Provocations with my coffee

This from The Prospect: we should just ignore the Middle East. .... Anyone?

This from The Chronicle: Nussbaum highlights the danger brewing, again, in India. It's the fundamentalism, stupid. Beware the clean, simple, self-justifying narrative.

This from the LA Times: blogs not a great medium for cultural critique. Nice medium for anthropologists though.

This from The Claremont Institute: Is Clash of Civilizations really a necessary metaphor/historical process? They think not. (again, it's the fundamentalism, and let's toss in a dash of power-glory-ego, stupid)

This from The Columbia Journalism Revue: food, writing, trends of conscience. And the paradoxes therein.

All ganked for you from Arts and Letters Daily.

Sidenote and Spoiler: the season finale of Lost. Oh, YES! YES, because I do not want things to wind up badly for Jack, and YES, because TV almost never really takes us into the tragic (or something like the tragic) in this way. Good on ya, writers at Lost. Now, of course, you realize that you will have to up the ante.