"For seven years, while I was trying to make my way in radio, I had been living in New York with this woman who didn’t think I was smart enough for her or in general. She doubted I was good enough for her, and I doubted it too. Finally that summer she went away to Texas for a few weeks, for work. And without her presence, without her voice in my head, suddenly I was just actually able to be myself and not worry about how stupid I was coming off. I didn’t have to worry that my opinions weren’t good enough — and essentially that was what had been wrong with my writing at the start, that I didn’t think that my opinions were good enough. For her it was very important that things be very serious and deal with serious issues. She had worked for Ralph Nader, she was a public-interest attorney. And I always felt like the things that were interesting to me were fluff compared to the big things that were on her mind. I felt like I should be interested in the big important issues of the day like she was, and my interests in nobody people and their funny little stories and the feelings they have seemed shameful and bourgeois and unserious silliness. We broke up by the end of that summer."
June 20, 2009 at 7:08pm Comments
June 20, 2009 at 7:07pm Comments
"The crowd “burst into laughter,” the New York Times reports, when the Ayatollah insisted in his “hard-line” speech that the huge margin between President Ahmadinejad and opposition candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi was too large for foul play."
June 20, 2009 at 7:06pm Comments
"If the Republican Party and we of the Religious Right had had our way by now there would be a constitutional amendment and/or laws forcing prayer in schools, disenfranchising gay men and women, banning all abortions under penalty of death, banning gay men and women from serving in the military, launching a neoconservative led and religious right backed holy war against Islam, fixing Israel’s borders permanently to incorporate all the land taken in 1967 forever into a “Greater Israel” based on the “fact” that “God gave the Jews” the land “forever,” capital punishment would be used routinely to punish a variety of crimes including being gay, civil rights for blacks, women, gays, unions would be in retreat, and — other than enforcing “morality” - George W. Bush’s style of “free market” non-governance would be permanent. Think this is all far fetched? Then you never sat in secret meetings with Pat Robertson or the late Dr. Kennedy — as I did when I was a religious right leader — fomenting plans to “bring America back to God.” If we’d won America would be a slicker more dangerous version of Iran."
— Frank Schaeffer (via azspot)
June 20, 2009 at 7:04pm Comments
"Copyright is a powerful weapon, and it grows more powerful every day, as lawmakers extend its reach and strength. Funny thing about powerful weapons, though: Unless you know how to use them, they make lousy equalizers. As they say in self-defense courses, “Any weapon you don’t know how to use belongs to your opponent.” Recording artists get an extra 45 years of copyright, and it’s promptly taken from them by the all-powerful record labels, who then use it to strengthen their power by extending their grasp over distribution channels. Authors are given the right to control indexing of their works, and it’s promptly scooped up by Google, who can use it to prevent competitors from giving authors a better deal. For so long as copyright holders think like short-timers, seeking a quick buck instead of a healthy competitive marketplace, they’re doomed to work for their gatekeepers, rather than the other way around."
— Cory Doctorow (via azspot)
June 20, 2009 at 7:01pm Comments
Driving home from work, listening to NPR’s story about health care costs, I couldn’t help but be struck by a couple of numbers. The Obama health plan will cost a trillion dollars we’re told. A TRILLION sounds big enough to end the debate, doesn’t it?
Then I hear, almost as a footnote, that that trillion is over ten years. That’s still a big number to be sure. A hundred billion dollars a year. But then later in the story, I hear that US total health care costs are $2.2 trillion a year. Suddenly, that $100 billion a year doesn’t sound so big. That’s only a 4.5% increase.
Doesn’t it strike you as just a bit odd that we accept those kinds of increases from our insurance companies every year as a routine cost increase, but balk at the amount when it is presented as an attempt to overhaul the system?
Meanwhile, we’re expected to believe that it’s impossible to find 4.5% worth of cost savings in the system? That’s also hard to believe. In this economic downturn, a lot of companies (including my own) have had to cut our costs a whole lot more than that in order to balance the books. Any industry with the will do so can find that much in the way of waste, duplication of effort, and improved processes that lead to cost savings.
June 20, 2009 at 6:58pm Comments
ennui
/onnwee/
noun: listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from boredom
—-
…time for some good ol’ fashioned melancholia…
June 20, 2009 at 5:36pm Comments
(via tba)
I’ve taken some Contact Improv workshops. Weird shit, that.
I’m thinking in a tech driven world where bodies are very disconnected maybe contact improv might have a new meaning and resonance. We shouldn’t lose touch with our bodies. Can tech become more embodied?
Isn’t there a lot of research on that at M.I.T.?
« previous
27 of 643
next »
