From TAP, Spencer Ackerman on a glossary of Iraq euphemisms. From FP, why Bob Gates’s new plan to fund academic research is just what the doctorate ordered. Not so lazy, after all: Is it possible that Europeans — famed for their endless vacations - - work as much as we do? The Russian futurist: Aleksander Solzhenitsyn killed off leftist attachment to the Soviet ideal in Europe, but his own attitude towards the motherland was complex (and more from Christopher Hitchens). From In These Times, the American Left: Does a nationwide "progressive movement" actually exist? A review of Grover Norquist's Leave Us Alone. From Alternet, here's a guide to the sleaziest (and most contradictory) smears on the Dem nominee — a good formula for selling books. Is Obama the end of black politics? The resistance of the civil rights generation to Barack Obama’s candidacy reveals a generational divide in African-American politics. From Boston Review, an interview with Vivian Gornick, author of The Men in My Life. From Discover, could pandas be an evolutionary mistake—or proof of an Intelligent Designer? A review of Fertilizers, Pills, and Magnetic Strips: The Fate of Public Education in America by Gene Glass. In the first of a weekly series, Michael Blastland, co-author of The Tiger That Isn't: Seeing Through a World of Numbers, gives some hints at getting to grips with surveys.
