouldn’t want her to). But, for all its warmth, “Parks” suggests the brutality of politics better than many dramas. “Hey, kids, would you like to learn how Leslie got your bill passed?” her enemy sneers, threatening to disillusion the kids she hopes to inspire. “Councilman Knope traded my vote for her—” Before he can finish, he gets pushed into that swimming pool, with a tremendous splash. Lobby all you want for change in Washington; maybe what we really need is a dunk tank.

• Curls and the Patriarchy.
• The Republican Party Rape Advisory Chart.
• Infinite Jestice.
• Mourdock, Rape as a Gift from God, and Islamic Shariah.
• On Mourdock’s God’s Gift.
• The Bourgeoisie Had Bushy Beards:

What you don’t see — and only hear speak of briefly, as if in passing — are the millions of workers who had something or other to do with these Great Men and their construction of industrial America. These workers are milling about in History’s 19th century somewhere, but it’s not too clear where, why, or how. As far as The Men Who Built America is concerned, the men and women who did the actual building don’t matter. I guess mangled limbs and Pinkerton clubs don’t make for good TV? (They so do!)

The show’s complete disregard for the actual men who built America makes sense, though, when you think about life in the Second Gilded Age. We don’t have Robber Barons of the First anymore, but we’ve got Job Creators (and even some Wealth Creators). We’ve got about as much inequality. Lord knows our unions are similarly reviled by capital. Last but not least, who could ignore the parallels between that era’s environmental catastrophes and the looming armageddon of our own?

• Speaking in Memes.
• A Finnish Film About A Finnish President – in Swahili with Kenyan Actors.
• The Marketing of Mo Yan.
• Ethnic Cleansing: Colorblind Casting in Cloud Atlas.
• George McGovern and American History.
• Things Obama Says When Famous People Die.
• “This Chamber Reeks of Blood.”
• Paying Taxes to Your Boss: Another Step Toward 21st Century Feudalism:

That could soon be the law of the land in Pennsylvania, where the state legislature has passed a bill that would, asPhiladelphia City Paper blogger Daniel Denvir describes it, “allow companies that hire at least 250 new workers in the state to keep 95-percent of the workers’ withheld income tax.” These workers will essentially be paying their employers for the privilege of having a job. Some have called this “corporate socialism,” but it also calls to mind an even older economic model that was once popular in Europe – except back then, the bosses were called lords. It’s a more modern innovation in the U.S., but combined with increased political pressure from employers and a crackdown on workers’ rights, it all adds up to feudalism, American-style.

The Pennsylvania bill is just the most recent example of state income taxes being turned into employer subsidies. It’s already the law of the land in one form or another in 19 states, and according to Good Jobs First, it’s taking $684 million a year out of the public coffers. The theory is that this will boost job creation. But the authors of the Good Jobs First report note, “payments often go to firms that simply move existing jobs from one state to another, or to ones that threaten to move unless they get paid to stay put.” In other words, it’s more like extortion than stimulus.

• Obama Sign Riddled With Bullet Holes: As Election Nears, Voter Intimidation Increases.
• Stalin’s Favorite Roosevelt.
• The Army as a Concentration Camp.
• A Beluga Whale Mimics Human Speech.
• Skinny Privilege.
• Leisure and Liberal Arts.
• Piracy Trends Off the Coast of Somalia and Nigeria.

Last weekend’s reading ended with a list of really intelligent people talking about Redditor Violentacrez and the scary world that is /r/creepshots. I’m starting this weekend’s reading with more great insight on the same:

• On Ruining Violentacrez’ Life.
• The Tyranny of Anonmymity, Reddit, and the Future of Your Body Online.
• Power on the Internet.
• “Cultural Scavengers”: Violentacrez, Reddit, and Trolls.
• Free Speech and Power.
• A Critical Look at Trolling Subculture and How We Talk About It.

And some links on other topics:

• #Kony2005.
• Diversity Against Justice.
• Incremental Extremism: on the GOP Abortion Stance.
• Is America Recovering from a Recession or a Financial Crisis?
• A Post-Debate Piece, that ends with a look at who an undecided voter is.
• Mitt, Assault Weapons, and Single Parents.
• Them’s That Got Shall Have: Criminalizing Parents Who Steal Free Education:

At the heart of this issue is how we fund our public schools. As education advocate Diane Ravitch has said, a child’s educational outcomes can be predicted based on her zip code. With few exceptions, the generational nature of wealth transfer means where we live is a direct reflection of how we were born. Wealthier neighborhoods generate more property taxes, which, in turn, can provide greater resources for their public schools. Few of those wealthy parents would advocate for legally barring poor, brown children from attending their schools. But, hardening the border between districts does exactly that: it legally sanctions poor, brown kids from attending those schools. That it also makes inequality a bureaucratic act that distances well-meaning wealthy parents from the dirty act of exclusion is just a bonus.

