Saturday, April 23, 2011

People Lie of TV. Get a Latte. Go to the Gym. Everything is OK

I am getting up earlier, before 6AM. The sun is coming up earlier, before 6AM. The cat and the dog are chasing each other about the house making a racket. They are not about to let me stay in bed. Time to go out. Time for me to get up. Tomorrow I take off. Got the truck all packed. Be back in July I said. Well maybe. No sooner than that anyway.

Stars sling shot / round the center / at millions of miles per // In rest homes beds, patients / hang on / as if to love – Rae Armantrout – Versed, 2000  p25

People lie, They stand up right there on TV and they lie. They lie to you and me. They lie in front of the kids. They lie  in church. They will lie to their dog. They lie right there on TV; is there nothing sacred anymore?

The fact [is] that we are no longer excluded. We are no longer excluded, not because of racism, sexism, and class differences have come to an end. They manifestly have not. Rather, we are no longer excluded because…because there is no longer any culture to be excluded from. That is to say, the word “Culture” no longer names a metadiscursive project – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996  p103

Bureaucratic rationales are not reasoned arguments but take as given unsubstantiated propositions backed up only by the authority of the bureaucracy itself – bureaucracies are self-referential. Bureacrates are the paragon of excellence.

There is… not much evidence to real ‘learning’ taking place at most postsecondary institutions, if by that we mean the process by which a student is motivated to participate in, even challenge, established intellectual authority – Stanley Aronowitz – The Knowledge Factory, 2000 p143

The big blond climbs up
Into a black SUV clutching
            A latte and talking
            On a cellphone
How much work does it
            Take to arrest
            This middle-age spread
Two little Jon Bennet Ramseys
            To dress, the real-estate
            Game was supposed to have
Been such easy money but then came
            The turndown and one finds
            Oneself struggling just
To make ends meets let alone
            To dream and be
            All that one can be
But still one must try
One must keep on keeping on
            Mustent one?
Get a latte and head for the gym

The institution doesn’t need another hero. There are no heros in bureaucracy – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996  p45

Two thirds of the world’s 5 billion mobile phone subscribers are in the developing world

Under globalization the state does not disappear; it simply becomes more and more managerial, increasingly incapable of imposing its ideological will – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996  p47

For each 10% increase in mobile phone usage there is a 0.6% boost in GDP for a developing country

Rather than being under national political control, the economy is more and more the concern of transnational enities who transfer capital in search of profit without regard to national boundaries. The erstwhile all-powerful state is reduced to becoming a bueraucratic appaaratus of management – Bill Readings – The University in Ruins, 1996  p49

Natural gas produced by hydraulic fracturing as it turns out produces as much pollution and contributes at least as much  and maybe more to global warming than does an equalivent quantity of  coal. This is largely due to the amount of methane released during production. Enough emissions are released to negate the carbon advantage that gas has over coal and oil when they are burned.

Every unit represents an implied measurement… Behind every real-world number, there is a measurement – Charles Seife – Proofiness, 2010   p10

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