August 2008
Reflections on Seeing Leonard Cohen in Concert
Sean Michaels in McSweeney’s:
Tickets for this Leonard Cohen concert were very expensive. I paid $180 for this ticket. Because I’m a music critic, it’s tax deductible. Also, I thought I’d sell a review to someone, but in the end no one wanted a review. Sitting in the Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier, I think about what I would write if I were reviewing this for Rolling Stone or Pitchfork. “He seems at once smaller and larger than his songs. And, while I never need to hear ‘Democracy’ or ‘Boogie Street’ again, because they were terrible, I also never again need to hear ‘Who by Fire’ or ‘Sisters of Mercy,’ because they were beautiful.”
“Malgré les prix gonflés,” Leonard says, wryly, “j’espère que vous n’êtes pas déçus.” Despite the inflated prices, I hope you are not disappointed. While Leonard is playing “I’m Your Man,” I do some math. If the concert is three hours long, that’s just $60 an hour. Or $15 for 15 minutes. Which is about the same price as a taxi. Or laser tag. This concert is far, far, far better than riding a taxi or playing laser tag. Leonard, I am not disappointed.
(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
Francis Bacon Interview
Here’s a selection from a documentary about the painter Francis Bacon. He says he’s “optimistic about nothing” in particular.
Via The Guardian.
Transcendental Revolution
No Useless Leniency:
How does Deleuze resist the problem Althusser courts – that of functionalism, in which the depth of ideological structuring appears to prevent any rupture with such a ‘system’? Deleuze argues that to perform this rupture requires the power to raise the false existent sociability to the level of a ‘transcendent exercise’ that can break this regime of commonsense. This ‘transcendental object’ is revolution as ‘the social power of difference, the paradox of society, the particular wrath of the social idea.’ (Deleuze 1994: 208)
Nick Cave’s Love Song Lecture
Nick Cave, from a lecture in Vienna:
As I said earlier, my artistic life has centered around desire or more accurately, the need, to articulate the various feelings of loss and longing that have whistled through my bones and hummed in my blood, throughout my life. In the process I have written about two hundred songs, the bulk of which I would say, were love songs… I am proud of these songs. They are my gloomy, violent, dark-eyed children. They sit grimly on their own and do not play with the other songs. Mostly they were offspring of complicated pregnancies and difficult and painful births. Most of them are rooted in direct personal experience and were conceived for a variety of reasons but this rag-tag group of love songs are, at the death, all the same thing - life lines thrown into the galaxies of the divine by a drowning man.
‘An insane choice’
Obvious, but also very true. I don’t understand why the Obama camp isn’t pouncing.
Flat Duo Jets
The Flat Duo Jets On MTV’s The Cutting Edge (1985):
And then there’s little brother, Dexter, who moved his bed into a building behind the house. He calls it ‘The Mausoleum.’
Guitar Praise
A concerned parent says:
“My kids have begged me to get them Guitar Hero and I just couldn’t bare the thought of some of the lyrics they would be embedding into their minds. Guitar Praise has music that they are familiar with and love already, as well as lyrics that they can memorize and think on that are full of truth!”
New Census Numbers: Poverty, Income, & Health Insurance
Think Progress breaks down the numbers: according to the U.S. Census Bureau, which just released new figures this morning, there are approximately 37.3 million people living in poverty in the U.S. (12.5% of population), as well as 45.7 million who are uninsured (15.3% of population). (Via Matthew Yglesias.)
Control: The Fate of Joy Division
Kevin Martinez of the WSWS has an interesting review of Control, a documentary film directed by Anton Corbijn about the band Joy Division, as well as some other interesting historical and biographical details surrounding Ian Curtis.
… in prison!
When Obama chaffed McCain for forgetting how many houses he owns, Rogers huffed, “This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison.”
Yeah, it’s from a Maureen Dowd column, sorry. I couldn’t resist the pause.
