a rage for rigor
TO THE HYPHENATED POETS
Richer than mother’s milk
is half-and-half
Friends of two minds,
redouble your craft.Our shelves our hives, our selves
a royal jelly,
may we at Benares and Boston,
Philly and Delhicollect our birthright nectar.
No swarm our own,
we must be industrious, both
queen and drone.Being two beings requires
a rage for rigor
rewritable memory,
hybrid vigor.English herself is a crossbreed
mother mutt,
primly promiscuous
and hot to rut.Oneness? Pure chimera.
Splendor is spliced.
Make your halves into something
twice your size,your tongue a hyphen joining
nation to nation.
Recombine, become a thing
of your own creation,a many-minded mongrel,
the line’s renewal,
self-made and twofold,
soul and dual.–Amit Majmudar
The best laws inspire the law-abiding.
Jack Shafer on the limits of gun-control legislation:
As Noel Perrin wrote in Giving Up the Gun: Japan’s Reversion to the Sword, 1543-1879, cultures can change their violent ways, but building such a cultural consensus takes more effort and persuasion that just passing new gun-control laws.
Yes, but passing new gun-control legislation does a great deal to advance that cultural consensus. By defining guns – and some more than others – as dangerous and problematic, we impact cultural norms as well as individual behavior. Laws not only exist to punish law-breakers but to inspire the law-abiding; they provide a template for how we want to live.
Chestbursters vs. Engineers
Like many, I found the sequence in which the new Ripley “hacks” a sexist computer to give herself an abortion to be the best and truest to form. The magic of the original Alien movie was largely the alien in all its unsubtle sexuality. That is, the species will or drive for self-preservation programmed into all life.
Yes, the movie Prometheus is about creation, but, like its predecessors, its strongest when the creation being interrogated is literal, carnal. The Engineers are, at best, the decorations on a vase for serving up the black goo at the heart of the story: the liquid Id.
Mad Men 2013
About 15 years ago I saw Tyler Brule, then just two years into Wallpaper, give a presentation that would forever change my understanding of art and commerce. He explained how Wallpaper was cajoling its clients into letting the magazine’s art team redo their ads so that these would play better as facing pages to the editorial.
I wonder if, say for the final season of Mad Men, AMC’s clients could be talked into having their creative redone to match the time period depicted in the series. (For example, the early 1970s.) Would it make those spots all the more talked about, noticed, viral?
Tapas are a delicious and nutritious reason to distrust Libertarians.
Spanish tapas are said to have been invented in the 13th century when the Spanish king Alfonso X The Wise required that all bars serve a plate of cold cuts along with every glass of wine. (The word “tapas” means “covers” as in a small plate of food which covers the glass of alcohol with which it is consumed.)
Alfonso’s alleged goal was public health: preventing the over-intoxication of workers who might otherwise go drinking on an empty stomach – and/or preventing insects from entering cups, etc. In other words, the evolution of one of the world’s best foods (cf. El Bulli) might be traced back to a law which regulates the consumption of drugs. (i.e., Alfonsocare.)
Whether apocryphal or not, the fact that this story endures suggests it has resonated for many generations of Spaniards. That the story is older than the Council of Trent makes it not unlike religious teachings: it is true enough.
In Spain, at least, laws that regulate commerce have fostered innovation and improved public health. Libertarians are right to point out the idiocy of laws that impede innovation in the marketplace. But they’re foolish to insist that all laws do so.
The new co-viewing. Same as the old.
Television sets often determine the layout of the furniture in communal rooms. Their position in the typical American home is a clear testament to their social function, a purpose that can be traced back to the origins of theater and other communal rituals.
Television programmers have always been involved in family and/or group dynamics. Successful programmers must not only persuade individual viewers to watch a show, they must also win over the viewer’s family and/or co-habitants. (This network often extends to peers and friends but it’s unlikely to exclude the home.)
This inherently social context is not solely a function of the linearity of traditional television – the fact that it is distributed at set times with an emphasis on those times when most viewers are available (i.e., “prime time.”)
Non-linear or video on demand is also, in its own way, a very social practice. In order for a “web video” to become popular, it must be shared by its viewers. Thus, even though such programs are often consumed by a solitary individual on a personal device (computer, tablet, smart phone), they are still dependent on group dynamics for their success.
