The mystical realm
Speaking of One Hundred Years of Solitude, it took Gerald Martin 19 years to finish his biography of “Gabo” Márquez:
When asked to muse about Márquez the man himself, Martin looked toward us and answered, “This is a very intuitive man. This is a man with a very large ego. This is a man, who no matter what was going on in his life, would sit himself down, and write his books. He always had a strong sense of what he was going to do. As for why it took me so long to finish, why would I ever want to stop writing it?”
Electric Mini
“The all-electric MINI Es are starting to be delivered, and AutoblogGreen reader David VM. will do something a little extra with his new ride: power it completely by solar power.”
The Millionth Word
In orange
Is this one spiky, Lucy?
Ce N’est Pas Ma Maison
A short film by J. M. Harper, the film review editor for Wunderkammer
quote out of context
What Fox did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality.
A Republican to Save Us
Sheila Bair, who was reappointed by our President to head the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., seems like the sort of person we ought be aware of (I wasn’t until today):
Once an aide to then-Sen. Robert Dole (R-Kan.), Bair was appointed by the first President Bush to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and reappointed by President Clinton. Later she was named head of the FDIC by President George W. Bush. Throughout her public service she has proved to be a vigilant protector of consumer interests.
Bair angered people on both sides of the political aisle by repeatedly raising questions about the radical deregulation policies that unfettered Wall Street’s greed. She has been a great watchdog of the public’s interest. That was acknowledged recently when she and former CFTC Chair Brooksley Born, the prescient hero who warned most clearly of the coming debacle, each won a John F. Kennedy Library “Profile in Courage” Award.
Bair has continued to show courage in her work. As The Wall Street Journal noted: “The FDIC’s influence has grown in the past year because of Ms. Bair’s willingness to challenge her peers, as well as her agency’s central role responding to the financial crisis. Ms. Bair warned about the housing crisis before many of her colleagues.”
“Willingness to challenge her peers.” I like that sound of that.
the genetics and biology of tameness
Scientists in Germany have isolated the genes that differentiate wild animals from tame ones.
“I hope our study will ultimately lead to a detailed understanding of the genetics and biology of tameness,” said researcher Frank Albert of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany. “Maybe we’ll then be able to domesticate a few of those species where humans have historically not been successful like the wild African Buffalo.”
Y’all
I woke up to see this question in my twitter feed. I almost choked.
A Higher Education Bubble?
Considering people are starting to sense that many higher education programs are a complete joke, I would be shocked if the current economics of the model didn’t cause it to pop:
With tuitions, fees, and room and board at dozens of colleges now reaching $50,000 a year, the ability to sustain private higher education for all but the very well-heeled is questionable. According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, over the past 25 years, average college tuition and fees have risen by 440 percent — more than four times the rate of inflation and almost twice the rate of medical care. Patrick M. Callan, the center’s president, has warned that low-income students will find college unaffordable.
Meanwhile, the middle class, which has paid for higher education in the past mainly by taking out loans, may now be precluded from doing so as the private student-loan market has all but dried up. In addition, endowment cushions that allowed colleges to engage in steep tuition discounting are gone. Declines in housing valuations are making it difficult for families to rely on home-equity loans for college financing. Even when the equity is there, parents are reluctant to further leverage themselves into a future where job security is uncertain.
Narcapulco
Suspected drug traffickers trapped in a safe house fought a furious gun battle with Mexican soldiers early Sunday in the beach resort city of Acapulco.
As terrified residents and tourists cowered in their rooms, the firefight raged for two hours, leaving 16 gunmen dead. Two soldiers were also killed and several bystanders were wounded.
The gunmen, suspected members of one of Mexico’s major cartels, threw as many as 50 grenades at the advancing soldiers, and both sides fired thousands of rounds from assault rifles.
After the battle ended, soldiers found at the house nearly 50 guns, two grenade launchers, 3,500 rounds of ammunition, luxury cars — and four bound and gagged state police officers who said they had been kidnapped earlier.
Tourism is Mexico’s third-leading source of legal foreign revenue.
Cindy, maybe we should buy a motel in Mexico?
the warrior gene
A variant of an MAOA gene, known as a ‘low-activity 3-repeat allele, has been shown to have a relationship to violence in males.
“Previous research has linked low-activity MAOA variants to a wide range of antisocial, even violent, behavior, but our study confirms that these variants can predict gang membership,” says Beaver, the Florida State researcher. “Moreover, we found that variants of this gene could distinguish gang members who were markedly more likely to behave violently and use weapons from members who were less likely to do either.”