One Sentence Movie Reviews: The Last King of Scotland
I’ve decided to start a series of movie reviews where I summarize a film for you in a single sentence and then give that film a score from A+ (wunderbar) though F (don’t bother with this one). Just imagine putting an end to all of those excruciating hours spent in your living room, sitting on your cat urine stained couch, munching stale Dorritos, trying desperately to hear the television while your neighbors argue in the apartment above you! Your time has come, my friend. For now there are one sentence reviews that capture the plot and spirit of the films that you wish to rent. You’ll never need to watch another movie again. And so we begin:
Title: The Last King of Scotland
Release Year: 2007
Director: Kevin Macdonald
Starring: Forest Whitaker and James McAvoy
Based on the novel by Giles Foden
Review: He really should have just gone to Canada.
Rating: B+
Commemorating the Haitian Revolution
Interesting write-up on the Haitian Revolution, the construction of “blackness” and Haiti’s first independent ruler, Jean-Jacques Dessalines, over at Lenin’s Tomb.
Joe Biden’s Big Break
Lucky guy. Not only is he Barry’s running mate, he has a new TV show coming out.
The Curious World of the Last Stop
A somewhat surreal article in the Times about the last stops on the NY metro:
At the city’s often-threadbare fringes, there is an inescapable sense of lonesomeness. There might be a Last Stop Deli, a forlorn bar, a maintenance yard populated mostly by rows of empty trains. There is, surprisingly often, a cemetery.
Yet to visit all the system’s extremities is to see that the last stop is not a single, monolithic place. There are subway lines that end, logically, where the city runs out of land; lines that end, anticlimactically, where builders ran out of money; even a few that fetch up in bustling downtowns of one sort or another. From the marshy lowlands of Tottenville to the lush hills of Riverdale to the ceaseless clangor of Flushing, the end of the line manages to take in the entire breadth of the city beyond Midtown Manhattan.
After living in DC for a year, I can confirm the universal sense of urban ennui that awaits commuters at the end of the line. Also, the article reminds me of two songs worth checking out: “End of the Line” by Max Larkin & The Relations (available here, and our interview with Max Larkin here) and “Dirty Blvd.” by Lou Reed.
Heartbreak Hotel
A very interesting look at the evolution of a song over at Fragments of a Cale Season. This song goes through the wringer.
[S]omewhere between playing mit der Polizei and coming out of his lost years, in the less innocent days of good friends, fast women, lots of drugs, and possibly too many studio recordings… he started playing it on solo piano. And no more was this man kidding around.
Version 1
Version 2
Version 3
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Strike!
It is better to do nothing than to work formally toward making visible what the West declares to exist.
—Alain Badiou
Rick Perlstein: “A Liberal Shock Doctrine”
Rick Perlstein writing in the American Prospect:
Progressive political change in American history is rarely incremental. With important exceptions, most of the reforms that have advanced our nation’s status as a modern, liberalizing social democracy were pushed through during narrow windows of progressive opportunity — which subsequently slammed shut with the work not yet complete. The post–Civil War reconstruction of the apartheid South, the Progressive Era remaking of the institutions of democratic deliberation, the New Deal, the Great Society: They were all blunt shocks. Then, before reformers knew what had happened, the seemingly sturdy reform mandate faded and Washington returned to its habits of stasis and reaction.
(Via A Tiny Revolution.)
The Bankruptcy of America, Starring Aquaman
Ken Layne, managing editor of Wonkette, writing for Political Machine:
The United States of America is bankrupt, morally and financially. This country stands for nothing but bad loans, brute force and blind consumption. Everything is literally crumbling, from our roads and bridges to our financial system to our “bring all children down together” public schools. The White House’s response to the Russia/Georgia war gets a smirking “whatever” from Moscow. Who are we to be telling anyone not to invade little countries? We’ve been doing it with great fanfare and steady failure since Vietnam, and we’re bogged down in so many doomed occupations today that Robot Troops are the only hope. Maybe we can buy some from Japan, on credit. Or that famous swimmer Michael Phelps can save the country by, uh, swimming very fast to various problem zones, like Aquaman.
