Goodreads |2008 week 03 number 5 (Life is better in Venezuela)
Life After the Bubble Burst | Ken O. Burtch http://www.pegasoft.ca/coder/coder_april_2006.html
“This is a strange economic time in Canada. While the unemployment rate is the lowest in many years (CTV), Statistics Canada reports that 2/3rds of aged 25-54 Canadians are underemployed or are working under substandard conditions (CTV). According Robert Wright (as discussed in my Linux Startup book), the post World War II generation has exploited both their parents and their children for material gain. During the time of the Great Depression in the 1930’s, Canadian families pumped over 1 trillion dollars into the next generation so they wouldn’t do without. The baby boomer generation, with its hedonistic world-view, retired on the money instead of reinvesting it in the future, leaving Generation X with high unemployment, unpaid education debt, lower income and higher cases of suicide. As more and more older people retire from the work force, the true damage to the Canadian economy is slowly being being unmasked. A friend of mine with a university degree who moved to Venezuela recently returned to Canada because he couldn’t find work in South America. After trying for two years to get a job which paid enough to support his family, he announced that things were worse in Canada than Venezuela. He return to Venezuela…the cost of living was cheaper there.”
// article date: 17 April 2006
Goodreads |2008 week 03 number 3 (A brain floating in space on a midwinter’s day)
Big Brain Theory: Have Cosmologists Lost Theirs? | Dennis Overbye http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/shorty/nytimes/cosmobrain/
“It could be the weirdest and most embarrassing prediction in the history of cosmology, if not science. If true, it would mean that you yourself reading this article are more likely to be some momentary fluctuation in a field of matter and energy out in space than a person with a real past born through billions of years of evolution in an orderly star-spangled cosmos. Your memories and the world you think you see around you are illusions.”
Goodreads |2008 week 03 number 2 (Pink Man Bigotry)
I agree with what’s she’s saying, but I don’t agree with the labeling or stereotyping. – Timothy
Who’s Tired of Pink? | Erica Jong http://www.huffingtonpost.com/erica-jong/whos-tired-of-pink_b_81087.html
“I am so tired of pink men bombing brown children and rationalizing it as fighting terrorism. I am so tired of pink men telling women (of all colors) what to do with their wombs–which connect with their brains–in case you forgot. I am so tired of pink men telling us we should stay in Iraq for generations. I am so tired of pink men buying bombs and cheating schools. I am so tired of pink men having wives who stand behind them and nod sagely on television. I am so tired of pink men expecting that someone–a brown, black, yellow or white woman–will trail behind them changing light bulbs, taking out garbage, washing laundry, keeping food in the house, taking care of kids of all ages, of parents of all ages …”
Goodreads |2008 week 03 number 1 (The Moral Instinct)
The Moral Instinct | Steven Pinker Link (New York Times Magazine)
“Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it’s an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. […] Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, crunched the numbers and determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world like malaria, diarrhea and parasites. Mother Teresa, for her part, extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: their sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and dangerously primitive medical care. […] The starting point for appreciating that there is a distinctive part of our psychology for morality is seeing how moral judgments differ from other kinds of opinions we have on how people ought to behave. Moralization is a psychological state that can be turned on and off like a switch, and when it is on, a distinctive mind-set commandeers our thinking. This is the mind-set that makes us deem actions immoral (‘killing is wrong’), rather than merely disagreeable (‘I hate brussels sprouts’), unfashionable (‘bell-bottoms are out’) or imprudent (‘don’t scratch mosquito bites’). The first hallmark of moralization is that the rules it invokes are felt to be universal. Prohibitions of rape and murder, for example, are felt not to be matters of local custom but to be universally and objectively warranted.”
Goodreads |2008 week 02 number 2 (The Toronto School)
My excuses for tardiness: my sister’s dog ate it. Or not …. yes, I found this when it first came out and wanted to post it, but it was just before New Year’s and I thought I’d wait.
Then I saw it on BlogTo and thought there was probably no need. (But here I have to say I considered Laura Mendes’ attempt to make it palatable to BlogTo readers juvenile. She wrote that Kingwell was ‘brutally harsh’ and ‘mean’. Mean? Brutally harsh? Who do you think is reading BlogTo, 13 year olds? How thin is your/their skin? Is this what happens to bourgeois bohemians after a live time of anti-wrinkle skin cream?)