Do We Have Any Flockers in Pennsylvania?
Because this sure sounds like one of us.
Écrasez le boudoir!
That is our battle cry.
Bedrooms are old-fashioned.
That is our manifesto.
from the comments
Daniel Day Lewis is married to Arthur Miller’s daughter, which makes Marilyn Monroe his mother in law.
the Mad Men of Flying Cars
The Art Center in the 1950s, California
“Early concept cars were drawn by designers and illustrators who entered the industry as youthful pioneers. Optimistic and in their 20s, they started work in Detroit beginning in the Depression, with a resurgence of activity just after World War II. Think of the guys from Mad Men, but younger and with cars on their minds, drafting in their shirtsleeves in America’s very first styling studios.” I interview Brett Snyder, collector of vintage car-design art, at Voice.
Bonnie “Prince” Billy – Careless Love
A few nights ago, Deron went to see Bonnie “Prince” Billy in concert. There was a little exchange of words and Deron revealed that he had taken a few photos. He asked me if I fancied putting them to some of Will Oldham’s music. He left the tune to me. This is the result. Deron has asked if I might explain my somewhat random process – random it is.
Well, I started by listening to stuff by him I like and bore in mind that Deron’s images were dark, so I wanted something that reflected their mood. Having chosen a tune I decided that the images alone kind of left the tune static so I had to go in search of footage that I could integrate between his stills. I started by looking for Will Oldham footage and was lucky enough to stumble across another video of his that had snippets I liked. I snatched that – a few Martini’s and a modicum of jiggery pokery Bob’s your uncle and Fanny’s your aunt!
Not the best description of my work flow, but then there never really was one anyway.
Clusterbook #2, anyone?
So is anyone up for another Clusterflock bookclub meeting? I’m thinking a low-fi kind of thing, reading or re-reading a book we might have on our shelves already. Perhaps a classic book that people would like to read for the first time, and others might be keen to revisit? I have never read Lolita, for instance, and I know that Sheila loves it. I would love to hear your suggestions.
Green, Bloody Acres
At the ‘stock, I was telling Dave that I romanticize farmlands with all their silos and barns. This economy is exposing other city kids with sunblock and idealism in hand:
I’m not alone in idealizing the rural life. It’s become common to the point of cliché for harried New Yorkers, Michael Pollan books in hand, to attempt their own “Green Acres” fantasy in this region. The lush landscape seems safely distant from city pressures, but is still dotted with enough antiques shops and stylish bistros so that they don’t feel like, well, hicks.
That vision ended for me 30 minutes into my new agrarian life, with my right hand buried up to the wrist in a still-warm chicken’s hind end.
Listen Sister, Don’t Date a Hipster
(thanks, Dale)
More on Salinger
I have complained for years that Salinger has infected my pen and, quite possibly, my tongue (the incessant deferrals, obsessive qualifications, twitchy paretheticals, etc., etc.) for better and ill. But, it was not until I read Rosenbaum’s reflection on Salinger’s silence (via) that I got a clear (albeit, controversial and guessed) diagnosis of the problem:
There is also a critical difference between the two finicky writers: Nabokov was a finisher. Look how many dozens of books he wrote in two languages in his life. True, he tried to burn Lolita. (It was saved only by his wife.) True, he was a perfectionist, but, I’d argue, one who came to recognize that there was a time finally to publish. That a work was, at a certain point, as perfect—as perfectly Nabokovian—as it would ever get. Salinger seems—in his parentheses-choked later works, at least—to believe he could never get as Salingerian as he wanted. And that his work had to be not as good as he could make it but as good as God could make it. Which suggests nothing can ever be truly finished. Maybe that’s his problem.
The Dinner Party
Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe, Carson McCullers and Karen Blixen at McCullers’ home in Nyack, January 1959.
Karen Blixen (who wrote Out of Africa) and Carson McCullers (who wrote The Heart is a Lonely Hunter) met at a function and Blixen expressed an interest in meeting Monroe, so McCullers invited them all out to lunch at her house.
Taken from ”The Life and Destiny of Isak Dinesen.”
we’ve got a live one
A Florida fisherman reeled in a live missile and kept it in his boat for ten days.
The bomb squad said the missile was very corroded from floating in saltwater for a long time. They said it was live and in a very unstable state.
This was in the Gulf of Mexico, so it’s almost Texas.
something, 29
“You were right in how you described him. Sort of . . . sexorexic?”
