Michael has been shot full of Novocain to relax the muscles in his lower back. He wanted to tell me how painful the shoots were. I ask him if he could tell me every excruciating detail. What he really wanted to do was to complain. He declined to tell me. He wanted to hear about my jury duty instead. He wanted help naming his line of hand-made soaps. One had blood orange, lemon and other citrus essences. I suggested Carrivra. He said that he thought that blood oranges grew in the Sierra foothills and was thinking about “Sierra Citrus” I told him that that would work too. He said that there was someone up in Washington who was selling 10,000 bars a month to just one distributor in Japan. She had names for her soaps like “Fish Off” (for removing the smell of fish from your hands). Maybe that will work with the Japanese but not the denizens here in Pacific Heights..
The rich need the poor much more than the poor need the rich
Understanding does not lead to a unity of knowledge. Knowledge does not provide confidence.
The notion of an objective yardstick against which degrees of risk can be measured overlooks the fact that risks count as urgent, threatening and real or as negligible and unreal only as a result of particular perceptions and evaluations – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p13
The continual political appetite for a global war on terror has let to a commodification of ‘actionable intelligence”, which is a product chiefly of human prisoners – Peter Bartogiewicz – The Intelligence Factory (Harper – Nov 2009)
That we can even talk about torturing human beings in such an unemotional and technical language is indicative of how acceptable torture has become to us. Translation – trading in human beings and extorting information from them through torture is now a routine business arrangement justified by our desire to feel secure. We have met the enemy and it is we.
With self-assurance
He is dangerous
Explaining God’s
Plan
With such self-presence
Everyone is toting
Their Bibles
Darwin is Dead
God is Alive
He don’t like to joke
People misunderstand
He says
And take it what he says
For a Meme of God
He walks in trepidation
Afraid of
His own power
God himself couldn’t
Have done it better
At least we cannot live to see it all; no comfort / Reset in this. Yet, this record is not empty of flags – Kenneth Patachen – Collected Poems, 1967 p7
The County Poorhouse
Stood in the woods
A few scattered sticks
Bricks that once constituted
A communal fireplace
Made to feel different
Wearing shinny trousers
Gathered and mended
By the church ladies
No time to lounge
Must be about sloping
The hogs
On a working farm
A marginalized existence
With no place else to go
When the corn stalks froze
In the field
But into a fresh hand dug
Grave
Just another chore that
One performed for his keep
Fed and housed by the lowest
Bidder
Dominance may be cruel and exploitative, with no hint of affection in it. What it produces is the victim. On the other hand, dominance may be combined with affection, and what it produces is the pet – Yi-Fu Tuan – Dominance & Affection: the making of pets, 1984 p2
Factoid: Each death penalty trail resulting in an actual execution is conducted at a cost to taxpayers three million dollars more than a non-death penalty murder trial would have cost (this does not include any - and there are many - post trial legal expenses).
The political costs of omission are much higher than those of over reaction – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p54
Sunrise
Sunset
Photograph
Daytime
Primetime
Television
Weekday
Weekend
Slave away
Everywhere is to Rome
This house has no dome
In the universe now there was no longer a container and a thing contained, but only a general thickness of signs superimposed and coagulated, occupying the whole volume of space – Italo Calvino – Cosmicomics, 1965 p39
Factoid: Only one in four of the workers laid off in a recession ever regain their lost income
The more emphatically world risk society is denied; the more it becomes a reality. The disregard for the globalizing risks aggravate the globalization of risk – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p47
All solutions that involve substitution
Result in higher levels of anxiety
Greed has replaced guilt
What can be done, man
Is a greedy beast
If I don’t get mine now there
Won’t be anything left
Get while the getting is good
We’ll count the cost once
The feeding feast is done
Neither science, nor the reigning politics, nor the mass media, nor business, nor the legal system, nor even the military, is in a position to defend or control risks in a rational way. The individual is forced to mistrust the promises of rationality of these institutions – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p54
This is how astroturfing works
Channeling corporate contributions
This is the way astrology works
Clairvoyants stashing it away
So unseemingly of a demagoguery
Foretelling the future is natural for those
Doing the waterboarding
Modern society has become a risk society because it is increasingly engaged in debates over self-generated risks in an attempt to manage and to prevent them – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p50
The visual is not a source of understanding – it is the genesis of action (awareness). Seeing is not believing but acting.
To knock a thing down…. Is a deep delight to the blood – George Santayana – Reason in Society: the life of reason, 1905 p81
Cartier-Bresson goes to China
Cartier-Bresson photographs the people there
Cartier-Bresson comes back
Cartier-Bresson’s photographs show that
China is full of Chinese
Cartier-Bresson will not be returning to China
Can we be sure that there are still Chinese there
Risks enter the global story after God has made his exit – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p92
Photographs are to time as money is to desire
The challenges of the beginning of the twenty-first century are being negotiated in terms of concepts and recipes drawn from the early industrial society – Ulrich Beck – World at Risk, 2008 p28
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