Sunday, May 31, 2009

The stax of our trax


Am I wrong?

One needs to hear as wide a variety of musics as possible when young. Listening to Beethoven (e.g.) when one is 14 unlocks doors in the soul the way repeated video game use unlocks hidden areas and characters. Listening to music may very well chalk forth something of our destinies.

Listening to Beethoven (e.g.) on NPR (or the wretched WQXR) when one is older than, say, 40 opens nothing. It's merely reaffirming the purported validity of familiar parts of the soul.

"Meat-Girl" courtesy of April Winchell's fine blog.

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Thursday, May 28, 2009

this and not that

"It is equal measure document and conversation.”

and platform.

IntelProp thems contentz, boyz.

unlike Bing, it conceives of communication before consumption.

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Tuesday, May 26, 2009

ecrasez l'infame


Media critics, who so often less than fruitfully take issue with what bogus channels like Fox are saying, might consider looking more carefully into what, and whose existence, such channels do not, under any circumstances, acknowledge.

For example, she-whom-the-NewYorkTimes-will-never-do-a-story-about*, Amy Goodman, has Andrea Juhasz, lead author of the True Cost of Chevron report, updating what Bill Keller's dad's old oil buddies are up to.

The interview comes on the eve of Chevron's annual shareholder meeting.



*Apparently also the case at NPR news.

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

Hunting Eagles and Toast

We flatter ourselves that we act, by creating images of perfervid calisthenic motion in service of some end:



We make more of these images all the time.



In service of some end.

Meanwhile, we regard guys who go to the trouble of casting the Mona Lisa on manifold pieces of toast with condescension:



As General Motors/Countrywide/Name Your Bank/AIG fails. It took many years to make these creatures. Their scale was law, free and clear, unto itself.

They were free to rise. Were we free from their rise? Are we free from their fall?

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Tuesday, May 19, 2009

dirty bullavid

I have a feeling this image would be showing up on dirty beloved if there were world enough and time:


The randomness of the thought is somewhat attritted by my having received the image, made by Viktor Bulla, from dirty beloved's maker. Circumstances directly attributable to Alan Greenspan have make it difficult for Mike to be online - and I know he misses that, as those of us who love his blog, miss him.

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Monday, May 18, 2009

Hackers + Kindle = Open System?

Soy un Asco ponders the love/hate syndrome that is JSTOR, and dreams of unlimited access through Kindle.

So kack your Hindle.

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Of reading aloud

A New York Times editorialist discovers reading aloud. There's much to be said for it. A group of us have been reading a variety of texts aloud for several years now, and it brings both pleasure and discovery. If you go back far enough, every written thing, with the possible exception of mercantile receipts, was meant to be voiced and listened to. In the textures and wit of storytellers of Greece, Rome, the Old Testament, the "Middle Ages," and the Renaissance (as Benjamin keeps reminding us) are voices scored (scarred?) by the received wisdom gleaned in manifold retellings in plural settings, with diverse audiences, contexts, and contexts. Nobody except Sid Caesar gets anything right right off, do they?

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Friday, May 15, 2009

Evil Sprites from the North, eh?


NAOMI KLEIN: You know, I just would just add, you know, that clip that you played earlier of Obama saying, you know, we’re not starting from scratch—true, no country is ever starting from scratch. But when you look at the way all of these various crises are interrelated, the healthcare crisis with the financial sector crisis with the manufacturing sector crisis, you could not imagine a moment when there—which was more ripe for possibility of actually stepping back and going, “This whole thing is broken; how do we rebuild this in a way that makes sense?” There’s not going to be another moment like this, Amy, you know?

AMY GOODMAN: And that’s interesting that they’re not questioning nationalizing the debt of—and bailing out these banks and these other companies, like AIG, but they question nationalizing the cost of healthcare, which involves everyone.

NAOMI KLEIN: Yes, that this—they agree with the Republicans: that would be socialism. So, yes, it’s true. Avi and I are from a socialist—the socialist country of Canada, would that it were so.

Fire the Boss - DN.

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Friday, May 08, 2009

comedie sous real

AKMA on the faster horses of technology, and their pack-mule counterparts - (the latter my characterization, not his), and on Fish & Ditchkins.

The comedy of human rational effort locked in a small ampulla called JSTOR; the greater comedy of the NYTimes thread on Reason.

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Thursday, May 07, 2009

Helots' own JSTOR shoebox

Breaking JSTOR open, a little bit at a time:

Bill Thayer has transcribed a bunch of out-of-copyright scholarly articles and created a subsite called the Antiquary’s Shoebox to hold them. This sort of stuff is normally only on JSTOR, so very valuable to we helots whose duty in life is to pay for the latter, without getting access to it. link.


Also

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For National Train Day

Tuesday, May 05, 2009

a reader

Monday, May 04, 2009

Hollywood Kong


A small treasure on the two-disk DVD of In the Mood for Love:  Hua yang de nian hua* - a brief montage of found clips from early Hong Kong cinema - reveals that Hollywood was alive and well in China. Uncanny.

*Still do not know what this means.

See also.

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Ach Ja, Die Stoffe ist der Geist

Sigh

"Intellectual property has to be just as protected as material property. All creativity will be destroyed if you have a mentality that everything should be free."

The Good German Parliamentarian ist soooo richtig. The elan vital of lobbyists, middlemen, advertising yeggs, their bartenders and valets could seriously be impaired by the dissolution of their host.

Towering Germanic intellects such as these might benefit from a talk with Steve Albini.

Update: The problem with music - dead link on textism.

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Saturday, May 02, 2009

when paranoia was young

Three good reads for kids

SJ and I have enjoyed these:





This one must be out of print in the U.S. - Foreman has a ton of others - couldn't get a link to the cover (link to used version is at bottom) but this is how it might look in England:




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