(Via Mike Soron.)
141 Tiny Terror Combos Stolen
Thieves broke into Orange HQ at Borehamwood on Saturday night (16th August) and stole 141 Tiny Terror combos with a total retail value of £62,000. So far, 121 Tiny Terror combos have been legitimately shipped into the UK and 2 pieces to Hungary, no others have been shipped anywhere in Europe…
I put in a price inquiry on one of these with a great guitar site a few months ago. The original Tiny Terror head has earned some great reviews and from what I’ve heard in youtube videos these combos have a really great sound. I envy the thieves.
Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds’ Baby, I’m On Fire
Part 1:
Part 2:
The illegal downloader says…
The complete freeloader says…
Banana Bread
Love banana bread, but hate recipes that invoke confusing dichotomies between crisco and salt? Love that wet, ‘cakey’ taste, as opposed to the flakey, dry banana ‘bread’ you often find in supermarkets? Then this is the recipe for you!
Recipe:
- 1 cup of sugar.
- 1 cup of brown sugar.
- 1 1/2 cups of flour.
- 1 tbsp of vanilla.
- 1 cup of crushed walnuts.
- 2 eggs.
- 1/2 cup of sour cream.
- Handful of raisins.
- 1 stick of butter.
- 1/2 tsp of salt.
- 1 tsp of baking soda.
- 3 mashed, ripe bananas.
Instructions:
- Set oven to 350° F.
- Mash bananas in bowl; set aside.
- Mix eggs, butter, sugar, brown sugar, vanilla, and sour cream in separate bowl.
- Stir in flour, baking soda, raisins, etc., and mashed bananas from first bowl into above bowl.
- Pour mixture into greased [cooking spray] loaf pan.
- Bake for approximately 50 mins - 1 hr. Keep a close eye on the bread; the color will be a dark golden brown.
- Enjoy!
Communism
Mike Johnduff at Countermemory:
On the left, things seem just as nuts. There is no theory of this spread and the resistance to it, except those promising ones of micro-loans. This leaves them with the specter of Lenin: communism has not died out there either. The idea of mobilization (Zizek) and the general idea that social-democracy is, as Jean-Luc Nancy put it, a “compromise” (“Is Everything Political?”) is flawed.
Regardless, one thing is clear from all this, Communism still remains a specter—one cannot simply, as we have been doing, forget about it. The key is to see that it does not return into our thinking as a big massive homogenous thing: we are realizing that our framework for dealing with these problems remains very locally determined by Communism and Marxism in general as a model. This is chiefly Frederic Jameson’s insight, and it is to his credit that he continually insists, against the pragmatists (and one needs to apply this critique to the Lacanians and to the Nancy-type radicals too), that this is actually the greatest unifying discourse of our time.
Violence and its Vicissitudes
Jodi Dean:
What Zizek omits, though, is the creative, productive dimension of resentment. It can create power relations invested in refusal (an acquaintance of mine once used the expression ‘anti-war profiteers’). Differently put, even heroic resentment can become ordinary and normalized, ultimately exhausting itself and rendering the heroic feeble and pathetic. The challenge, then, of heroic resentment is this very risk, this unavoidable uncertainty.
Worst Video on YouTube?
Here’s my nomination:
His description is also pretty priceless:
This is My Sharona by the Ramones(?), A Tribute to the Grandfathers(?) of punkrock. The first punk rock band.
Conclave Obscurum
Don’t ask me to explain what it is, but if you can get it to load it’s worth the wait.
Reuters Published Fake Propaganda Photos
It is interesting to note that the boy’s supposedly injured right leg, “bleeding” profusely from the thigh, seems to be supporting itself. The soldier on the right also appears on many of the photos below in various capacities.
A very similar situation to the Iranian photoshops. Now I’m waiting (hoping) for the Errol Morris analysis.
