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Friday links! Transcendent joys edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links, Uncategorized August 12, 2011 2 Comments

Uncle Walt

It has been a week of transcendent joys here at Combat! blog, and one of the things we transcended was collecting links for Friday. You know I’ve been having fun for the last several days because my Evernote has not steadily filled up with internet articles, which initially presented a problem. Fortunately, joy—by which term I mean weirdo shit—is all around us. Today’s links are short, poorly articulated and striking in ways that thwart comprehension. They’re what the European Romantics called sublime, and the arbitrary unification of the sublime is what the American Romantics called transcendence. Around here, we just call it Friday. Drop your socks and grab your unkempt beards, because the transcendent brilliance of the internet is about to blow your face off. Believe it or not, it starts with Rick Santorum after the jump.

The confidence game

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas August 11, 2011 1 Comment

I don’t know if you follow the markets, but it’s been one hell of a week. The Dow lost nearly five percent of its value yesterday, following another day of steep declines likely precipitated by S&P’s downgrading of the US federal credit rating last Friday. That move shook investor confidence—as did the decision of certain commentary blogs to cover mean campus organizations in Pakistan instead of the most significant financial event of the year—and confidence is what makes a modern market go. In an economy based on making things, growth is spurred by demand. In an investment economy, somewhat tautologically based on making money, growth is spurred by demand for investments. The more people think a stock market is going to do well, the better it does, and vice versa. Today—as of 12:38 Eastern, at least—a bunch of people decided that the Dow would probably go up, and it did. Which begs the question: why don’t we just have confidence in the market and watch it go up?

Combat! blog flies through beers, is abuseful

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized August 10, 2011 1 Comment

As you might guess by the lateness of the hour, Le Blog Combat! is in Montreal, where everyone is super friendly and seems as if they appreciate our attempts to speak French by speaking Spanish without pronouncing the last three letters of each word. Also, a pint is a completely different quantity of beer here, and a liter of wine is the same quantity as everywhere but still much greater than you think. I threw up an entire yogurt parfait this morning. While I continue my cultural ambassadorship, how about you read this column from Paul Krugman about S&P’s recent downgrade of the US government’s credit rating. I have to go explain to the entire nation of Canada what Alka-Seltzer is.

By the time you read this, I’ll be Canadian

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized August 9, 2011 4 Comments

Combat! blog hurtles down the iron rails of politeness today on its way to Montreal, there to see noted crazy person Jeff Mangum. There will be no post today so that I have time to argue with various Amtrak officials. While I frantically try to learn French, how about you read about Dock Ellis, the major-league pitcher who claims to have been on LSD when he threw his no-hitter? You will not be disappointed. Or you will, but I will have had time to flee the country while you were finding out.

Know your theocrats: Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba

By Dan Brooks in Church People August 8, 2011 6 Comments

IJT student activists welcome progressive politician and former cricket star Imran Khan to Punjab University.

Those of us who attended the University of Iowa might remember the terrifyingly-named Campus Crusade for Christ, a Christian student group devoted largely to making t-shirts and organizing church retreats where, it can be presumed, absolutely no one got handjobs. In America, our campus religious groups are pretty harmless, and still we find them vaguely inappropriate. In Pakistan, their campus religious groups beat people with bicycle chains, and they are allowed to run the teacher’s union. That’s the news from this LA Times report on Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, who slapped a male philosophy student at Punjab University for talking to a female student. After the philosophy department organized a protest, the IJT responded by attacking their dormitory in the middle of the night. Then nothing happened because, as the principal of Punjab university put it, the IJT runs “a parallel administration.”