quote out of context
He went on to say, “the extent to which you think writing is about something other than words then you will fail.”
I just don’t know how you can be averse to those good things
quote out of context
I don’t know what to do. They just make these things up.
compulsive hoarding
While the term “compulsive hoarding” is relatively new, the condition is not. In the 1800s, doctors often diagnosed something called “collector’s mania.” Hoarding is frequently seen as a problem of the elderly or a holdover from Depression-era frugality, yet the mean age of hoarders is 50, and the tendency often manifests as early as age 3, notes Randy Frost, a professor of psychology at Smith College and expert on the disorder. Compulsive hoarding affects both sexes and all economic classes.
Freddy’s is fighting and they’re doing it on Fox News, baby
A couple of friends of mine were on Fox News yesterday morning, to talk about their fight to save Freddy’s, a hugely loved local bar in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn – as well as many homes and businesses - from being snatched in a landmark eminent domain ruling.
Basically, the New York supreme court has decided that billionaire developer Bruce Ratner can seize property in the 22 acres of the “Atlantic Yards” footprint in order to build an arena and some tower housing that is deeply unwanted by the people of the neighbourhood. It is now enshrined in law that it is fair game for the state to seize property from small businesses, homeowners and renters, if the billionaire or corporation who wants to seize their properties can pay higher real estate taxes to the state. This is an outrageous abuse of the idea of eminent domain which was originally designed to be used ‘for the public good’.
The community has fought against this for 6 years now, and the last appeal against this use of eminent domain was decided last month in favour of the billionaire. Two days before Christmas, Forest City Ratner initiated proceedings to seize the homes and businesses in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn.
The message is: if you are a homeowner in the United States of America, anyone who wants to seize your property is now enabled by law to do that, so long as he is richer than you. That is now enshrined in law, in a decision handed down by the highest court of the land.
Freddy’s is more than a bar. It’s a community, a true neighbourhood sanctuary, and a fantastic music venue. It is expected that the site that Freddy’s sits on will fit a few SUVs in the parking lot that is planned for it. Handcuffs have been installed in the bar, and there are more than enough people willing to chain themselves to the bar and go to jail to defy the bailiffs if and when they arrive at Freddy’s door.
The fifth amendment to the United States Bill of Rights
prohibits the federal government from depriving any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.
Well, they got their due process of law, but it is bad bad law indeed. More legal challenges are on the way.
UPDATE: I have now amended this post to reflect the fact that this decision was originally handed down by the United States supreme court, which means that it can happen legally anywhere in the US. It has been challenged in the state of New York in this case, but the ruling apparently (and I am not a lawyer or an American citizen) stands countrywide.
UPDATE again: George Will wrote this op-ed column in the Washington Post about the ruling and “the twisted meaning of ‘blight’”. Read it.
up in the air
The study confirms what has been supposed for decades – the Arctic tern has the longest annual migration of any animal in the world. When added up over a lifetime, the total journey for the bird is the equivalent of three trips to the moon and back.
Average yearly migration 44,000 miles.
my posting of this image, and attending text, in no way endorses the media frenzy — or scurrilous sanctimony — surrounding Tiger Woods dipping his wick
The bottles, found in several grocery stores, displayed “Unfaithful” rather than the usual “Focus” message. Obviously, they were fakes; this isn’t the kind of collectors’ edition that a company generally manufactures. Gatorade naturally issued a statement distancing itself from these creations.
Missed Opportunity
I can’t help but feel we’re missing a certain journalistic opportunity by not sending good correspondents to write about the Adult Entertainment Expo, which rolls out year after year almost untouched by good reporters. I mean, you can actually buy molds modeled after (and that supposedly emulate) your favorite pornstar’s anus or vagina. Pornstar vaginas! That’s how far they’ve taken this manufactured reality. Tell me this isn’t a gold mine of psychological and sociological commentary.
Of course, DFW had his day.
South Aiken Avenue, Pittsburgh, early evening
Deron said, “How about some color in the new year?”
