on another e-mail related note, i have to give some love to andy hagan. besides smoking like a chimney, he knows a lot about pretty much everything. so when i got an e-mail from him whose subject line read "Some things are worth fighting for", i figured something was probably up. nah, turns out he was pulling my leg. but since i'm feeling lazy, i'm just going to let you read andy's e-mail instead of bothering to come up with something on my own. Here it is:

Yeah, that headline [Some things ... fighting for] gets the attention, doesn't it? It just screams "check out this smarmy email loaded with all sorts of cliches about this that and the other". Right out of the gate, you know that there's going to be some sort of trash scraped up from the cutting room floor of "Chicken Soup for the Hypernationalistic Soul" and spilled into perfectly good fiber-optic cable connections with the sole intent of extolling the sender's pride/faith/blind acquiesence. But who needs trite titles to start of winning emails? I sure don't.

From my "International Politics" syllabus:

"3. Critical Theory: Neo-Marxism and IR: Robert Cox and the revival of Marxian thought in IR. 'Problem-solving' v. 'critical theory.' Neo-Gramscian international political economy as an alternative to the 'Washington Consensus'. Habermas, the Frankfurt School and IR; Andrew Linklater and the transformation of political community; David Held and Cosmopolitan Democracy".

Roughly translated, it means:

"3. Buzzwords. 'Different Buzzword' v. 'Other Buzzword.' New Buzzwords as alternatives to yet further buzzwords.' German guy and his Buzzwords (busworden). Somebody else and his buzzwords, followed on by some other guy (who no one really cares about at all, thus he's mentioned last), and his two-part buzzword."

End "Daily Update for 8 October 2003, #2"