in spite of potent medicines

thenationmagazine: The national movement of fast food and...

Wed, 15 May 2013 12:25:35 -0400

The national movement of fast food and retail workers’ strikes has hit Milwaukee—the fifth city in 6 weeks where employees have walked off the job demanding $15/hour and the right to form a union without retaliation. Josh Eidelson has the story.

(Photo from @OLBLightBrigade)

Audio

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 14:44:42 -0400

newyorker: Emily Greenhouse remembers E.L. Konigsburg, author...

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 14:32:55 -0400

newyorker:

Emily Greenhouse remembers E.L. Konigsburg, author of “From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler” http://nyr.kr/ZmeuMD

Audio

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 13:46:11 -0400

"I tend to follow a very nocturnal sort of existence, mainly because I don’t much care for sunlight...."

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 13:52:00 -0400

“I tend to follow a very nocturnal sort of existence, mainly because I don’t much care for sunlight. Bright colors of any kind depress me, in fact, and my moods are more or less inversely related to the clarity of the sky on any given day. Matter of fact, my private motto has always been that behind every silver lining there’s a cloud. So I schedule my errands for as late an hour as possible, and I tend to emerge along with the bats and the raccoons at twilight.”

- Glenn Gould

Radio play, 1942 From UbuWeb: “The city wears a slouch...

Mon, 08 Apr 2013 17:59:14 -0400

Radio play, 1942

From UbuWeb: “The city wears a slouch hat is one of those Cage works that many know about, but few have actually heard. Commissioned by CBS’ “Columbia Workshop” to accompany a radio play by “Beat” poet/writer Kenneth Patchen—a surreal script centered around a mysterious drifter known as “The Voice” and his encounters with various characters of the urban landscape. Cage’s music aptly fits Patchen’s texts, scored for “sound orchestra” of 5 percussionists along with live and recorded sound effects, revealing Cage’s gift for orchestrating the timbres of percussion. One can only imagine what unsuspecting families, seated around the radio for an evening’s entertainment, made of this bizarre script and rambunctious music in 1942.”

"I looked down and didn’t say anything. Her fingers stiffened for a moment on my neck, then..."

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 20:23:00 -0400

“I looked down and didn’t say anything. Her fingers stiffened for a moment on my neck, then relaxed their grips.
‘It’s burning,’ she said, looking off towards the fires. ‘Are you sorry?’
I didn’t now what to say.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I hope it all burns down entirely.’ (The word “entirely” sounded strange on her lips.) ‘So that nothing’s left but ruins. Do you like ashes?’
I was dumbfounded.
‘Yes,’ I said.
At that moment, in the moonlight, her eyes looked to me like two magical ruins.”

- Ismail Kadare, Chronicle in Stone trans. Arshi Pipa

At The Awl, Ken Layne investigates the world of Espionage Twitter.

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 22:34:12 -0500

At The Awl, Ken Layne investigates the world of Espionage Twitter.:

This is amazing

"What would be the use, for instance, in giving the plan of the room that was really my room, in..."

Tue, 26 Feb 2013 03:33:00 -0500

“What would be the use, for instance, in giving the plan of the room that was really my room, in describing the little room at the end of the garret, in saying that from the window, across the indentations of the roofs, one could see the hill. I alone, in my memories of another century, can open the deep cupboard that still retains for me alone that unique odor, the odor of raisins, drying on a wicker tray. The odor of raisins! It is an odor that is beyond description, one that it takes a lot of imagination to smell. But I’ve already said too much. If I said more, the reader, back in his own room, would not open that unique wardrobe, with its unique smell, which is the signature of intimacy. Paradoxically, in order to suggest the values of intimacy, we have to induce in the reader a state of suspended reading. For it is not until his eyes have left the page that recollections of my room can become a threshold of oneirism for him.”

- Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space trans. Maria Jolas

bostonreview: Archbishop Desmond Tutu objects to Obama’s kill...

Fri, 15 Feb 2013 15:34:02 -0500

bostonreview:

Archbishop Desmond Tutu objects to Obama’s kill lists.

newyorker: Teju Cole on the civilizing function of literature,...

Mon, 11 Feb 2013 14:26:32 -0500

newyorker:

Teju Cole on the civilizing function of literature, and the disparity between Obama’s bookshelf and his use of targeted killings:

How on earth did this happen to the reader in chief? What became of literature’s vaunted power to inspire empathy? Why was the candidate Obama, in word and in deed, so radically different from the President he became?

Continue reading: http://nyr.kr/WYUGMz

Photograph: Pete Souza/The White House/Getty.

explore-blog: Filament Mind – an illuminated “connectome”...

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 18:24:00 -0500

explore-blog:

Filament Mind – an illuminated “connectome” visualizes books borrowed at the Teton County Library.

Each of the 1000 fiber optic cables hanging above (totaling over 5 miles of cable) corresponds to a call number in the Dewey Decimal System, which organizes the library’s collection into approximately 1000 categories of knowledge. These category titles are displayed in text on the lobby’s south and north walls.

More on how it was made here.

ruineshumaines: (by el crater)

Sat, 09 Feb 2013 22:06:07 -0500

ruineshumaines:

(by el crater)

pendulummusic: Steve Reich - Pendulum music...

Sun, 27 Jan 2013 16:03:07 -0500

pendulummusic:

Steve Reich - Pendulum music (instructions/score)

"Circa 1970, ‘adult’ was no longer quite being defined as in times previous. Among those..."

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:37:00 -0500

““Circa 1970, ‘adult’ was no longer quite being defined as in times previous. Among those who could afford to, a strenuous mass denial of the passage of time itself was under way. All across a city long devoted to illusory product, clairvoyant Japonica had seen them, these travelers invisible to others, poised, gazing from smogswept mesa-tops above the boulevards, acknowledging one another across miles and years, summit to summit, in the dusk, under an obscurely enforced silence. Wingfeathers trembled along their naked backs. They knew they could fly. A moment more, an eyeblink in eternity, and they would ascend …””

- Thomas Pynchon, Inherent Vice.

Apparently, Paul Thomas Anderson is trying to adapt it. Either it’ll be great, or it will be satisfying to complain about.

Audio

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 15:14:00 -0500

braiker: jhermann: Teju Cole continues to devastate in 140...

Tue, 15 Jan 2013 10:34:52 -0500

braiker:

jhermann:

Teju Cole continues to devastate in 140 characters or less.

ProPublica: Everything we know so far about drone strikes

Everyone else should just stop tweeting.

Audio

Sun, 13 Jan 2013 16:07:53 -0500

guardian: Meet Vladimir Franz, an opera composer and painter -...

Thu, 10 Jan 2013 09:32:04 -0500

guardian:

Meet Vladimir Franz, an opera composer and painter - tattooed from head to toe, his face a warrior-like mix of blue, green and red. He’s also running in a surprising third place ahead of this week’s Czech presidential elections. (via Vladimir Franz: tattooed composer polling strongly in the Czech elections | World news | guardian.co.uk)

laughingsquid: Flying Houses, Surreal Photos of Houses That...

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 23:06:42 -0500

laughingsquid:

Flying Houses, Surreal Photos of Houses That Appear to be Floating