James Mollison’s The Disciples
Galleries of concert goers. An example:
Some more from the set can be found on The Guardian, but you have to go to the end of the slide show to figure out what concert they’re taken from.
The Most Trusted Man in America?
An interesting profile piece on Jon Stewart and The Daily Show in the Times. It reminds me that I should probably start watching it again.
Winehouse takes on Talented Musicians
Amy Winehouse lost the job of performing the theme song to the new James Bond film due to her inability to stay clean–the gig eventually went to the team of White Stripes’ Jack White and Alicia Keys
But according to the Telegraph UK, Winehouse is threatening to release the version of the Bond theme in order to show the flim (SIC) producers that they have “made a big mistake.”
Said Winehouse, “I guess they are going for clean-cut and boring. When I do release mine – and I am tempted to do it on the same day – this would be the bigger hit…If they change their minds, I’m waiting.”
Yes… those other musicians are such commercial phonies. They’re not indie enough to do the theme for a James Bond movie. The tabloid junkie British soul singer in the cleopatra make-up is obviously the “authentic” one. She’s going to prove she’s legit by selling more records– the true measure of a successful artist.
21st Century Hegel
Frank M. Kirkland in Logos:
As we scome to the end of the 200th anniversary of the publication of the Phenomenology of Spirit (PhS),[1] I am reminded of a remark made a decade ago by the noted Hegel-scholar Robert Pippin. He then entertained the possibility of what a sequel to the PhS would look like were Hegel able to complete one. In his mind, the sequel would present two new chapters, which “would have to include oddly parallel accounts of both [a] the great expanding confidence and influence of modern science and technology…and [b] the coincident ever-growing pessimism that all of that, and much of anything else, matters all that much….”[2] Pippin rightly recognized the need of new “shapes of Spirit” relevant for at least a 1997 PhS. He had seen in the trajectories of these two large-scale cognitive and ethical enactments “contradictory” outcomes in which the success of (a), in fulfilling ideals that have been set for modern science and technology, comes at once with (b), with a disposition that ever loosens the normative grip their ideals are to have on us.
I myself admit that Pippin’s selections to a hypothetical sequel to the PhS and his evaluations for those selections are on point. However, I would like to make a suggestion of my own to such a sequel. With all the discussion, both critical and uncritical, on racial oppression and cultural diversity over the distant and recent past, a shape of spirit accounting for a conceptualization of these matters appears to me quite apropos.
(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
Zizek on Haiti: Democracy versus the People
Slavoj Zizek reviews Peter Hallward’s book on Haiti in the New Statesman:
As Aristide himself puts it: “It is better to be wrong with the people than to be right against the people.” Despite some all-too-obvious mistakes, the Lavalas regime was in effect one of the figures of how “dictatorship of the proletariat” might look today: while pragmatically engaging in some externally imposed compromises, it always remained faithful to its “base”, to the crowd of ordinary dispossessed people, speaking on their behalf, not “representing” them but directly relying on their local self-organisations. Although respecting the democratic rules, Lavalas made it clear that the electoral struggle is not where things are decided: what is much more crucial is the effort to supplement democracy with the direct political self-organisation of the oppressed. Or, to put it in our “postmodern” terms: the struggle between Lavalas and the capitalist-military elite in Haiti is a case of genuine antagonism, an antagonism which cannot be contained within the frame of parliamentary-democratic “agonistic pluralism”.
This is why Hallward’s outstanding book is not just about Haiti, but about what it means to be a “leftist” today: ask a leftist how he stands towards Aristide, and it will be immediately clear if he is a partisan of radical emancipation or merely a humanitarian liberal who wants “globalisation with a human face”.
(Via I cite.)
