Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Peter's LiveJournal:

[ << Previous 20 ]

Thursday, September 18th, 2008
11:01 pm	July and August books I was moving and traveling and stuff in July and August, but I did read some books. This list will be longer next time, but they'll mostly be school-related. Book Books , said the shotgun to the head by Saul Williams: I actually read poetry, and it was amazing. Chuck Klosterman IV Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle, and the Experimental Life by Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer The Cholera Years: The United States in 1832, 1849, and 1866 by Charles E. Rosenberg Danny the Champion of the World by Roald Dahl: I started this when I was 9 or 10 and got scared. I finally picked it up again and loved it. Comic Books As the World Burns: 50 Things You Can Do to Stay in Denial by Derrick Jensen and Stephanie McMillan: Good anarcho-environmentalist propaganda in comic book form. Swamp Thing: A Murder of Crows by Alan Moore et al Swamp Thing: Earth to Earth by Alan Moore et al (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, September 8th, 2008
11:38 pm	Last week in Minnesota I just wrote this on my other blog and am cross-posting here as favored: I haven’t posted in a while. This is partly because classes have started and I’ve been spending most of my time reading, but it’s also because I was spending what time I had left following news from the demonstrations outside the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis and St. Paul. I’ve been waiting to post about these demonstrations and the police reaction to them until someone else did them justice in writing, and one of my favorite writers has: Chris Hedges in Tyranny on Display at the Republican Convention. Glenn Greenwald also covered the house raids that prefaced the demonstrations well, and Twin Cities Indymedia published some incredible first-person accounts and videos. (Comment on this)
Friday, August 29th, 2008
11:01 pm	New blog I'm starting a new blog called Historical Present, partly because I want to have a pseudo-professional history of science blog and partly because I really really love the title. If you're interested in my thoughts about the internet, creationism, and other "science, technology and society" stuff, please read it. But I also have a question for all of you: Should crosspost that sort of stuff to my LJ? Is it annoying to put it in two places, or helpful? (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 20th, 2008
8:19 pm	Movies? I have slightly too much time and too little social life for the next couple weeks, and a good independent video store near by. Any recommendations of movies that I ought to see and might not have? (15 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 1st, 2008
6:37 pm	May and June books Book Books Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market by Eric Schlosser The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis The Evolution-Creation Struggle by Michael Ruse Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal by Eric Schlosser On Conflict and Consensus: A Handbook on Formal Consensus Decisionmaking by C.T. Lawrence Butler and Amy Rothstein Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story by Chuck Klosterman The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn Comic Books Summer Blond by Adrian Tomine Swamp Thing: The Curse by Alan Moore et al Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier by Alan Moore and Kevin O’Neill (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 3rd, 2008
4:10 pm	April books Book Books Candide by Voltaire, translated by Theo Cuffe World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks Interface Culture: How New Technology Transforms the Way We Create & Communicate by Steven Johnson Comic Books Saga of the Swamp Thing by Alan Moore, Steve Bisstte, and John Totleben Swamp Thing: Love and Death by Alan Moore, Stephen Bisstte, John Totleben, and Shawn McManus Miniature Sulk by Jeffrey Brown Little Things: A Memoir in Slices by Jeffrey Brown Be A Man by Jeffrey Brown The Plot: The Secret Story of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion by Will Eisner (3 Comments |Comment on this)
2:51 pm	Rushkoff on “Riding Out the Credit Collapse” Douglas Rushkoff is someone I respect for his essays, though I haven't read his books with the exception of his comics. He's a wonderfully diverse thinker who tends to focus on how media relate to reality, a set of ideas he puts in a more economic framework in a new essay on “Riding Out the Credit Collapse.” It's technical but accessible in the middle, but the beginning and the end are really nicely written. ( First paragraph and last five ) (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 12th, 2008
5:43 pm	So I made the grad school decision. Come fall, I will be a PhD student in the history and sociology of science at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. I figure I'll move there sometime in August, but I'll be in Cleveland most of the time until then. That is all. (10 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 31st, 2008
9:58 am	February and March books Book Books PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions about Gender and Sexuality edited by Carol Queen and Lawrence Schimel Saint Foucault: Towards a Gay Hagiography by David Halperin: I read this and History of Sexuality in parallel. You should too. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1 by Michel Foucault Animal Farm by George Orwell: I’d never read it. It was great. The American As Anarchist: Reflections on Indigenous Radicalism by David DeLeon: Argues that anarchism is a particularly American form of radicalism with strong connections to Protestantism and liberalism. Quite good. Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau I Don’t Believe in Atheists by Chris Hedges: Despite the dumb title, this is a pretty well argued attack on the “New Atheists,” mainly Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. There’s a short version too. Hedges deals with elements of racism, war mongering, and fascism in anti-religion (hence the focus on Harris and Hitchens rather than Dennett and Dawkins), but the book is really about the dangers of moral perfectionism. It's flawed, especially in its philosophy of science, but still worth reading. The Ethical Slut: A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities by Dossie Easton and Catherine A. Liszt Comic Books Embroideries by Marjane Satrapi Chicken with Plums by Marjane Satrapi Pride of Baghdad by Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon Blankets by Craig Thompson Ex Machina: The First Hundred Days by Brian K. Vaughan, Tony Harris, Tom Feister, and JD Mettler Ex Machina: Tag by Brian K. Vaughan, Tony Harris, and Tom Feister AEIOU or Any Easy Intimacy by Jeffrey Brown Unlikely: A True Love Story by Jeffrey Brown Students for a Democratic Society: A Graphic History by Harvey Pekar, Gary Dumm, and Paul Buhle Clumsy: A Novel by Jeffrey Brown Every Girl Is the End of the World for Me by Jeffrey Brown (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, March 10th, 2008
