December 2009
27 posts
5 tags
“…when a female cabbage butterfly lays her eggs on a brussels sprout plant...”
– This NYT article suggests that the complexity of plant life -and specifically its capacity for sophisticated responses to stimuli- might ethically problematize eating vegetables.
There are ways of problematizing almost any stance on the consumption of life, a point Will and I discussed long ago and...
3 tags
This Time of Year
I have a terrible memory, and one thing I enjoy about digitally artifactual living is that I can more fully reflect on the past.
At this time in 2008:
Will and I went to Oregon on a wonderful, wonderful trip; I can’t even believe those photos now!
I received a fun present from Elle.
I reblogged Distorte, who remains one of my favorites.
At this time in 2007:
I mentioned Komar and...
4 tags
3 tags
2 tags
“Although there’s no hard statistical evidence on most-stolen titles, The...”
– Steal These Books, in the NYT, quoted by Alan Jacobs. Also worth quoting: “It’s mostly younger men stealing the books,” Zack Zook, the general manager of BookCourt in Brooklyn, suggested. “They think it’s an existential rite of passage to steal their homeboy.”
3 tags
3 tags
“Stalin, for as monstrous as he was, felt three-dimensional, himself tormented...”
– Jack July, who’s been immersed in readings about dictators, contrasts Stalin with the less complex Mao.
1 tag
6 tags
“We were struck by the states that come at the bottom, because a lot of them are...”
– No it isn’t! An article on how ‘happy’ the various US states are is full of absurd quotes: “When human beings give you an answer on a numerical scale about how satisfied they are with their lives, it is best to pay attention. Their answers are reliable.” Little about humans is reliable,...
1 tag
4 tags
“Anathematization of the world is not an adequate response to the world.”
– Donald Barthelme, quoted by Falling and Laughing (who had an additional political note, as do I). I have many reasons for not cursing the world; I even agree that “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.” Sometimes I worry that I’m naive, or that such...
1 tag
2 tags
“last night i had a dream where we kept trying to have sex but things were...”
– Complete email from Abby to me. Reflecting on it, I became curious. I can’t wait to tell her all about them!
4 tags
Aggregates, Accuracy, Politics, Prejudice
Nick Kallen posted a piece on “heaping,” illustrated by a classic example:
Would you describe a single grain of wheat as a heap? No. Would you describe two grains of wheat as a heap? No…. You must admit the presence of a heap sooner or later, so where do you draw the line?
Kallen asserts that “the defining characteristic of the modern era is that every aspect of society is...
4 tags
“Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover;
Breath’s a ware that will not...”
– From “Reveille,” the fourth poem in A Shropshire Lad, by A.E. Housman; the source for the title and epigraph for James Ellroy’s Blood’s A Rover. Greg, so far, so good.
3 tags
“Moviegoing meant experiencing possibilities so seldom realized that we lived in...”
– Pauline Kael, from her “Notes on 280 Movies” in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, quoted by Falling and Laughing. Do you think that cinema and television have amplified this problem: the occupation of our imaginations by fantasies? James Thurber’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty was written in 1939. Mitty...
3 tags
7 tags
“A nonviolent movement could not have halted Hitler’s armies.”
– Barack Obama, in his Nobel speech, asserting that violence can be necessary to achieving peace. Contrast with much of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s thought, or that of Mahatma Gandhi; perhaps ahimsa is fine for weaklings fighting strong opponents but useless when conflict is “real”...
1 tag
3 tags
Floth' and Fly' →
Every single one of the Word Idol posts has been better than mine; has that every happened to you? Have you ever come in dead last? But all that flash and flimflammery, however highly it speaks to the wit of the field, does nothing to alter this fact:
It is the f-words themselves that we judge.
Of course you love Skee-Lo, but independent of my pedantic lying about hip-hop etymology or the...
6 tags
3 tags
3 tags
5 tags
“I don’t care whether Picasso put out cigarettes on people’s arms. My...”
– Camille Paglia, quoted to me by Abby and posted because Peter and Petitchou mentioned the issue again on Woody Allen’s birthday.
She does not suggest art exculpates guilt; she suggests that guilt is irrelevant to art’s value. She’s probably correct, but I struggle to discard my...
1 tag
“Lie detector eyeglasses perfected: Civilization collapses.”
– Richard Powers, from heroine Sarah Belfort’s post of some six word stories; also included were:
Longed for him. Got him. Shit.— Margaret Atwood I’m your future, child. Don’t cry. — Stephen Baxter LOVELY SPRING WEATHER BUBONIC PLAGUE RAGING.— Evelyn Waugh Thought I was right. I wasn’t. — Graeme...
4 tags
4 tags