Thus, whether programming a linear or non-linear channel, the programmer must consider the social role of the experience – how it will be presented by one viewer to another, how it will impact their relationships, how it will be used – for it to reach its maximal audience.
actor and spectator
in the actor-spectator relationship, both participants experience self-knowledge by “trading places” with another person.
for the actor, self-knowledge is gained by looking inward, as if into a mirror. the actor is trained to master her own mind and body so that she may produce the gestures and voice that convey another person. the better the actor is at playing someone else, the more in control she must be of her own mind and body.
for the spectator, self-knowledge is gained by looking out at someone else, as if through a window. the spectator hopes to be transported elsewhere: into another room, seeing the world through another person’s eyes.
this experience of being somewhere and someone else would be incomplete if it did not come to an end. the spectator expects to be returned feeling refreshed, renewed, rejuvenated. the more enjoyable the show, the more the spectator has come to recognize, albeit unconsciously, something about themselves.
the drama has to “hit home”. the joke has to be “so true” it’s funny. the elaborate plot has to, ultimately, “make sense”.
in a successful actor-spectator exchange, none of the participants are fully “there” – each is someone, somewhere else. the person most present has been conjured, as if by a seance.
Cost management is for winners.
You don’t create better products by cutting costs. You cut costs after you create a better product.
It may be tempting for companies with unpopular products to cut costs in order to hide a shrinking or flat market share. This is cost management as denial.
A free marketplace does not forgive companies that fail to produce better products. Time and again, consumers have rejected the more affordable product for one they perceive to be better. (Before Starbucks, who paid $3 for a cup of coffee?)
Cost management helps companies with already successful products increase market share.
Take Apple. First, they create a must-have product that does not compete on price. Then they make it cheaper so that more people can buy it. This approach has made them the most profitable in their sector.
This is cost management as an accelerant.
Butterfly and hurricane, tick and $2bn trading loss
A tick > Lyme disease > absent boss > riskier trades > $2bn trading loss.
Do bad companies fire more workers?
Successful companies have better employees. They are more productive and more profitable because they are better at hiring (choosing, attracting) and developing (guiding, coaching) their workers.
So, does the inverse hold: do bad companies fire more employees, more often?
This may be a matter of correlation, not causation. Also, perhaps, this has already been investigated by economists.
Scrapbooks made for sharing
From the Wikipedia entry on the origins of the scrapbook in the 15th century and their ongoing function as self-portraits:
From the standpoint of the psychology of authorship, it is noteworthy that keeping notebooks is in itself a kind of tradition among litterateurs. A commonplace book of literary memoranda may serve as a symbol to the keeper, therefore, of the person’s literary identity (or something psychologically not far-removed), quite apart from its obvious value as a written record. That commonplace books (and other personal note-books) can enjoy this special status is supported by the fact that authors frequently treat their notebooks as quasi-works, giving them elaborate titles, compiling them neatly from rough notes, recompiling still neater revisions of them later, and preserving them with a special devotion and care that seems out of proportion to their apparent function as working materials.
The writing being performed via collecting is thus somewhat unconscious; the sum greater than its parts.
In our age, visual communication is as commonplace as literacy. Thus, for at least the last century, scrapbooks have consisted of both clever phrases and the equally smart typography in which they are set, of notions of selfhood as well as the fashion with which these identities are performed.
Tumblr circa 1912
Recent tools like Ffffound, Tumblr, Polyvore and Pinterest not only facilitate the practice of collecting but, also, transform this once personal process into both a performance and/or a collaborative process.
the vessel of exploration
For Europeans and their former subjects, the making of planet Earth – a process better known as globalization – begins after the Renaissance, as newly empowered groups embrace the idea that, contra the Church, the world is both knowable and mostly unknown.
before
The frontier – the unsettled terrain – is thus not just an economic and political prize but also, importantly, a stage for intellectual and spiritual advancement. To travel to distant lands is to make the world known.
after
The system which emerges, beginning with the colonization of the Americas and ending with the Cold War, is the largest cosmos to date; so ubiquitous, it is capable of viewing itself from orbit.
hello, world
A new self-image, a more unified self is the destination of every figurative voyage. Thus, the lore of the traveler is that of self-discovery. In such representations, any vessel is a means to a psychological end.
hello, ego
The more perfect of these vessels are mirror-like. Such reflective ships move the traveler, inwardly. To a world always in creation, one that can never be fully known.
Two ideas for a fusion taco stand
1) Guatequeria: Cuban. e.g., tacos de ropa vieja or tacos de rabo encendido. Roast pork.
2) Pintxos tacos: Northern Spain. e.g., tacos de pulpo con papa or tacos de bacalao. Anchoas.