10:26 pm	One last time: Minnesota Wisconsin Chicago Pennsylvania Harvard Cambridge The second half of my travel plans was FUBAR'd by the weather, and I never made it to DC or NCOR. I was tired enough that taking the train back home wasn't a bad thing, though. (Comment on this)
Friday, March 7th, 2008
2:51 pm	There's going to be a students' antiwar demonstration at Public Square in Cleveland on Thursday, March 20 from 4-6 pm. It would be cool if there were an Oberlin contingent there. Nudge nudge. I'm in Madison again, and Ron Numbers pretty much persuaded me to come here this morning. We'll see if I change my mind after my Penn revisit, but I'll probably be here next year. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 4th, 2008
6:16 pm	I learned today that I've been admitted to Penn. I've also heard about offers from Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Penn, and they're all as good as they could possibly be, so I have a tough decision now. Minnesota Wisconsin Chicago Pennsylvania Harvard Cambridge Travel plans: train to Chicago and bus to Madison on Thursday, accepted students day there on Friday, plane to DC on Saturday, NCOR on Saturday and Sunday, visit Naomi on Monday, train to Cleveland on Tuesday. Stay home about a week, then go to Philadelphia for another accepted students day. (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008
10:52 pm	Obama endorsement I've had the experience of my favorite candidate dropping out of the Democratic primary race twice this year, but I still feel like there's a pretty big difference between my third choice, Barack Obama, and my last choice, Hillary Clinton. I think that Obama would bring in a wave of optimism and reform. I think that Clinton would bring in, to quote Steve Earle, "four more years of things not gettin' worse." Two political thinkers who I respect greatly have made this argument at greater length and more effectively than I can. The law professor and technologist Lawrence Lessig has a video providing 20 minutes or so on why I am 4Barack. The cartoonist David Rees, writer of the incredible Get Your War On, wrote a great essay on Clinton, Obama, and Cluster Bombs. The message of both is that Obama has a moral courage that Clinton doesn't and has the potential to affect American politics much more deeply and positively. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
12:16 pm	So I entirely forgot I said I'd keep an updated list of grad school stuff like jqsilver did last year. These are listed west to east, which is the order I've been tending to list them verbally. Italics means I've been accepted. I don't know what my financial situation is yet at any of those schools, but I should in early March. Minnesota Wisconsin Chicago Pennsylvania Harvard Cambridge (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, February 2nd, 2008
1:09 am	January books I'm in the middle of many, many books. I did finish some in January, though: The Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back by Andrew Sullivan: Mostly a conservative attack on fundamentalism. I have reservations, but fewer than I expected. Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto by Chuck Klosterman: Pop philosophy and sociology through pop culture. Often really clever. I shelved it with media theory, which probably says more about me than the book. Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire by Chalmers Johnson: Really interesting, and generally plausible, analysis of U.S. foreign policy, focused on East Asia because that's what Johnson studies. Hopefully reading Johnson prevents me from looking like a conservative hipster. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, January 21st, 2008
2:27 pm	Juan Cole on Martin Luther King “Let us consider whether King wasn't right in 1958, and whether contemporary warfare isn't too destructive, too blunt an instrument to achieve even negative good any longer. Far more al-Qaeda operatives have been busted through good police work than were ever captured on a battlefield. And, the brutality of the Iraq war has created hundreds of little Bin Ladens, as Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak predicted it would.… Bush and Cheney keep imagining that they are in 1928 or 1942 or 1947. Their mindset is that of the first half of the twentieth century. They are men of the past. Martin Luther King was a man of the future. He saw clearly that humankind has a choice. It is the choice between continuing to wage war, and surviving as a species. King was also a man in a hurry. He did not have much time. Neither do we.” —Juan Cole, King: War Cannot Achieve Even a Negative Good (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 9th, 2008
12:42 am	I wrote my first essay since college that wasn't part of a grad school application. It was really fun so I thought I'd share. ( Social Network Sites and the High Fidelity Model of Identity ) (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, December 20th, 2007
5:04 pm	I just noticed that They Might Be Giants are playing at the Beachland on February 27. Tickets go on sale Saturday. It seems to me like a smallish venue for them, so it might make sense to buy tickets soon. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, December 19th, 2007
11:28 am	So the University of Oklahoma history of science program has been trying to get me to apply; they sent a big packet of information a couple weeks ago, and then last night I got an email from the chair. The department actually looks quite good and has faculty interested in things I care about, but it's in Oklahoma. This means first that it's three hours drive from anyone I know (that'd be noders in Fort Worth), and second that, well, it's in Oklahoma. It apparently doesn't mean that it's as conservative as I'd have assumed, though; one of the more interesting faculty members studies the relationship between evolutionary theory and socialism and looks like this: ( picture ) (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, December 10th, 2007
9:36 pm	I just did dishes and took out the trash while listening to The Wall. It was like a one-person crew. (3 Comments |Comment on this)