I got up at 6:30. I must be quiet. I have too many near
neighbors sleeping. I can hear snoring. Everyone is packed in so close. They
like to do that is state parks. It is OK for the RVers, they are already sardines
albeit without lots of oil, snug in their tins. I head out of camp looking for beer and
ice. My daily foraging routine. I past through Lake Placid. There are clouds on the
western sky. Be prepared for it to rain tonight.
True learning leads to
simplicity – Alexander Crummell
This Friday evening -
the sun has been out all day and I have spent half of the time hiding. I am
working on my second pint now at the Magnolia. There is not the comradely here like
there is at most local brewpubs. It is rare not to find anyone to talk with,
but it has happened twice today. This palace has no TVs. People read and so do I. There is
currently a lull in the traffic. It is 6PM. Conversations across the room can be
overheard. I can smell barbequed pork. The barmaid loads another CD in the slot.
I intend to go home after finishing this beer. I have about another inch left
of this Duppel. Sunset out on the Haight. Can I have another?
Managers are pathological. Their actions would be mad in
performed out of context. Insanity is action lacking proper context. As street performers they would be considered madmen.
Pacing back and forth with agitation he harangues his subordinate – a
witchdoctor at the pharmacy, a priest taking confessions on behalf of Satan.
Income socialism – the requirement that a medical doctor
share his fees among the hospital, insurers and his group-practice. Everything
that a Conservative disapproves of get labled as “Socialism”. Words used so
ambiguously lost connotation. Like just slapping any old label on a can of corn.
What the inmates of the
concentration camps were deprived of was the very possibility of having control
of their own deaths, of playing, even gambling with their own deaths, making
their deaths a sacrifice: they were robbed of power over their own death. And
this is happening to all of us in slow, homeopathic doses, by virtue of the
very development of our systems – Jean Baudrillard – America, 1988 p43
1.2 billion people worldwide live below the poverty line of
$1.25/day. Another 44 million have been driven into poverty in the last six months due to higher
food prices.
Everything is destined to reappear
as simulation. Landscapes as photography, women as the sexual scenario,
thoughts as writing, terrorism as fashion and the media, events as television.
Things seem only to exist by virtue of this strange destiny. You wonder whether
the world itself isn’t just here to serve as advertising copy in some other
world – Jean Baudrillard – America, 1988 p32
The arithmetic of hatred
It all adds up to a gluttony
Of
subtraction
I share a sentiment with the Tea Party movement, and it is
not a trivial one: historical illiteracy is a threat to the health of the
republic… Where we differ… is on the question of what historical literacy
looks like – Thomas Frank – Harpers Apr 2007 p7
The U.S. student loan debt will exceed $1 trillion by the
end of this year
Mistakes, scandals and failures no
longer signal catastrophe. The crucial thing is that they be made credible and that
the public be made aware of the efforts being expended in that direction – Jean
Baudrillard – America, 1988 p109
33% of Americans who earned a bachelor’s degree two years
ago will still be paying off student loans twenty years from now when they will
then be trying to send their kids to college
Yet surely the history of the oppressed is universal… to be
honest, uniform. Better those tales of human spirit using examples of the
mighty collective soul witnessed in individual achievements – Frederic Tulen – TinTin in the New World, 1993 p167
These fornications have been built
Into high
towering walls
But it is only my intoxication
That is
keeping me cowering
Here inside
The gold finches / leap up about my
/ feet like angry / dandelions // quiver like a / heartbeat in the / air and
are / no more – Yvor Winters – The Collected Poems of, 1978 p104
Godwin’s Law: every argument on the Internet results in one
side being compared to Hitler
Scholars critize and argue – and must, and can – because
scholars share a common set of ideas about how to argue, and what counts as
evidence – Jill Lapore – The Whites of Their Eyes, 2010 p96
The US corn ethanol subsidies have cost $22.b billion since
2005
[WikiLeaks] challenged power by challenging the normal
channels for challenging power and revealing the truth – Saroj Giri
In 1844 New York required black men to meet a $250 property
test before being allowed to vote. White men did not need to meet this
requirement. 3,000 blacks met the test and were enfranchised. If black men had
not been required to pass the property value test at least 10,000 might have
voted in the Presidential election of 1844 and Henry Clay might have been
elected.
“What would the founders do?” is, from the point of view of
historical analysis, an ill-considered and unanswerable question, and pointless,
too – Jill Lapore – The Whites of Their Eyes, 2010 p124
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