Thursday, July 02, 2009
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Infinite Jesting
I keep being tempted to join in the fun, but I'll be traveling soon and it's a brick too big to be carrying. But I remembered I did most of my Infinite Jest reading while commuting between Brussels-Luxembourg station near Place Jourdan, where I lived, to Université Catholique de Louvain, located in Louvain-la-Neuve, an interesting but rather misguided attempt at creating a modern pedestrian town/city. I did lug that brick around, and did manage to finish the book.
I'm a bad critic so I won't try very hard to explain why it's worth the long hard slog. But, short version is... an overly clever and confusing book slowly gives way to surprisingly powerful emotional resolutions. An elaborate word game becomes surprisingly sentimental, nonsensical PoMo gone wild becomes a meditation on contemporary need and desire. And in a way which makes sense. It isn't a cheat. I think someone described Beethoven's 9th as Beethoven chipping away at a bunch of stone until all that was left was the Ode to Joy. While not quite the same, the experience of reading Infinite Jest kind of reminded me of that.
I'm a bad critic so I won't try very hard to explain why it's worth the long hard slog. But, short version is... an overly clever and confusing book slowly gives way to surprisingly powerful emotional resolutions. An elaborate word game becomes surprisingly sentimental, nonsensical PoMo gone wild becomes a meditation on contemporary need and desire. And in a way which makes sense. It isn't a cheat. I think someone described Beethoven's 9th as Beethoven chipping away at a bunch of stone until all that was left was the Ode to Joy. While not quite the same, the experience of reading Infinite Jest kind of reminded me of that.
Meltdown
It's going to be fascinating in the gazing at a car wreck way to see how things unfold in California.
Apologies for even suckier than usual blogging today. Stuff to do!
Apologies for even suckier than usual blogging today. Stuff to do!
Almost Not Shrinking
Census population city estimates tell us that most larger cities are growing (excel file). And my poor Philadelphia, shrinking in population for years, almost, but not quite, managed to avoid shrinking this year. Better luck next year!
These are the municipal cities, not the metro areas.
These are the municipal cities, not the metro areas.
The World's Greatest Deliberative Body
Senators place a great premium on being civil and nice to each other. I don't actually think this is important, but for some reason they do. Except when they don't.
California Dreaming
It was a state which, for a long time, provided a middle class compact with tax dollars. And Arnold's going to turn it into [insert shitty state name here.]
The terrible irony in decimating the public sector to save the state is that the California that was the epicenter of the postwar American dream was fundamentally a creation of government. Fighting a Pacific war during World War II compelled the federal government to spend billions on California industry and infrastructure, and the state was the leading beneficiary of Pentagon dollars during the Cold War. As Kevin Starr, California's leading historian, points out in "Golden Dreams," his brilliant new history of the state in the 1950s and early '60s, fully 40 percent of all defense dollars for manufacturing and research in 1959 went to California, anchoring the state's booming economy in a well-paid workforce that was either unionized or professionalized, and seeding an electronics and high-tech sector that was to blossom in the following decades. Building on that prosperity to create more prosperity, Earl Warren, Goodwin Knight and Pat Brown -- two Republicans, one Democrat -- invested state dollars in schools, universities, freeways and aqueducts that were the best in the world. The Golden State was never more golden.
Today, its governor seems determined to turn that gold to dross. On Monday, the Democrats in the legislature passed a budget that included cuts of $11 billion, levied a tax on oil companies and tobacco, and raised auto registration fees by $15 per car to keep the state parks from closing. Schwarzenegger reiterated his refusal to raise any taxes or fees and said he would veto the budget.
Mixed
While I get why some applaud Walmart's embrace of an employer mandate, I also think that our employer-based health care insurance system really sucks and I'm not really excited about locking it in place.
The Genius of The Politico
The Politico tries to explain: Why Norm Coleman lost.
I think it's because the other guy got more votes. For fuck's sake.
MORE. I see I am not the only person to have this reaction; John also has an interesting screenshot showing pretty definitively that Coleman is a secret Klingon, so I guess we barely dodged a bat'leth there! (Shoot me.)
I think it's because the other guy got more votes. For fuck's sake.
MORE. I see I am not the only person to have this reaction; John also has an interesting screenshot showing pretty definitively that Coleman is a secret Klingon, so I guess we barely dodged a bat'leth there! (Shoot me.)
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