Linton Weeks

A lull until New Year's? Not so these days

Linton Weeks — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 22:56:36 +0000

Time was, the stretch following Christmas Day until New Year's Day was a quiet, sleepy spot on the American calendar. The six-day span hung like a lazy hammock between the holidays.

Not anymore.

Nowadays, the WAC — Week After Christmas — is busy and abuzzing. All around the country, Americans continue to celebrate — Kwanzaa, the Christmas afterglow and the coming New Year.

It's a mashup week that morphs from cozy fires to fireworks, from prayer books to party hats, from holly berries to hangovers.

Do we really need a second inauguration?

Linton Weeks — Sat, 17 Nov 2012 16:36:13 +0000

For the sake of argument, let's agree that when we use the word "inauguration" in this particular post, we are talking about the multiday, ball-bestrewn, soiree-soaked, tuxedo-dappled extravaganza that costs tens of millions of dollars and often leaves many Americans out in the cold — figuratively and literally.

We are not referring to the inaugural parade and solemn swearing-in ceremony planned for Jan. 21, 2013. The 57th inauguration of the U.S.

Nonvoters: The other abstinence movement

Linton Weeks — Sat, 03 Nov 2012 21:23:44 +0000

To many Americans, the right to vote in a presidential election is a sacred and precious opportunity. To others, the right to not vote is just as meaningful. And they exercise it.

In just-released data, the Pew Research Center reports that about 43 percent of Americans of voting age in 2008 didn't participate in the presidential election.

The report goes on to say who nonvoters prefer in the election coming up on Tuesday between President Obama and Mitt Romney.

When a robot comes to the door, it might want rights

Linton Weeks — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 17:03:32 +0000

Peter Remine says he will know it's time to get serious about rights for robots "when a robot knocks on my door asking for some help."

Remine, founder of the Seattle-based American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Robots, says the moment will come when a robot in an automobile factory "will become sentient, realize that it doesn't want to do that unfulfilling and dangerous job anymore, and ask for protection under state workers' rights."

Bit by bit, we are growing more comfortable with digital devices in our daily lives.

Debates and debauchery: A history of drinking games and politics

Linton Weeks — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 19:55:54 +0000

Here's a new idea for a Presidential Debate Drinking Game: Every time someone says "Presidential Debate Drinking Game" today, take a drink. Just kidding.

But drinking games have become a familiar part of the American political landscape — like buttons, bunting and bumper stickers. Where there are political rallies, there are protesting groups. Where there are campaign speeches, there are fact checking teams.

OMG! A Deb8! What young people really want to ask Obama and Romney

Linton Weeks — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 14:57:27 +0000

Generation Y is asking why.

Why is it so hard to find a job? Why is health care so expensive? Smart questions from a smart generation. Their inquiries — and the presidential candidate they think can provide the best answers — could be a decisive factor in the 2012 election. If not the Tipping Point, as least a Tilting Point.

For many millennials, economic prospects are murky.

Paul T.

A political litmus test, in 6 jokes

Linton Weeks — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 14:08:11 +0000

Is it possible to tell whether you are a liberal or a conservative by the jokes you think are funny?

Maybe so. "Like smell or taste, humor is a sense and different people are going to think different things are funny," says Alison Dagnes, author of the just-published book A Conservative Walks Into a Bar: The Politics of Political Humor. "When you throw politics into the mix, our opinions and our biases will affect the way the jokes land."

But what if you don't throw politics into the mix?

From politics to pestilence: Everything is earlier

Linton Weeks — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 14:56:17 +0000

Leaves are falling in the summertime. School starts in early August in many places.

Get Ready For The First Robot President

Linton Weeks — Wed, 23 May 2012 16:40:27 +0000

As many folks know, Bill Clinton was called the First Black President by Toni Morrison in The New Yorker.

Google wins - he's giving up on privacy

Linton Weeks — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 19:22:43 +0000

That's it. They win. He's giving up his privacy.

Trying to maintain privacy in contemporary America is just too time consuming, too complicated, too exhausting. He can't tell the good guys from the bad guys anymore. He doesn't know whom to trust.

There are so many relentless assaults coming at all angles — from closed-circuit cameras to GPS trackers to online cookies to spammers, hackers, malware makers, spyware spinners, identity thieves and countless other assailants — he cannot fight them all anymore. They never sleep.

A nation divided: Can we agree on anything?

Linton Weeks — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 18:57:43 +0000

Like baseballs in a batting cage, the controversies that divide us just keep on coming. Fast and unpredictable.

Last month it was the flap over the Susan G. Komen foundation and its move to cut financial support of Planned Parenthood. The resulting imbroglio dredged up deeply held convictions among Americans about women's health issues and "cause marketing" that, in this case, has resulted in profits for companies promoting breast cancer awareness and research through pink and omnipresent product tie-ins.

This month it's the Girl Scouts.

Is The State Of The Union Address Obsolete?

Linton Weeks — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:10:25 +0000

Given the nonstop, stereo-rock news cycle, the warp speed tempo of geopolitics and the constant to-and-fro between the media and the president, has the State of the Union address become obsolete?

Traditionally, the speech — an annual where-we-stand lecture delivered by the president to a joint session of Congress — has for decades been an opportunity for the professor in chief to issue a national report card and put current events in calm, codifiable context.

In the past, it was a monumental moment — surrounded on each side by a few days of national reflection — in a relatively quiet and

Does regionalism matter anymore, y'all?

Linton Weeks — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 21:49:59 +0000

The race for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination is fixing to get, as we Southerners tongue-in-cheekly say, about as slippery as a greased pig in a hog wallow. Nasty as a old possum in a croaker sack. Murky as South Carolina swamp mud.

The Republican primary focus is shifting to the South, where folks talk and act different from the rest of the country. And where they look for different characteristics in candidates than other regions of the ...

Whoa now, hoss. That last part may not be so true anymore.