Wolraich: Obama at the Gates of... Gates
Dr. C: In Praise of Writing Binges
Maiello: Gatsby Doesn't Grate
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Wolraich: Obama at the Gates of... Gates Dr. C: In Praise of Writing Binges Maiello: Gatsby Doesn't Grate |
Blowing |
Dagblog was founded in the mid-1960's as an homage by devoted followers of deceased UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold. After Al Gore invented the Internet, these "dagbloggers" began "posting" their "blogs" on said Internet. Today, they number eight strong, and beneath a series of "avatars" they hold forth every day on topics, including politics, international affairs, sports, entertainment, and their lives. They, and dagblog, are simply all that. In short, to paraphrase Gwen Stefani, their shit is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.
But seriously, dagblog is six guys and two woman who don't get enough attention in their personal lives and want to post anonymously about issues of common concern, to get your attention. They have conference calls sometimes, but can't agree on a dagblog T-shirt design. In short, to paraphrase Gwen Stefani, their shit is bananas. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.
Michael Wolraich is a non-fiction writer in New York City. He co-founded dagblog, contributes frequently to CNN.com, and wrote Blowing Smoke: Why the Right Keeps Serving Up Whack-Job Fantasies about the Plot to Euthanize Grandma, Outlaw Christmas, and Turn Junior into a Raging Homosexual (Da Capo, 2010). Wolraich has been a guest on C-SPAN's BookTV, The John Batchelor Show, Culture Shocks, and various radio shows across the country. He is currently working hard on his next masterpiece, When the War Began: Theodore Roosevelt, Republican Progressives, and the Birth of Modern Politics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
Wolraich is also the computer genius who maintains dagblog's state-of-the-art software, but he denies responsibility for technical glitches and advises users to "quit sniveling." In his spare time, Wolraich raises peach mold and performs live impressions of the law of gravity.
Michael Maiello (also known as "Destor23") is a New York based columnist, performer, fiction author and playwright. He worked for ten years at Forbes Media, writing and editing for both Forbes Magazine and Forbes.com. He also appeared frequently on CNBC, Fox News, Fox Business News, CNN and MSNBC. He is also the author of the 2004 book Buy The Rumor, Sell The Fact: 85 Wall Street Maxims and What They Really Mean. He has performed stand up comedy at The Laugh Factory, The Comic Strip and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival and now reads regularly with Mama D's Arts Bordello in New York. He has had four plays published (Night of Faith and Waiting For Death by Playscripts.com; Principia and Troy! Troy! Troy! by The New York Theatre Experience/indiethieatrenow). From inception to dissolution, he wrote a weekly op-ed column for The Daily, a News Corp. publication designed for tablet computers and he is an occasional op-ed contributor to Reuters.
Doctor Cleveland blogs about politics, education, literature, and the arts. His personal obsessions include live theater, Red Sox baseball, and powerful black coffee. He teaches college under another name, somewhere along America's glorious North Coast. While he blogs about the general academic life, he does not discuss his current institution, its students, or its employees on the blog. Nor does he use any university resources to blog. Any public statement he chooses to make about his employer will be made under his legal name.
Ramona used to write nice feature pieces for newspapers and magazines, along with columns that, yes, got testy once in a while (Ronald Reagan was president. What could she do?) but were basically and overall nice.
But then. . .
. . .then came the hanky-panky and subsequent impeachment of Bill Clinton! Then Bush v. Gore! Hanging Chads! Katherine Harris! Supreme Court busy bodies! 9/11! War with Iraq! (Iraq??) The right wing! The religious right! The TEA PARTY, for God's sake!
Whatever she is today is the fault of all of the above. She is not to blame.
Prompted by Peggy Noonan's claim in The Wall Street Journal that "we are in the midst of the worst Washington scandal since Watergate," Andrew Sullivan steps forward to defend Pres. Obama's honor. "Can she actually believe this?," he asks incredulously.
By Julian Pecquet, The Hill, May 18, 2013
Congress is ramping up a new round of sanctions against Iran, ignoring the Obama administration's request to let diplomacy run its course.
In back-to-back hearings this week, lawmakers on key House and Senate panels put the State and Treasury departments on notice that their patience is wearing thin after the latest round of talks last month failed to produce a deal. Both chambers have legislative efforts in the works – the House foreign affairs panel will vote next week – but the administration is warning against any moves that could undermine international support for the existing sanctions against Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program [....]
By Carl Zimmer, New York Times/Science, May 16/17, 2013
An article that summarizes the recent work of Ya-Ping Zhang, a geneticist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who has led an international network of scientists who have compared pieces of DNA from different canines which is pointing to the theory that dogs domesticated themselves.
But the article's message is not just what it first appears to be. When you get to the concluding paragraphs there are some real though provokers:
[....] SLC6A4 may have played a crucial part in this change, because serotonin influences aggression.
To test these ideas,...
By Neha Paliwal, Passport @ ForeignPolicy.com, May 17, 2013
On Friday, chaotic clashes broke out in Georgia as an angry mob -- comprised mainly of young men but also including robed priests and some women -- descended on a gay rights rally commemorating International Day Against Homophobia. A day earlier, the head of the Georgian Orthodox Church had demanded that authorities stop the rally, calling it a "violation of the majority's right."
According to EurasiaNet, the mob, which numbered...
By Miriam Elder in Moscow, The Guardian, May 17, 2013
Federal Security Service spokesman breaches protocol as he accuses US agency of crossing 'red line' in its recruitment efforts