I said, “O.K.”
Dear Clusterflock
Tell me the title of my next art piece.
Post Avatar Distress Disorder
“Ever since I went to see ‘Avatar’ I have been depressed. Watching the wonderful world of Pandora and all the Na’vi made me want to be one of them. I can’t stop thinking about all the things that happened in the film and all of the tears and shivers I got from it,” Mike posted. “I even contemplate suicide thinking that if I do it I will be rebirthed in a world similar to Pandora and the everything is the same as in ‘Avatar.’ “
Guess who is going to contribute to Fox News
Whittaker Chambers on Rand
An old National Review article that susses out why we have no business ever taking Atlas Shrugged seriously. To put it simply, Randian philosophy is incapable of being any more than pseudo-intellectualism grounded in unfounded egotism:
Something of this implication is fixed in the book’s dictatorial tone, which is much its most striking feature. Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal. In addition, the mind which finds this tone natural to it shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: “To a gas chamber — go!” The same inflexibly self-righteous stance results, too (in the total absence of any saving humor), in odd extravagances of inflection and gesture-that Dollar Sign, for example. At first, we try to tell ourselves that these are just lapses, that this mind has, somehow, mislaid the discriminating knack that most of us pray will warn us in time of the difference between what is effective and firm, and what is wildly grotesque and excessive. Soon we suspect something worse. We suspect that this mind finds, precisely in extravagance, some exalting merit; feels a surging release of power and passion precisely in smashing up the house. A tornado might feel this way, or Carrie Nation.
Heavy Metal magazine, January 1978
Sushi Etiquette
I did not know all this.
You Are Not A Gadget
Sheila, I am thinking about picking up a copy. What do you think?
AD&D Covers
This brings back memories of late elementary school for me (of which I have few):
People who suggest, however, that the game has become highly sexualized because of the most recent edition of the player’s manual cover have obviously not spent much time flipping through the earlier manuals. Shoot, I haven’t touched them in nearly ten years and I bet I could find ALL the racy photos in a manner of minutes.
January 10, 2010
I am not staying at a Hilton tonight.
Do people ever read the Bibles in their hotel rooms?
Yes! Each Bible placed in a hotel room has the potential to reach up to 2,300 people in its estimated six-year life span. Research from the hotel industry tells us [The Gideons] that approximately 25% of travelers read the Bibles in their hotel rooms.
Dear clusterflock
How do you experience vertigo? If at all, that is.
Morrison CO, 10Jan2010
The Apparatgeist calls
The Economist on cell phone culture across the world:
TECHNOLOGIES tend to be global, both by nature and by name. Say “television”, “computer” or “internet” anywhere and chances are you will be understood. But hand-held phones? For this ubiquitous technology, mankind suffers from a Tower of Babel syndrome. Under millions of Christmas trees North and South Americans have been unwrapping cell phones or celulares. Yet to Britons and Spaniards they are mobiles or móviles. Germans and Finns refer to them as Handys and kännykät, respectively, because they fit in your hand. The Chinese, too, make calls on a sho ji, or “hand machine”. And in Japan the term of art is keitai, which roughly means “something you can carry with you”.
This disjunction is revealing for an object that, in the space of a decade, has become as essential to human functioning as a pair of shoes. Mobile phones do not share a single global moniker because the origins of their names are deeply cultural. “Cellular” refers to how modern wireless networks are built, pointing to a technological worldview in America. “Mobile” emphasises that the device is untethered, which fits the roaming, once-imperial British style. Handy highlights the importance of functionality, much appreciated in Germany. But are such differences more than cosmetic? And will they persist or give way to a global mobile culture?
Tuscaloosa, Ala
You cannot make this stuff up, folks:
The University of Alabama is going to display its new national championship football trophy at a place where most anyone can see it: Walmart.
Gone to Houston
Be back Monday.
real or fake?
An SLS AMG driven upside down? Regardless, listen to that fucking engine!
