Lobster in a Bucket

Under the Radar

Things that are under the radar:

Mike Huckabee: People have moved into a binary framework for the Republican nomination. Either we will have Guiliani or Romney. But this assumes that the Rudy campaign doesn't self-destruct in the coming months. There is a good chance of this happening. And that leaves us with Romney. If Republicans are left with the choice of a former Mormon governor or a former Baptist Governor, I predict they go Baptist. Besides, Huckabee lost his 100 lbs the old fashioned way.

The Avett Brothers' Emotionalism: This album came out in March, but it just got a Pitchfork review today. What does this mean? That Avett Brothers have got some legs, and that no one saw this album coming. It's good too, BTW. It has the proper balance of pop, Americana, and rawkousness. I could imagine being at a show in between a frat boy and a 13 year old girl, and not really caring, because the show was that good. There aren't too many albums that I'd say that about.

Google Book Search: There's been a lot of talk about how Wikipedia is changing the way that we do research. Next year, as a teaching assistant, I'll probably have to give a little talk to my sections about it. But the power of Wikipedia to get basic information about pretty much anything quickly is not really that useful. In a pinch, if I can't remember who George Washington's first Secretary of State was, fine, but the uses are kind of limited. On the other hand, with Google book search I can search for words or phrases in pretty much every published book in most languages. The potential for scholars is huge. Previously, something that get's left out of the bibliographies of one generation of scholars is pretty unlikely to get picked up by the next. Now, there isn't really any secondary source that can't help us. But again, people aren't talking a lot about this.