Chasing Dragons

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 130

 This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'The World's Best Known Portrait' by Patrick Cramsie at designobserver.com
• 'Butt Out! Pakistan Telecom Watchdog Drafts Rude text Message Ban' by Saeed Shah at guardian.co.uk
• 'Against All Odds: Muslim Fashion Designers on the Politics of Clothing' at muslimahmediawatch
• 'Chasing the Dragon in Tehran' by Roland Elliot Brown at foreignpolicy.com 

For a bit of perspective, please see the following link about the state that leads the world in illicit and licit drug use.

I hope to be blogging more regularly within the next fortnight once my whistle-stop world tour comes to an end. In the meantime, have a good weekend and enjoy your weekend dose of the sublime...

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 129

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'A Conspiracy of Hogs: The McRib as Arbitrage' by  Willy Staley at theawl.com

• 'The Elusive Enemy: Looking Back at the War on Terror's Visual Culture' by David Campbell at david-campbell.org

• 'The War on Drugs and the Shameful Silence of Our Politicians' an editorial at guardian.co.uk

• '"The Conquest" and France's Political Film Renaissance' by Heather Horn at theatlantic.com

• 'Has American Popular Culture Become Too Dumb for Beavis and Butt-Head' by Rex W. Huppke at chicagotribune.com

• 'Frank Miller, Losing His Mind, Occupy Wall Street, and My Thoughts' by Brett at graphicpolicy.com

Have a good weekend!

Image credit: Verne Southern

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 121

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'iPads Now Helping Marines to Unleash Hell' by Mark Riffee at dangeroom

• 'War/Photography: An Interview with Simon Norfolk' by Geoff Manaugh at bldblog

• 'Ghosts in the Machine: Do Remote-Control Pilots Get Combat Stress?' by William Saletan at slate.com

• 'National Drug Threat Assessment 2011' by the National Drug Intelligence Center at the US Department of Justice [link]

Have a good weekend!

Photo credit: oceanaris

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 109

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Mapping the discontinuous spatiality of the contemporary nation-state through the publication of the secret government memo listing 259 facilities around the world considered crucial to everyday life in the US' by Geoff Manaugh at domus

• 'World Drug Report 2011' by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime at unodc.org

• 'Pyramid Schemes' by J. Malcolm Garcia at guernicamag.com

Have a good weekend!

Photo credit: centralasian (picture is of the world' oldest known map)

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 104

The apocalypse has apparently been indefinitely postponed. Therefore, you should have the time to check out these items on the reading roundup:

• 'The Lawfulness of the US Operation Against Osama Bin Laden' by Harold Koh (Legal Advisor, US State Department) at opiniojuris.org

• 'Targeted Killing of Drug Lords: Traffickers as Members of Armed Opposition Groups and/or Direct Participants in Hostilities' by Patrick Gallahue at International Journal of Human Rights and Drug Policy

• 'The Cyborgology of Blade Runner' by PJ Rey at cyborgology

• 'The Un-Shock Doctrine' by Slavoj Zizek at guernicamag.com

• 'Globalisation isn't What We Think it is' by Jon Wilson at leftfootforward.org

• 'Foucault and Writing 2' by Clare O'Farrell at refractedinput

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Phot credit: davitydave

 

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 101

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'How Election-Ready Wardrobes Win the Day' by John Allemang at theglobeandmail.com

• 'The Royal Wedding Reminds Us that Hereditary Princple is Alive and Well in the UK' by Bart Cammaerts at lseblog

• 'Interview with Gil Kerlikowske (US Drug Czar)' by Susan Glasser and Joshua E. Keating at foreignpolicy.com

• 'Racism by Any Other Name: Whitewashing Les Bleux' at globalsociology

• Dictator Chic' by David Sirota at salon.com

Happy May Day!

Photo credit: midiman

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 97

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Jobcentres tricking people out of benefits to cut costs, says whistleblowers' by John Domokos at guardian.co.uk

• 'Blogs are Dead, Long Live Blogging' by Charlie Beckett at charliebeckett.org

• 'The Kill Team' by Mark Boal at rollingstone.com

• 'The Underpinnings of the New Global Economy' at globalsociology.com

• 'Rita Abrahamsen and Michael Williams on Private Security Companies, Security Assemblages, and Africa' by Peer Schouten at theory-talks.org

Have a good weekend!

Image credit: 50 Watts (formerly a Journey Around my Skull)

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 92

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Shia-Sunni Schism Explained from Lebanon to Bahrain' by Haroon Siddiqui at thestar.com

• 'How to Make Anything Signify Anything' by William H. Sherman at cabinetmagazine.org

• 'Drug Poliy: Lessons Learnt and Options for the Future' by Mike Trace at idpc.net

• 'Just How Damaging Will the Coming Cuts Be? Ask the IMF' by Duncan Weldon at falseeconomy.org

• 'Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on US Senators' by Michael Hastings at rollingstone.com

Have a good weekend!

Image credit: Vector Portal

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 87

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Phone-hacking scandal could dog the government for months' by David Batty at guardian.co.uk (who will this hurt most: David Cameron or Rupert Murdoch?)

• 'Photography after Empire: Citizen-Photographers or Snappers on Autopilot' by Frank Moller in New Political Science (free access for a limited time)

• 'Innocent Bystanders: Developing Countries and the War on Drugs' by Philip Keefer and Norman Loayza at worldbank.org (if one can overlook the moralising narrative that argues the contrary, this volume provides very interesting micro-level economic analyses of why prohibition does not work)

• 'The Dubai Job' by Ronen Bergman at gq.com (old school investigative journalism into the assassination of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh)

• 'Imagining the Polity: Cinema and Television Fictions as Vernacular Theories of British Politics' by Nick Randall in Parliamentary Affairs (compelling stuff from my Newcastle University colleague!)

Have a good weekend!

Photo credit: artinfiber

Weekend Reading Roundup v. 86

This weekend in the reading roundup:

• 'Social Media Icon @JayRose_NYU Explains How He Tweets' by Tracy Samantha Schmidt at 435digital.com

• 'The Banks Debate has a 1970s Parallel' by Steve Richards at indepedent.co.uk

• 'Meth Flourishes Despite Tracking Laws' by Jim Salter at yahoonews.com (betchya did not know that smurf is now a verb)

• 'Bushpunk and the Future of Africa' by Julia Lasky at designobserver.com

• 'DIY Media 2010: Video and Gaming Culture' by Henry Jenkins at henryjenkins.org

• 'A Decade of Fear' at informationisbeautiful.net

Have a good weekend.

Photo credit: Mr. Greenjeans