Fighting the Universal Spider Too

It is snowing again – big flakes – the temperature is in the lower twenties. My ears froze this morning while I was walking the dog – the wind blew from behind on the way out but in my face on the way back and like a sailor I must gauge my voyage by its most disadvantageous leg – I shouldn’t have gone as far as I did, but the dog was scampering about, pawing at the leaves and pissing up a storm – how could I have told it no, I want to go back as my ears are getting so cold. But then had I not picked it up and carried it back earlier in the winter when it froze it little paws. The sun has not shown in a long long while.

49% of Americans think that the US should mind its own business internationally

The worlds of media and politics have been steadily merging and today they seem all but interchangeable – Sam Tanenhaus – New Yorker (Dec 7, 2009) p84

This museum in honor of
       Failed products – for example
       The Holocaust
Unlike Ford’s automotive
       Assembly line where
       The latest models still roll forth
Achieving efficiency in waste management
        Is still our  measurable  objective
Employing the best and the brightest
        For a better  future - better living
        Through chemistry
All out for agent Orange
Garbage in - Garbage out
        Interchangeability


This Self-sustaining enterprise
These factories of social engineering
        Where noting is absent
        Except moral rectitude
Museums of failed endeavors
Are strewn across our borders
       Archelogical opportunities
       Indicators of full employment
And a growing economy
Platforms for re-electability

In 2002 no US university president earned more than one million dollars. Today there are 24 US university presidents who earn at least one million dollars

Beyond the boundaries of the ordinary world of lives and houses, unguessed, undreamed of in their common philosophy, lies the vast realm of the improbable – Jean Cocteau – The Holy Terrors, 1957 p87

There is less than a 1% chance that a name on the US Terrorism list will also be on the “no-fly” list

Wealth is an inborn attitude of mind, like poverty. The pauper who has made his pile may flaunt his spoils but cannot wear them plausibly – Jean Cocteau – The Holy Terrors, 1957 p88

42% of South Koreans have never knowingly spoken to a foreigner

[In an overall] culture shift of perceiving crime more and more in terms of insufficient surveillance [we come to see crime as actually] caused by insufficient surveillance. So we used to be trying to figure out the root cause of crime, but now we are saying people are committing crime, because no one is watching. The criminals wouldn’t be doing this if the cameras were there – Stepehane Leman- Langlois

98% of Chinese government officials claim that their health is “not too good”

Surveillance… presents not truth but the appearance of truth, not reality but the aura of reality, not knowing but the feeling of knowing – Ned Niedziecki – The Peep Diaries, 2009 p201

25% of same sex female couples in the US are currently raising a child

But slice water with a knife, and water still flows, / empty a wine cup to end grief, and grief remains grief. // You never get what you want in this life, so why not / shake your hair loose on a boat at play in dawn light – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p71

Telecommunications – per 100 inhabitants
       Telephone lines     Mobile phones    Internet users
United States    50             87              74
United Kingdom   54            126              76
Sudan             1             29              10
Spain            45            112              57
Monaco          107             67              67
Malaysia         16            112              56
World            18             60              23

Up where new born clouds rise over open rock, / a guest come into wild flower confusions, // I’m still lingering on, my climb unfinished, / as the sun sinks away west of peaks galore – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p49

43% of the French say that ‘capitalism is fatally flawed’ and that a different economic system is needed.

Not that you lied to me, but that I no longer believe you, has shaken me – Friedrich Nietzsche – Beyond Good and Evil

60% of the jobs lost in the last year can be attributed to cuts from small businesses

Money has always been scarce for the speculative boomer throughout American history; there has never been quite enough to ballast his inflated predictions – A Theodore Brown - Frontier Community Kansas City to 1870, 1963 p189

The average unemployed American male spent 74 more minutes per day watching TV and spent 3 minutes a day less providing child care than did his employed counterpart.

Sometimes there is a dividing-line running across life. Sharp, almost actual, like the black stroke of a paintbrush or the white gash of a chalk-mark. Sometimes, but not often – Cornell Woolrich – I Married a Dead Man, 1948

400,000 child paternity DNA tests are conducted in the US every year

You admit lament is empty, ask how / reflections get so worn and withered – Li Po – The Selected Poems, 1996 p123

18% of American males think that standing up during sex is an effective form of contraception

Pure numerological nonsense, but wonderful. It is this playfulness that makes for a great mathematician – Marcus du Sautoy – Symmetry, 2008 p102