Psychoanalysis as Spirituality
Patrick Lee Miller in The Immanent Frame:
Psychoanalysis strives, first of all, to reveal the meaning of symptoms (not to mention dreams, slips, free-associations, transferences, and anything else mysterious in someone’s mental life and behavior). But this meaning is none other than the apparent but illusory good sought by the analysand. He may inquire, for instance: “What is the meaning of my coming late to sessions every day?” The hard-won answer will be something of this form: “I want my analyst to feel as though I don’t need him; I want him to feel worthless, to snub him, so that he will know how he makes me feel.” When such an apparent good comes to light, it reveals itself as illusory: “My analyst doesn’t make me feel unworthy, he’s waiting there patiently for me everyday; I think the person I really want to snub is my father; he’s the one who made me feel worthless.” When the analysand exposes such illusion himself, he grows in wisdom, not least by the acknowledgment that he unconsciously chose that illusory good and has clung to it all the while. He grows further in wisdom when he recognizes that his boss, and no doubt many others besides, have been victims of his illusion, since he has sought its apparent good from other relationships as well. His character changes, finally, when he can relate differently to these others, seeing them not as ghosts of his father—or his mother, or his siblings, or whomever—but instead as the unique individuals they really are.
I don’t know how I feel about conceiving of psychoanalysis as a “spiritual” science, which to me reeks of New Age obscurantism. I recommend giving the whole article a read though. (Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
McCain and Obama’s Top 10 Songs
Barack Obama’s top 10:
- Fugees - Ready Or Not
- Marvin Gaye - What’s Going On
- Bruce Springsteen - I’m On Fire
- The Rolling Stones - Gimme Shelter
- Nina Simone - Sinnerman
- Kanye West - Touch The Sky
- Frank Sinatra - You’d Be So Easy To Love
- Aretha Franklin - Think
- U2 - City of Blinding Lights
- will.i.am - Yes We Can
John McCain’s top 10:
- ABBA - Dancing Queen
- Roy Orbison - Blue Bayou
- ABBA - Take A Chance On Me
- Merle Haggard - If We Make It Through December
- Dooley Wilson - As Time Goes By
- The Beach Boys - Good Vibrations
- Louis Armstrong - What A Wonderful World
- Frank Sinatra - I’ve Got You Under My Skin
- Neil Diamond - Sweet Caroline
- The Platters - Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
Personally, I prefer Obama’s, though I don’t know what he’s thinking with 7,9 & 10. As for McCain… seriously, Dancing Queen? (Sorry Tobis.) My feelings about the list are in tune with Guardian commenter Martyn Bone:
When I saw this “news” item on NME.com yesterday, I just knew there would be a Guardian blog on it. And that it would be run by one ex-NME hack and feature comments by other ex-NME hacks. If you’re gonna do this kind of thing on the Guardian blog, why not do a comparison of, say, Obama and McCain’s respective books, w/ one of the Guardian Books section bloggers in charge? There might be something worth saying and discussing there.
Mind you, I concede that more voters might be swayed by these Hornbyesque lists of pop songs than by reading Obama or McCain’s books…And you can’t help but ponder the racial connotations of their choices. McCain chooses three African American acts, but all of them date back to the 1950s or earlier…
Nerds Play Rock Band at Dylan Concert
I can almost guarantee they were Computer Science majors from CMU. I can also guarantee that they were, and remain, pricks.
As the legend, now 67, performed “Like a Rolling Stone” and other ’60s classics, a handful of rude boys wailed away on the video game 50 yards from the stage so loudly that Dylan’s voice was all but drowned out.
Is the Globalization Consensus Dead?
Dani Rodrik in Business 24/7:
The world economy has seen globalisation collapse once already. The gold standard era – with its free capital mobility and open trade – came to an abrupt end in 1914 and could not be resuscitated after the First World War. Are we about to witness a similar global economic breakdown?
The question is not fanciful. Although economic globalisation has enabled unprecedented levels of prosperity in advanced countries and has been a boon to hundreds of millions of poor workers in China and elsewhere in Asia, it rests on shaky pillars.
(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
The Rich Get Richer
A telling graph.