Yesterday it was on Metafilter. Metafilter! The poster on Metafilter said, ‘The article is a great read even if you’ve never stepped foot in the city.’
Geesh. I guess I better get on this.
Speaking of bourgeois bohemians: I went to see Kingwell interview Carl Wilson at his book launch the other night, and brought my recorder, but I had to leave before they got around to talking. Because I’m a humorless nerd I found the preceding performances intolerable (although I loved Laura Barrett’s cover of Weird Al Yankovic’s ‘Smells Like Nirvana’) but that also had a lot to do with not having a place to sit, put my coat, nor the fact that I couldn’t move around freely with bouncers guarding the doors lest anyone leaving to use the bathroom be mistaken for someone trying to sneak in.
It was a widely successful night and I congratulate Mr. Wilson on it.
Goodreads |2008 week 01 number 2 (The City of the Future: 2108)
Richard Florida linked to this story on his blog, and his request for comments (the rhetorical ‘Your thoughts …’ ) prompted me to post a link to GR 07w49:4, in which I presented my own ideas about the ‘City of the Future’, not necessarily New York. Florida, given his expertise, focuses on the economic and cultural relevance of the future city, whereas I focus on its form.
Florida predicts that London will become the Western world’s unofficial capital, whereas I would posit such predictions are (as usual) foolhardy: who’s to say that even the concept of ‘the Western World’ will still be relevant? Although this elevation of London suggests something to me, and that is: London has always been the Western World’s capital, ever since the days of the British Empire in the 19th Century. The 18th Century wars between England and France were fought to establish this pecking order, and in a sense the 19th Century represented a sharing of power: Politics and Economics went to London, culture went to Paris. The renewal of European hostilities in the 20th Century meant that the Western World Capital was for a time assigned to New York, which absorbed Europe’s tired and hungry and poor. New York not only got to be an economic capital, but the cultural as well.
Now that the USA has begun rejecting the world’s miserable, when it’s not outright torturing them, London has been able to take back the mantle. In other, simpler words: the King was critically wounded in battle, the Prince became Regent during the King’s recovery, but now the King is better and the Prince can go back to immiserating the peasants, exercising droits de seigneur and the like. God save the king.
I did a search through the New York Times archives to see what they were reporting a hundred years ago, and some of the highlights are below.
The World of Tomorrow | Jim Rasenberger http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/shorty/nytimes/2108/
“ON Jan. 1, 1908 — New Year’s Day one century ago — The New York World greeted readers with a stirring rumination about the past and future of America. The title of the article was simply ‘1808 — 1908 — 2008.’ The World began by marveling at how far America had come since 1808, then turned to the question of the future: ‘What will the year 2008 bring us? What marvels of development await the youth of tomorrow?'”
Lent on Wednesday Earliest since 1856 http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/shorty/nytimes/lent2008/
February 2, 1913, Sunday – Not since 1856 has Lent begun so early as it begins this year, and not until 2,008 will it start so early again. Ash Wednesday is the Wednesday in the sixth week preceding Easter Sunday, the date of which is regulated by the paschal full moon, which is the full moon next after March 21st.
How Little Japan is Becoming Great | The New York Times http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/shorty/nytimes/japan1908/
PARIS, Dec. 18 1907. — One of the most remarkable books which has been devoted to Japan and Japanese politics since the deluge of such works immediately after the close of the Russian-Japanese war has just been published in Paris by M. Leo Byram under the title, “Petit Jap deviendra grand.”
Rules of the Road for the Airships | New York Times http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/shorty/nytimes/airships/
PARIS, Jan. 4 1908. — Two prominent sportsmen, well known in Paris aeronautic circles, MM. Vonviller and Florio, laid a bet of $20,000 this week as to who would be the first to fly a circular mile in an aeroplane without once touching the earth. Both men are now constructing machines on the Farman principle.
1907-1908 | The New York Times http://goodreads.timothycomeau.com/shorty/nytimes/1907/
January 1, 1908, Wednesday
A glance backward shows us that there was no real necessity for the grievous ills which we brought upon ourselves in the year now closed, and that we therefore have the destiny of 1908 largely in our control. In 1907 we had neither war, pestilence, famine, earthquake, nor conflagration.