• Forging North-South (Neck)Ties.
• Hait to Join the African Union – Why Not?
• On Anti-Bullying Campaigns, LGBT Youth of Color Suicide, and Why I Never Supported Spirit Day.
• Out of the Ashes of Dead Trees, on Newsweek.
• A Map of the World whose legend includes everything from “savage” to “enlightened.”
• Omaha Schoolgirl Dresses as a Different Historical Figure Each Day:

This is how Stella Ehrhart, age 8, decides what to wear for school. She opens her closet. She opens her book, “100 Most Important Women of the 20th Century.” And she opens her mind.

Voilà, she is Billie Holiday, in a black dress with a red tissue-paper flower tucked into her strawberry-blond hair. Behold, she is Grace Kelly in pink satin lace on her wedding day. Poof, she is Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, wearing a hat her aunt got her in Vietnam.

The Dundee Elementary School third-grader comes to school dressed as a different historical figure or character — Every. Single. Day. And she’s done that since the second day of second grade, when this all started.

• If Columbus had been Funded by the Gates Foundation.
• The U.S. Military: 100% Right, 0% of the Time.
• The Kochs’ Libertarian Hypocrisy.
• Foreign Aid Should Not Be About Us and Them.

It’s time to do some reading, so get on that:

• The Rehetorical (De)evolution of Affirmative Action.
• Angus Johnston on Fisher v. Texas.
• Soul-Searching for Diversity at UT Austin.
• Fisher v. Texas and the Problem of Proof.
• The CEO Who Built Himself America’s Largest House Threatens to Fire Employees if Obama Wins.
• It’s the Lack of Shared Governance, Stupid.
• Consistent Confusion:

Of course there’s nothing to explain here except that intellectually dishonest hypocrites are doing more of the same. Conservatives are great at this. Hollywood is a cesspit of moral depravity and celebrities are all airheads, but they practically soil themselves with excitement when some star endorses a Republican or talks about running. Experts and academics in the ivory tower are never to be trusted, but hey did you see this new Exxon-funded study from Dr. Shameless at Texas A&M that totally disproves global warming? He’s a scientist, so it has to be true. Government is bloated and expensive and must be drowned in a bathtub, except for the military, farm subsidies, the prison system, massive and politically expedient handout programs for seniors, and more.

• When Animal Collective’s Deakin Went to Mali to Make an Album and End Slavery.
• E-mails Ignored, Meetings Denied: Bias at the Search Stage Limits Diversity.
• What Government Can Learn From Squirrels.
• One Doctor in Japan Faked 200 Articles in Medical Journals over Two Decades.
• Stateless and Stranded in American Samoa:

Sebastian took a quick flight over and spent a short amount of time there, then flew back to American Samoa. But when he tried to board a flight back home to L.A., he was barred. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said he had self-deported.

“In 2002, an immigration judge with the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review ordered Sebastian to depart the United States,” ICE spokeswoman Gillian Christensen said in a statement. “In December 2011 when Mr. Sebastian traveled to American Samoa and Samoa, he was prohibited from returning to the United States due to the immigration judge’s order.”

• On California’s Decision to Deny Graduate Students the Right to Unionize.
• Texas School Uses Student IDs to Track Students.
• Is It Your Body or Not? Draw the Line, People.
• Laura Seay on Simon Fraser University’s Human Security Report.
• The Problem of the New York Police.
• From One Gilded Age to Another:

Ironically, the White House occupant who best represented the views that now dominate the American Right was a Democrat: Grover Cleveland, the only Democratic president from the eve of the Civil War to Woodrow Wilson in 1912. When Cleveland, a rotund New Yorker, was first elected in 1884, his party’s base was remarkably similar to that of the GOP today: white Southerners from all classes and white workers everywhere who did not belong to unions. The Democrats’ standard-bearer alsoexpressed doubt that any “sensible and responsible” woman would ever want to vote.

As president, Cleveland took several opportunities to denounce those Americans who, as Mitt Romney expressed it to his donors in Boca Raton, expected the government to provide them with the necessities of life. In 1887 he vetoed a bill that earmarked $10,000 to buy seed for drought-stricken farmers in Texas. “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution,” Cleveland explained in his veto message. “I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit.” He then added a pithy note of pedagogy: “The lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.”