Psychological Mind Games at Guantanamo
Stephen Soldz in The Boston Globe:
Psychologists have been identified as key figures in the design and conduct of abuses against detainees in US custody at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA’s secret “black sites,” and in Iraq and Afghanistan. Psychologists should not be taking part in such practices.
Yet a steady stream of revelations from government documents, journalistic reports, and congressional hearings has revealed that psychologists designed the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” techniques, which included locking prisoners in tiny cages in the fetal position, throwing them against the wall head first, prolonged nakedness, sexual humiliation, and waterboarding.
Jane Mayer, in her new book, “The Dark Side,” reports that the central idea was the psychological concept of “learned helplessness.” Individuals are denied all control over their world, lose their will, and become totally dependent upon their captors.
This sort of thing makes The Black Book of Psychoanalysis look like a joke. On a related subject I hear they also use CBTs there. (Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
2008 Olympics Opening Ceremony
I missed watching this since I don’t have access to television here in Ann Arbor at the moment. If you’re in the same boat as me—or not—check out these stunning pictures. (Via Bitch Ph.D..)
The La’s
Ever heard of them?
Iraq Private Sector Falters; Rolls of Government Soar
Despite early attempts by the U.S. to turn Iraq into a neoliberal utopia, where government is a hollow instrument used merely to transfer wealth from the masses to corporations through taxes and subsidies, the abysmal failure of this model has led to a huge increase in government jobs, according to the New York Times.
The Times is also right to point out that the impetus behind this policy isn’t completely economic: one advantage of government-based jobs is that they don’t necessarily have an incentive to cut costs, which, in the case of private corporations, creates large swathes of unemployed who have historically been the largest economic bloc to join up with paramilitary brigades like al Sadr’s Mahdi Army. The irony of course being that the so-called “free market” is perhaps the biggest instigator of insurgency in Iraq.
Morales Victorious in Bolivian Referendum
The BBC confirms that the recent poll undertaken by the Bolivian government has come out in favor of continuing Evo Morales’ reforms. This is not only a political victory for Morales, but for socialism in general, and a thorough rejection of the tendentious separatism of the Bolivian aristocracy that has threatened the country’s unity.
The Private Lives of Franz K
P.D. Smith at 3 Quarks Daily:
Hawes spent ten years writing a Ph.D. on Kafka. Now he is on a mission to deconstruct the “hagiographic myth” surrounding the Prague author in order to expose the real Kafka. His works are “wonderful black comedies written by a man soaked in the writings of his predecessors and of his own day”. Indeed, Max Brod provides some evidence of this comedic dimension to Kafka’s works. He recalled Kafka reading aloud from The Trial. At times, he said, Kafka “laughed so much that there were moments when he couldn’t read any further”. This Kafka has been somewhat obscured, but he’s certainly there, struggling to free himself from the chitinous, beetle-like skin into which fate and literary fame has sealed him.
The article gives a really thorough overview of Kafka’s works and I especially liked the aforementioned note about Kafka’s comedic side, which is generally overlooked.
Stalinism Meets Global Capitalism
Naomi Klein on the Olympics:
I think this is an incredibly efficient, actually, a scarily efficient way of organizing society that’s actually being celebrated here, which is a hybrid of some of the worst elements of authoritarian communism—mass surveillance of the population, total lack of civil liberties, lack of a free press, lack of democratic rights, authoritarian central planning, all harnessed not to advance the goals of social justice, even in name, although there may be some lip service still paid to that, but to advance the goals of global capitalism. So it is Stalinism meets global capitalism….
(Via Mike Soron.)
Slavoj Zizek Interview in The Guardian
Some really great responses. (Via I cite.)
WSJ’s Recording Nonsense
A very misguided editorial in the Wall Street Journal:
In the era of the online music store — even if you buy from iTunes rather than stealing from LimeWire, the problem is the same — no one knows how to listen to a complete album anymore. Everything is slanted toward the hit single. This means that the music industry is oriented toward one-hit wonders rather than consummate musicians, and talent development is just not worth the trouble.