Blue Valentine: the love story as murder mystery
Surely, for every lover who says “I love you” (which is to ask “Do you love me?”) there is another who asks “What went wrong?” – or, simply, “Why don’t you love me anymore?”
Few movies so deftly tackle this whodunnit as well as Blue Valentine. Using the techniques of a mystery – the withholding of information, presenting events out of sequence, framing characters as suspects – it offers an honest account of romance; the falling in and out of love.
Perhaps, all love stories are mysteries, filled with ambivalences, contradictory accounts and unknown motives. For what is love but a suspense: the suspension of doubt, of self and even of reason as the distinct perspectives of two people merge together, drift apart and, sometimes, reunite.
As in Julio Cortazar’s novel Hopscotch:
You look at me, you look at me closely, each time closer and then we play cyclops, we look at each other closer each time and our eyes grow, they grow closer, they overlap and the cyclops look at each other…
The questions come later because they were always already there.
Related: Wong Kar-wai’s Happy Together.
Peeling back the layers of nonsense around the “Catholic, contraceptives” campaign talking point
Garry Wills expertly peels back the layers of nonsense and cynicism around the American bishops decision to make common cause with Rick Santorum:
Catholics who do not accept the phony argument over contraception are said to be “going against the teachings of their church.” That is nonsense. They are their church. The Second Vatican Council defines the church as “the people of God.” Thinking that the pope is the church is a relic of the days when a monarch was said to be his realm. The king was “Denmark.” Catholics have long realized that their own grasp of certain things, especially sex, has a validity that is lost on the celibate male hierarchy. This is particularly true where celibacy is concerned.
What if rigging elections is the extent of Putin’s power?
A fascinating argument by Stephen Holmes and Ivan Krastev on the symbolic function of rigged elections in Russia:
Thus, by far the most important political role of sham elections during the past dozen years has been the way they have allowed Putin to display his capacity for manipulating them in an orderly and predictable way and thereby, paradoxically, to demonstrate his authoritarian credentials. Rigged elections, known to be rigged, are the cheapest and easiest way for the regime to mimic the authoritarian power it does not actually possess and thereby to bolster its faltering grip on the country, or at least give itself more breathing room. It takes only modest administrative capacity to rig an election; but a rigged election produces a disproportionate increase in the government’s reputation for power and control. Organizing a pseudo-election is like wearing sheep’s clothing to prove that you are a wolf. Non-competitive, Soviet-style elections simulate a centralized power that Putin’s Kremlin spectacularly lacks. In a sense, fixed elections serve the same function as Red Square parades after the collapse of Russia’s military strength: they allow the regime to thump its chest, even if many of the missiles turn out, on closer inspection, to be duds.
via The Browser
The movie Return: wanting for a story.
In the vein of Todd Haynes and Tony Kushner, Liza Johnson’s movie Return dramatizes an intimate, personal crisis to make intelligible a broader social catastrophe.
The plot is achingly simple: Kelli is a reservist who returns from war, loses her way, then her job, her car, her husband, her children and finally her freedom.
Why do these bad things happen to her? Time and again, Kelli is asked if something happened to her while she was at war. Each time she declines an easy answer, noting that nothing special happened to her over there. She has no story that would make sense of her confusion, her misfortunes or her increasingly reckless behavior.
And that’s the brilliant conceit of the movie: Kelli isn’t the only one who lacks a war story, it’s everyone around her – the audience included – who want for an explanation.
Through Kelli’s search for meaning, Johnson reminds us of the gaping holes in our grand narratives, from the missing weapons of mass destruction to the alleged benefits of creative destruction.
That the movie, like its protagonist, declines to provide an explanation for the circumstances that afflict its protagonists is to Johnson’s credit: that responsibility lies with us and the policies we support.
Panic: single working moms, unemployed single men, and high finance.
One way to explain the moral panics of our day: a society governed primarily by old, rich white men of European descent apprehends an economy driven by single, working moms, weighed down by unemployed single men and traumatized by the reckless mass incarceration of the poor.
Their imagined community is obsolete to an increasingly multiracial, multicultural and anti-heterosexist majority. Quite simply, the numbers do not support their story of self. (Not that they ever did.)
Meanwhile, this ruling minority are also experiencing a crisis of faith, as their religion, high finance, keeps failing to pull a rabbit out of the hat. Thus, perhaps, a great deal of panic. From Wall Street to Main Street and back.