• There Will Be a Memoir: Achebe and Biafra.
• The Arithmetic of Tenure Standards.
• How One Dutch Neighborhood Helped People Everywhere Reclaim the Commons.

• Follow-ups to Adrian Chen’s great piece, Unmasking Reddit’s Violentacrez, The Biggest Troll on the Web.
  • Why Shutting Down Non-Consensual Porn Matters.
  • Reddit Creeps and Girls’ Real Lives.
  • How to Shut Down Reddit’s CreepShots Once and For All: Name Names.
  • Thoughts on Free Speech and Violentacrez.
  • Creepshots and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of Free Speech.

The Weekend Reading keeps going! Let’s start with a bunch of education links:

• Marginal Revolution’s Foray into Online Classes.
• In Texas, Public Schools Turn to Parents’ Dollars for Support.
• Indiana Jones has been Denied Tenure.
• Universities and the Urban Growth Machine:

The ability of universities to raise tuition fees at will (without any fear of institutional default) is the basic collateral requirement for securing a good credit rating, which makes it much cheaper to borrow money to service existing debts and finance large-scale construction. In turn, this capital-intensive construction generates more space per capita, which is a key metric in the US News and World Report’s college rankings.

• Think Before You Intern.
• Fifty Years After Integration, Ole Miss Grapples with History.
• And a conversation on live-tweeting at academic conferences:
  • What are the Ethics of Live-Tweeting a Conference?
  • An Idea is a Dangerous Thing to Quarantine.
  • Twitter Good or Twittergate?
  • Manners and the Live-Tweet.
  • Tweet Away.
  • My Norm is More Normal Than Yours: Academic Tweeting and Loose Fish.
• Monetizing the Campaign in Won’t Back Down.
• Empowerment Against Democracy: Tinseltown and Teachers Unions:

Despite scapegoating teachers’ unions, Won’t Back Down is not an anti-teacher movie. Most of the teacher characters—especially Nona, played by Viola Davis—are heroic. That’s because one of the film’s messages is that busting teachers’ unions is better for teachers. In one scene, a meeting to discuss the possible takeover, Nona argues that losing the union will be worth it, “because we’ll be able to teach the way we want.” (The movie is vague on Nona’s pedagogy and why the union prevents it. In real life, charter teachers certainly don’t have any more control over curriculum than public school teachers do.) It is a ruling-class wet dream: workers who are happy to help destroy their own institutions. By giving up the organization through which they wield power, the fictional teachers reason, they will gain more power.

We have wandered deep into the swamp of Upsidedownlandia. Yet the same paradox colors the film’s view of parent power. The movie celebrates parents rising up and taking control of their children’s education—in order to rid themselves of all representation. Though the film does not discuss such pesky governance matters, a “takeover,” in real life, usually means that the school is run by a private organization with limited accountability to the public. While the state does decide ultimately which charters to shut down, there is no oversight by the school board, nor the city government, and certainly not the parents.

• In 2008 Focus on the Family predicted a 2012 under Obama. Let’s look at what really happened.
• Waiting for Malina Crater – on who gets remembered in space.
• Meeting a Troll.
• War Games at Home, Home Games at War: Geography and Military First-Person Shooting Games.
• Science Says We Think Symmeticral Faces are Prettier, so an Artist Created Some.
• The Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson.
• A Kids Club Where the Parents Die:

I had asked Bea, after the day of the two dead mothers, if she still wanted to go to the club. I had been prepared for her to reconsider, but she answered resolutely that she still wanted to go. She also mentioned the popcorn again. Then she looked at her hands and said quietly, “It got me through your cancer.”

When I posed the same question to my 12-year-old daughter, Lucy, she too gave the same answer. Yes, of course she wanted to keep going. “It makes me feel normal,” she said. “It makes me a better friend.” It really does. When a classmate she hadn’t even been close to lost a parent to cancer last year, she instinctively reached out to the child. She didn’t make the kid talk about her feelings. She just sat with her at lunch, asked her about her locker. She wasn’t afraid. She wasn’t awkward. Because she’d been there before.

• Ben Bernanke on the Difference Between the Fed and ECB.
• The Politics of Provocation.
• Sword Fight on a Hong Kong Rooftop.
• The Polls Have Stopped Making Any Sense.
• The Beauty of the Airline Baggage Tag
• The Kissing Sailor and the Selective Blindness of Rape Culture