Edward Snowden first reported his ethical concerns to his superiors and colleagues over a period of six months. He even showed them evidence of alleged unconstitutional wrongdoing. And he deliberately chose not to blow the whistle to Congress because he viewed it as part of the problem. [Read more…]
Delphinium Books Blog
The Whistleblower’s Dilemma: Snowden
With a growing awareness of NSA wrongdoing eating at him like moral acid, Edward Snowden became a whistleblower-in-waiting. All he needed was to complete his understanding of what the NSA was doing and how it was doing it. [Read more…]
Karen Silkwood, The Whistleblower’s DIlemma
One dry, cold November night in 1974, Karen Gay Silkwood left a union meeting at the Hub Café in rural Crescent, Oklahoma, jumped into her white Honda Civic, and headed down Highway 74 toward Oklahoma City. It was 7:30 p.m., the last day of her life. [Read more…]
Book Awards: The Best Reader Wins!
The winners of the National Book Awards were selected this week following an evening in which all the nominees participated in a reading hosted by New School.University. Even though I have no idea whether or not the judges attended the readings, I couldn’t help noticing that the best readers — at least in poetry and fiction — ended up winning in their categories. [Read more…]
The Middlemarch Millennial
Christopher Witte
I find Millennial bashing to be as fashionable a recreation these days as combinatory yoga-pilates. Everyone from Time Magazine to Aaron Sorkin to Michelle Obama has taken a healthy swing or two, and younger people are exercising a right to reciprocal ire. Yet take a step back and this intergenerational warfare, fought across the trenches of technology-swayed narcissism and entitlement, arguably resembles a more fundamental and timeless sort of conflict – the pitting of emergent youth against traditionalist elders. While a simple examination of a historical case (e.g. the criticism heaped upon the sixties counterculture generation) might be sufficient to evince this, it is again ample occasion to turn to our literary canon in order to widen our scope and defog our vision – this time through considering the famous work “Middlemarch” by George Eliot. [Read more…]
In Defense of Thoreau
Someone once told me “Walden” was a sort of hipster bible. A young, affluent twenty-something shuns convention, builds a cabin in the woods, and reflects on the nature of being; in all likelihood he sprouts a man-beard along the way. This put me off the work for at least half a decade, until, in the throes of devouring the writings of Tolstoy, I stumbled across the novelist uplifting a particular American name and wholeheartedly praising his ideas. The name was Henry David Thoreau – that of the early American transcendentalist. It was then I pried open the pages of Walden, and discovered a work of truly life-altering scope. [Read more…]