Old media

Hey, it only took the Guardian a year longer than bloggers to hear the Mostar Bruce Lee statue story. Ah, but the Guardian is a proper brand, so that’s OK.

Don’t mess with Chinese girlie-men, and other Sumatran colonial tales

Here, from Emil Helfferich (1878-1974)‘s Südostasiatische Geschichten (Jever/Oldenburg, 1966), is an account of what happened to another German-speaker who made light of girlie-men: He was German, early 30s, and came from a forest ranger’s family in Hannover. If not poverty, then extreme thrift had probably stood at the cradle of him and his numerous siblings.…

Locke & Habermas

If someone pulls the “Locke-Habermas” flashcard on you, you’ll probably mutter something along the lines of “critique by the latter of the belief of the former in the compatibility of capitalism and freedom mine’s a pint.” So it’s interesting to note–spin aside–how close the two seem to each other, as well as to certain dead…