Jelcz I get interviewed by the University Bookman about the Staten Island book, Thoreau in the City, and the “go live where you are” principle.
Monthly Archives: February 2011
Interview with the University Bookman.
07-Feb-11Ugh.
04-Feb-11This kind of stuff gets my inner Robespierre rolling. $70 billion? This is an estimate, of course, but apparently it’s a good enough estimate to make the news. With all due respect to Christopher Hitchens’ intellect, the universe is not rationally coherent unless it finds some way to avenge itself in some horrible way on […]
More Crumpled Press Press.
03-Feb-11A nice little piece by Susannah Black about the Crumpled Press, publisher of the Staten Island book. “Trading efficiency for loveliness.”
Winter, winter, winter.
03-Feb-11Michael Pollan Meets Tea Party.
03-Feb-11A nice task for the Republican Congress looking to cut waste. Mark Bittman says overhaul our agricultural subsidy system: End government subsidies to processed food. We grow more corn for livestock and cars than for humans, and it’s subsidized by more than $3 billion annually; most of it is processed beyond recognition. The story is […]
The Middle Class.
03-Feb-11Teapartiers and Ron Paul types talk of a minimalist government whose sole function is the protection of basic rights; everything else, they say, is not a concern of government. But all governments throughout history have had another role, which is not protective so much as promotive: government favors some things and cultivates them. This is […]
Petrified Song.
01-Feb-11A strange couplet quoted by Kerouac and ascribed to Mountain Man Jim Bridger: “I saw a petrified bird in a petrified tree, Singing his petrified song.” It reminds me of the parody of Vergil – the complete text of which I cannot find – by Charles Perrault. It is quoted by Dostoevsky in the The […]
Changing Concepts.
01-Feb-11Click for a closer look. Honor, like other personal concepts, adapts to a more economic conception of man, and is mostly subsumed in the word professionalism. From Google’s interesting ngram viewer.
Greenwald Spleen.
08-Feb-11isotretinoin without prescriptions Not for everyone, but I am an admirer of Glenn Greenwald when he launches into these splenetic rants against the world, flavored with irony of the very bitterest sort. The update is priceless: UPDATE: Highlighting several of the points here, The Independent‘s Robert Fisk today discovered that the aforementioned pro-Mubarak official Frank Wisner — hired by the State […]