The focus on singles is nothing new. With the exception of a few major artists music sales have always been dominated by single hit makers. And it’s not as if a single has to be the creation of a horrible band. The Rolling Stones were a singles band. Sly and the Family Stone were a singles band. The Ramones were a singles band. The Beatles were a singles band during Beatlemania in the early 60s. Everyone before the 60s was a singles artist. Virtually every blues artist, every folk artist.
This is another example of that often repeated myth that the album is the only musical art form. There’s room for both EPs, LPs and anything else the artist wants to throw at you. At this point in our history the size of an album is no longer limited by how much space has to be filled or how many songs can be squeezed onto a pressing. Musicians have unprecedented freedom to control the length and composition of their releases.…
Statist Olympic Problems Are Bigger Than Beijing
Mike Soron:
The reinvention of the Olympics in the late 19th century happened at the height of the nation-state’s ascendency. Since 1894, the Olympics have been used not to celebrate sport, but to celebrate the idea of the nation-state.
The Olympic experience is consistently used to violently change a human and ecological region. The system, in the wake of Olympic oppression, is shocked — in economic terms, human terms, in political terms. Rights suspended, social housing destroyed, a comprehensive reallocation of public and private resources towards corporatism, and forced fanfare for the primacy of the nation-state.
Adbusters: Pawn of Capital
Voyou on “counterculture”:
It’s this illusory gap between the self and the capitalist system that allows the system to function (I’m ventriloquizing Žižek again here). Not coincidentally, these ideas of authenticity and self-expression are important parts of the idea of the counterculture (and of forerunners to the counterculture, such as romanticism, another modern bourgeois phenomenon). But this isn’t to condemn counterculture; like many features of capitalism, it’s double-edged, or I hope it is, because there’s certainly no getting outside of it. Adbusters would do well to stop worrying so much about advertizing, and doing a bit more to understand it.
(Via The Weblog.)
Sambo Apparel
In the past we’ve knocked J.CREW for their hideous pants and jackets, but this American Apparel ad really takes the cake. I wonder if they plan on replacing the blaring in-store “hipster” music with live minstrelsy soon. (Via Bitch Ph.D. from Stuff White People Do.)
Mirrors Don’t Lie. Mislead? Oh, Yes.
As Johnnya says, it’s about time that “mainstream” science finally catches up with basic psychoanalytic concepts. The mirror graphic in the article is also worth checking out.
“The Dark Knight” Has It Both Ways
The Socialist Worker rectifies Joe Allen’s previous negative review of The Dark Knight, which exhibited left-wing contrarianism at its worst. This one by Scott Johnson is much more nuanced.
If The Dark Knight is a parable of the “war on terrorism,” it is also a parable about its dangers. Having said that, it should not be pigeonholed as simply a “progressive” or “reactionary” film—but neither does it transcend these labels. It wants to have things both ways, as when Batman builds an incredibly invasive eavesdropping device, uses it, then has it destroyed because it is too powerful.
UPDATE: On the further subject of the politicization of The Dark Knight, here’s a great write up by k-punk.
Einstein’s Brain
Well they’ve figured it out. It turns out you have no choice in the matter, it’s just the size and fuel economy of a particular section of your brain that makes you a success. If it were another part of your brain you might end up a mongoloid, a pedophile, or a mongoloid pedophile. Lucky you.
Most studies show that smarter brains are typically bigger—at least in certain locations. Part of Einstein’s parietal lobe (at the top of the head, behind the ears) was 15 percent wider than the same region was in 35 men of normal cognitive ability, according to a 1999 study by researchers at McMaster University in Ontario. This area is thought to be critical for visual and mathematical thinking. It is also within the constellation of brain regions fingered as important for superior cognition. These neural territories include parts of the parietal and frontal lobes as well as a structure called the anterior cingulate.
(Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
Defending the 1960s
Peter Marcuse in In These Times:
The protests of 1968 — symbolically, the occupation of the Columbia University buildings, the student uprisings in Paris and the street protests in Berlin — are now in danger of being denigrated as the actions of spoiled, confused, if not neurotic, students and rebellious youth who were “finding” themselves in making trivial demands of their uncomprehending and benevolent societies.
…Internationally, the ‘68 protests changed the character of post-war politics, helped end the Vietnam War, and legitimized concerns about peace, welfare and democracy beyond the prevailing mainstream consensus.
And on a related subject, here’s an article on the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and the Prague Spring over at the Socialist Worker. (Via 3 Quarks Daily.)
Other-than-me, More-than-me, Other-than-mine
The Psychoanalytic Field:
However, while an adult subject may come to see that the found object that supports a cultural experience (an idea, a relationship, or a community) is never truly a property, a much younger subject will reject even the slightest suggestion that the toy or blanket it has found is not entirely its own; it will not look kindly upon the adult’s attempts to mend or clean or in any way alter said toy or blanket; it will tolerate even less the prospect of having to share anything it has found with those around it. As the first “other-than-me” possession, the found object is not automatically registered as “other-than-mine.” The implication here is that the passage from “other-than-me” to “other-than-mine” is one that the subject will have to undertake if it is to look both forward and backward in time on the objects it has found, and experienced, and eventually acknowledge them as such.
Taking this line one step further, it seems as if Winnicott may have inadvertently set the ground for an assessment of the experience of “private” property as inherently childish.
Iraq as Holiday Destination
The Mirror:
Having a fantastic time, scorching weather and friendly locals… wish you were here in sunny Basra? It might sound like the sort of postcard you would only find in a joke shop but holidaying in Iraq’s second largest city might not be as ridiculous as you think.
Absurd. (Via Lenin’s Tomb.)
The Milton Friedman Institute
The University of Chicago plans on creating the Milton Friedman Institute with a $200 million endowment. Their endeavor to promote the founder of one of the most virulently ideological free-marketers has met with some criticism, however. Check out the discussion over at 3 Quarks Daily for more.
The Dissident Solzhenitsyn
The Washington Post:
“Putin inherited a ransacked and bewildered country, with a poor and demoralized people,” Solzhenitsyn told the German magazine Der Spiegel in a 2007 interview, when Putin was still president. “And he started to do what was possible — a slow and gradual restoration. These efforts were not noticed, nor appreciated, immediately. In any case, one is hard-pressed to find examples in history when steps by one country to restore its strength were met favorably by other governments.”
That Putin, a former KGB officer, should find an ardent champion among the most prominent victims of the agency he once served might seem bizarre. But Solzhenitsyn, who died Sunday at age 89, was always a very Russian puzzle: a brilliant curmudgeon, wrapped in heroism, inside a whopping ego. He was a man who exposed the murderous brutality of the Soviet Union but also lambasted what he saw as the spiritual vacuity of the West.
Obama and the Hecklers
Some sort of black socialist movement interrupted Obama’s speech. Then the (largely white) audience started chanting “Yes, we can” but I’m still unclear what that was in reference too. “Yes, we can- shout down protesters?”
And I believe Obama puts on some sort of accent at the end of this video. Of course anyone who’s been in the South for a few days can tell you that you do fall into those patterns. That Burroughs quote about language being a virus holds true.
For future reference, now that we live on youtube, it’s important to remember to print in bigger fonts.
[Via The Guardian.]
The New York Times Covers 4chan
A hilarious article with some fantastic quotes:
“Lulz” is how trolls keep score. A corruption of “LOL” or “laugh out loud,” “lulz” means the joy of disrupting another’s emotional equilibrium. “Lulz is watching someone lose their mind at their computer 2,000 miles away while you chat with friends and laugh,” said one ex-troll who, like many people I contacted, refused to disclose his legal identity.