06w17:1 Jane Jacobs 1916-2006 Posted April 25th, 2006 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2006 week 17 number 1 (Jane Jacobs 1916-2006) When I’m not buoyed by an optimism coming from my humanist readings, I can easily sink into a pessimistic misanthropy which I admit, was somewhat encouraged by reading Jane Jacob’s Dark Ages Ahead last year. Jane Jacobs died today after a lifetime divided between the United States and Canada and one devoted to making a difference. – Timothy ——————————————————————— Jane Jacobs Is Dead at 89 | Douglas Martin Ny Time Obit Jane Jacobs | Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs Jane Jacobs | Michael Blowhard http://www.2blowhards.com/archives/002592.html Jane Jacobs Jars Our Memories | Crawford Kilian http://thetyee.ca/Views/2005/01/05/JaneJacobsJars/ Jane Jacobs | Jim Kunstler http://www.kunstler.com/mags_jacobs1.htm Cities and Songs | Adam Gopnik http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?040517ta_talk_gopnik Radical Dreamer: Jane Jacobs on the streets of Toronto | Robert Fulford http://www.robertfulford.com/jacobs.html —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 25 April 2006 @ 9:33 PM
06w16:2 Ellen Dissanayake Posted April 18th, 2006 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2006 week 16 number 2 (Ellen Dissanayake) ——————————————————————— The Artistic Animal | Caleb Crain http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/calebcrain/artistic1 “But is art a well-defined category for biological study? In its freedom from social rules, art resembles play, while in its emphasis on display and embellishment, it resembles ritual. Art, play, and ritual benefit different individuals in different ways, however. Art enhances an artist’s prestige, play is linked to learning in juveniles, and ritual achieves a large number of social aims, from mourning to coronation. To focus her inquiry, Dissanayake has picked out a common element: During all three activities, humans make something special. That is, they distinguish an object or action from the ordinary. ‘What’s interesting about humans,’ Dissanayake says, ‘is that they gild the lily. They do more than is necessary.’ ‘Making special,’ rather than ‘art,’ is the behavior Dissanayake studies.” The Core of Art: Making Special | Ellen Dissanayake http://tinyurl.com/lkj9t “Previously, the sorts of objects that in the post-eighteenth century West came to be called art—paintings, sculptures, ceramics, music, dance, poetry, and so forth—were made to embody or to reinforce religious or civic values, and rarely, if ever, for purely aesthetic purposes. Paintings and sculptures served as portraits, illustrations, interior or exterior decoration; ceramics were vessels for use; music and dance were part of a ceremonial or special social occasion; poetry was storytelling or praise or oratory to sway an audience. Even when beauty, skill, or ostentation were important qualities of an object, they did not exist ‘for their own sake,’ but as an enhancement of the object’s ostensible if not actual use. This enhancement would be called beautification or adornment, not art. The word art as used before the late eighteenth century meant what we would today call ‘craft’ or ‘skill’ or ‘well-madeness,’ and could characterize any object or activity made or performed by human (rather than natural or divine) agency—for example, the art of medicine, of retailing, of holiday dining. It may be a surprise to realize how peculiar our modern Western notion of art really is—how it is dependent on and intertwined with ideas of commerce, commodity, ownership, history, progress, specialization, and individuality—and to recognize the truth that only a few societies have thought of it even remotely as we do.” NOTE: tinyurl links to 249K PDF, 26 pages —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyUrl (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, go here http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Tuesday 18 April 2006 @ 10:07 PM
06w16:1 Inventions of the March Hare Posted April 17th, 2006 by timothy. 1 Comment Good Reads Mailing List | 2006 week 16 number 1 (inventions of the march hare) April is the cruelest month, supposedly. But I found March pretty shity. Which is why these didn’t get sent. This is the ‘lost Goodreads March Collection’ for 2006. I nevertheless appreciate this collection as a reminder of how fleeting ‘current’ topics of interest turn out to be. – Timothy ——————————————————————— Text —————————– Up With Grups | Adam Sternbergh http://tinyurl.com/g923m He owns eleven pairs of sneakers, hasn’t worn anything but jeans in a year, and won’t shut up about the latest Death Cab for Cutie CD. But he is no kid. He is among the ascendant breed of grown-up who has redefined adulthood as we once knew it and killed off the generation gap. // I’ll admit that I only read about 1/3 of this article, and it got some play in the blogosphere during a time when there wasn’t much else (it seemed) to talk about; some consensus around it being too focused on the white upper-middle class of New York Beijing’s Unwanted Best Seller | Jürgen Kremb http://service.spiegel.de/cache/international/0,1518,407184,00.html People across China are trying to uncover the name of the mystery author behind the much-discussed best seller “Wolf Totem,” which has sold millions of copies. The tome’s author is a known Chinese dissident who is writing under the nom de plume Jiang Rong. If he had used his real name, the book never would have been published. The oil in your oatmeal | Chad Heeter http://tinyurl.com/mbw7s A lot of fossil fuel goes into producing, packaging and shipping our breakfast Costing an Arm and a Leg | Carl Elliott http://www.slate.com/id/2085402/ The victims of a growing mental disorder are obsessed with amputation. Hole-y Cow | Daniel Lew http://www.damninteresting.com/?p=306 Animals can live a surprising amount of time with a permanent hole to their stomach, especially if it is a surgically made fistula. Humans have had fistulas; the first human on record as having one was a French Canadian by the name of Alexis St. Martin. He sustained a life-threatening musket wound in 1822, and was marked a terminal case by his physician. However, he managed to heal and was mostly functional again