Surfeit of politics, dearth of friendship?

December 31, 2006

I subscribe to OpenDemocracy, but lately I often find myself clicking through the articles without paying too much attention. Too much party line, too familiar a frame, nothing to see: move along. I guess I’m getting crotchety about politics as my age settles increasingly into that middle part. But today I clicked through to Mark […]

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Yay and not-so-yay

December 27, 2006

Unexpectedly, an Amazon shipment of books arrived today, in time for birthday stuff, including the very weighty New York 2000: Architecture and Urbanism from the Bicentennial to the Millennium, by Robert A.M. Stern, David Fishman, and Jacob Tilove. It’s a tremendous resource and will go some way toward making up for not travelling to NYC […]

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Deadlines in December

December 26, 2006

We celebrate holidays in December because it’s a remnant from our agricultural past (fields fallow, stocks laid in, days too short to work outside), and we celebrate holidays in August because that’s a remnant from our industrial past (too hot to keep the factories humming, etc. etc.). This, I read somewhere, and now can’t remember […]

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Fashioning a certain age

December 24, 2006

I should have some idea of what my February article will look like, but what with “this season” and all, I’ve been singularly distracted. And there’s a birthday coming up in a couple of days, one of those big ones with a zero at the end (and a halfway grown up number in front). So […]

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Pomo goes to market

December 23, 2006

Fascinating article in The Economist, Post-modernism is the new black, by …hmm, how interesting: I don’t see a by-line. Ok, by “special report” or “the economist.” Whoever wrote it was pretty well informed. For once, none of the usual sophomoric trashing (which so predictably alternates with hagiographic treatments) of Adorno and Horkheimer, although the article’s […]

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Touring glam, anarcho-punk, and narcissism: a video history

December 20, 2006

I’m obviously not posting much on this blog lately. It’s experiencing a rethink — if I were smarter, I would figure out the pattern here, but I’m not there (yet!)… I’m experiencing a rethink, too. I have a paid writing gig these days — nothing too demanding, but I’m experiencing a learning curve nonetheless. I […]

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Delivered in sex

December 7, 2006

Not sure I want to bookmark this article, nor happy about leaving it lying around in one of my browser tabs, therefore, it’s one for the blawg. From the Daily Telegraph, an article on How Queen’s English has grown more like ours, which has a tewwibly witty line: A scientific study of Christmas broadcasts to […]

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Artist statement on Santa commercialism

December 7, 2006

Interesting article in today’s paper about Jimmy Wright, an artist who devised a punchy protest against xmas crass. Mr. Wright, aged 69, erected a cross in his front yard, which faces onto a main road in the farming community of Metchosin on Vancouver Island. But instead of nailing Jesus Christ to this cross, he affixed […]

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Wolf Biermann lays it on the line

November 30, 2006

Thank god for blogging, where you can just gush and not worry about measured prose and proper balance. Therefore: for pete’s sake, read Wolf Biermann’s most excellent and impassioned speech, Germany betrays Israel. That’s all. Just read it. It’s a shortened version of a speech he gave in Israel last month. The German original was […]

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As seen by google earth: perspectives, and the streets are paved in gold…

November 28, 2006

The image above is not a bas-relief carving of a face — it’s a Google Earth photo of the Medicine Hat, Alberta region. The Toronto Star has a fascinating photo essay link from Oct.25 on this page (scroll down at least a third of the way), introducing the series thus: Since its debut, Google Earth, […]

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