Daniel Aaron Lazar

If high-school government class taught us anything, it’s that getting bills passed through Congress is a game of numbers: The bill with the most votes wins.

Turns out it’s not that simple. These days, the polarized state of American politics means that major bills need at least 60 votes to avoid an inevitable filibuster by the opposition.

Political scientist Gregory Koger’s new book, Filibustering: A Political History of Obstruction in the House and Senate, addresses the institutionalization of the filibuster — and describes congressional loopholes by way of which fast thinking and hard work can beat the numbers. Koger teaches American politics at the University of Miami. He joins host Terry Gross for a conversation about what has happened to simple majority rule.

Listen to Koger discuss the filibuster in an interview with Terry Gross

Who are the most influential figures in American history? The Atlantic recently asked ten eminent historians. The result was The Atlantic’s Top 100—and some insight into the nature of influence and the contingency of history. Was Walt Disney really more influential than Elizabeth Cady Stanton? Benjamin Spock than Richard Nixon? Elvis Presley than Lewis and Clark? John D. Rockefeller than Bill Gates? Babe Ruth than Frank Lloyd Wright?

The List

Methodology & Analysis

Here are some of our favorites. Please leave a comment below and share yours. Cheers!

Maria Peligro (Mexican)

Dolores Burrito

Cafe do Brasil (the have the best buffet I’ve ever had…in my life! Tues-Thurs?)

Bar-Celona (Spanish Tapas & Paellas–I’m not sure that this is amazing food, but it takes me back to BCN, so…)

SUMO (Japanese)

3 MOMS (Vietnamese)

Ixthy’s (Amazing Korean Imbiss in overwhelmingly religious environment)

Ron Telesky’s Canadian Pizza

Bejte Ethiopia

Casalot (“Arabian”)

Le Cochon Bourgeois (Though prohibitively expensive French fare, the best food I’ve had in Berlin)

Weinstein (best German cuisine I’ve had?)

Italian Resaturants:

Bar Centrale

Knofi (Italian – and has a cute market across the street)

Malatesta (Best Italian in Berlin?)

Osteria No. 1 (nice garden in rear that backs up to Viktoria Park)

I teach you the Übermensch. Man is something to be surpassed. What have you done to surpass mankind? –Nietzsche

Analyze the following sources and come to our next session with written responses to the questions below.

Required Sources:

• The Wiki entry on the ubermensch just to get started
• A short passage from Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathrusta, Towards the Ubermensch
• A passage from Blood Meridian, pages 248-249 or a professional reading of this passage (for you aural learners)

Optional Sources:

• A Wiki entry which summarizes Blood Meridian
• A link from the University of Virginia which describes the real Glanton Gang
• A video discussion of Blood Meridian from an undergraduate class at Yale (The American Novel Since 1945 with Professor Hungerford)
• Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathrusta (entire book online for free)

Response Questions:

1. Define and describe the concept of the ubermensch.
2. Apply the definition and description from #1 to characters throughout history, both real and imagined. Think: Omar from The Wire, Kurtz from Heart of Darkness, Tyler Durden in Fight Club, Dexter, etc.
3. Assess the functions and dysfunctions of the pragmatic applications of the ubermensch philosophy.
4. How does Judge Holden personify the Nietzsche’s ubermensch?

This is far from an exhaustive list, but after a couple of years here, I figure that I should at least begin to compile a list [for Andrea]. These are some of the MySpace pages of some Berlin-based artists that I’ve seen and liked:

If you’ve found a Berlin-based artist that you recommend, please post a comment below.

17 Hippies (mostly acoustic French-American-German neo-folk something or other)

King Khan and the BBQ (surfer, punk soul review. AMAZING live performances!)

Pescadores de Ventanas (all over the place)

Eb Davis Band (blues and soul. Bobby Bland style)

Terrence Bowery Band (soul)

Reggie Moore (jazz piano)

Mike Russell (hollow-body, G. Benson guitar jazz-soul)

Tom Blacksmith & The Soulminers (poppy, playful blues)

Ryan Jacobs (US-Paris-Berlin singer-songwriter)

DJ Mark Hype (spins old soul records)

Here is the Party Platform of 1912 and here is the Party Platform of 1924

Here are my my class lecture notes which detail the domestic arena of the Progressive Era.

A note from Google:

Like many other well-known organizations, we face cyber attacks of varying degrees on a regular basis. In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different.

No more google.cn

Farhad Manjoo from Slate weighs in

On the eve of Hillary Clinton’s speech in response to Google’s decision, Atlantic correspondent and New America board member James Fallows moderated a discussion involving Open Society Institute fellow Rebecca MacKinnon, Foreign Policy contributing editor Evgeny Morozov, Columbia Law School professor and Slate contributor Tim Wu, and Clinton’s senior adviser for innovation, Alec Ross.  Watch this lively panel debate.

As militants lay down their arms in the Niger Delta, the battle is on to tackle Nigeria’s other massive ills…

Over the past three months the militants have been giving up both themselves and their guns in unprecedented numbers. The federal government has promised them an unconditional pardon for past crimes, a small stipend to live on and the promise of retraining in order to “reintegrate” into society.

Special Briefing from the Economist

BRITAIN, and especially England, is occasionally compared to North Korea (only half-jokingly) as one of the most heavily centralised states in the world. Whitehall bureaucrats micromanage schools and hospitals; local government is dependent on the Treasury for most of its funding. But one bastion of local power has for years stood apart from the trend towards central control: planning, the process by which building projects are granted or denied permission to proceed. Objections from stubborn locals can derail or delay everything from small wind farms and shopping centres to huge projects of national importance. The most notorious example is probably Heathrow airport’s fifth terminal, which languished in the planning system for year upon year before eventually being approved in 2001.

On November 9th all that seemed set to change, as Ed Miliband, the energy and climate-change secretary, delivered the first of the government’s “National Policy Statements” on infrastructure. These will inform the work of the Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC), an independent body set up last month. Led by Sir Michael Pitt, a veteran planner and local-authority boss, it will take over responsibility for planning nationally important projects from March 2010. Decisions that used to take years will, in theory, take just months or even weeks, with public involvement drastically curtailed.

Read on here