within two years – except for a hole in his stomach that would never close. Through this hole doctors were able to examine inner workings of his stomach. Pedophilic promo has manga maniacs panting for pre-schooler panties | Ryann Connell http://tinyurl.com/hc6tx It’s gross, filthy and disgusting, but Japanese erotic manga fans can’t get enough of a comic that comes with a pair of pre-school girl’s panties as a promotional item, according to Cyzo (March). More than This : Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation | Samara Allsop http://cinetext.philo.at/magazine/allsop/lostintranslation.html The film’s emphatic climax is the inaudible whisper however it also places emphasis on the fact that the transgression from friend to lover is never fully realised. Perhaps this is what is so appealing to contemporary audiences who are often used to graphic representations of sexual conduct. Celebrity Death Watch | Kurt Andersen http://tinyurl.com/f2jux Could the country’s insane fame fixation maybe, finally – fingers crossed – be coming to an end? One hopeful sign: Paris Hilton. Chamber of horrors http://tinyurl.com/ot4a9 // Santiago Sierra filled a synagogue with carbon monoxide and the viewers toured it wearing gas masks. Gas and Jews, get it? It got shut down for two weeks. Should we care? The Ten Commandments of Simon | Derek Kirk Kim http://www.lowbright.com/Comics/10Commandments/10Commandments.htm // how western males can remain virgins until age 29; online comic Micheal Ignatieff’s speech to University of Ottawa http://www.michaelignatieffmp.ca/speeches/speech0.html // Because he might be Prime Minister within the next five years Malcolm Gladwell has a blog http://gladwell.typepad.com/ Audio —————————– Fighting Terrorism with Schools | Leonard Lopate and Greg Mortenson http://audio.wnyc.org/lopate/lopate030706c.mp3 After a failed mountain climbing trip to the summit of K2, Greg Mortenson was nursed back to health by villagers in a remote part of Pakistan. He promised to repay them by returning and building a school. Now, he’s built over 50 schools in rural Pakistan and Afghanistan. He describes his mission to fight extremism and terrorism on the Taliban’s home turf in Three Cups of Tea. // Very inspiring. —————–Lectures —————————– Lectures Archive http://www.lecturesarchive.com/index2.html // a collection of links to a variety of lectures in streaming audio and mp3 Slought Foundation http://slought.org // Lectures for the iPod by such notables as Zizek and his would-be canonical companions. As for Zizek, consider this comment from Crooked Timber: “Today I was wondering whether it was worth buying Slavoj Zizek’s new book, The Parallax View and reading it, even in a spirit of ironic detachment or what have you. Reasons to Buy: 1. Some smart people I know like him. Selected Reason Not to Buy: 1. Life’s too short to deal with bullshit, even if it’s high-quality, triple-sifted, quintessence of ironic Lacanian crunchy-frog bullshit like this […] it’s clear to me that it’s not the Mainstream Media that has anything to fear from the blogosphere, but rather Slavoj Zizek-he will shortly be rendered obsolete by the universe of pop-culture enriched slacker grad-student/ABD bloggers. Even Zizek can’t write fast enough to keep up with them all.” —————–Norman Mailer and Son ———————— The Mailers in Discussion Part 1: http://audio.wnyc.org/lopate/lopate030206d.mp3 Part 2: http://tinyurl.com/o785x // Part 1: March 2nd afternoon on the Leonard Lopate Show; Part 2: March 2nd evening at some lecture hall. Norman Mailer and his son John Buffalo M. talk about their recent collaborative book and Mailer has great things to say about the state of the USA today. Personally, when Norman Mailer dies I’ll consider it a diminishment of humanity. Video—————————– The Answer | Peter J. Charlton http://tinyurl.com/mrojg // this lends support to my idea that art is meant for the easily impressed, or at the very least that the role of poetry in our lives has been totally taken over by pop lyrics. The Simpsons in Real Life http://youtube.com/watch?v=49IDp76kjPw // Apparently created in the UK to promote the new season; a month ago famous. Microsoft iPod Video http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2704424 // the importance of good design; a month ago famous. Somewhere it was said that this was actually created by Microsoft in order to critique their design department. South Park Scientology Episode http://youtube.com/watch?v=EJN6PT80ZcA // I think this episode was contrived simply to make fun of Tom Cruise; notable is the illustration of Scientology Doctrine with the overlaid ‘This is what Scientologists Actually Believe’. The question is: what movie did Cruise’s thetan watch 65 million years ago to inspire such feelings for her today? The entire episode used to be at YouTube and is probably still kicking around somewhere. This is the excerpt outlining their beliefs. —————————————- Long links made short by using TinyUrl (http://www.tinyurl.com) To remove or add yourself to this list, go here http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com emailed by Timothy on Monday 17 April 2006 @ 3:27 PM
06w15:1 The Extended Phenotype Posted April 9th, 2006 by timothy. 0 Comments Good Reads Mailing List | 2006 week 15 number 1 (The extended phenotype) There’s this line in the Ghost in The Shell sequel, Innocence. As they fly over a city, one character says to the other, “Reminds me of the line ‘what the body creates, is as much an expression of DNA as the body itself.’ … If the essence of life is information carried in DNA, then society and civilization are just colossal memory systems… And a metropolis like this one, simply a sprawling external memory.” This idea is that of Richard Dawkin’s Extended Phenotype. Basically, if a beaver is a beaver because of it’s DNA, a beaver’s dam is also an expression of that DNA. Therefore, the CN Tower is also an expression of human DNA, as is every other aspect of our material culture. ——————————————————————— The Extended Phenotype | Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extended_phenotype —————————————- http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com To remove or add yourself to this list, go here emailed by Timothy on Sunday 09 April 2006 @ 1:26 AM
