This morning, while reasearching story ideas for Another Magazine, I came across Prune, a smart little blog on landscape architecture. I didn’t have time to go deep, but I’ve bookmarked it for further reading. Check out these gorgeous digital astrogeologic renderings of lunar and Martian polar regions:
300SEL stretch with sleeping-pod trailer, spotted today on Saarbrückener Straß:
I stumbled across an amazing site yesterday. It’s called tinyvices, and it features a spectacular range of online portfolios and projects by a variety photographers and graphic artists. The site is curated by photographer Tim Barber, and when I looked him up, I found this description of him and his project at the website of the The Spencer Brownstone Gallery in New York, which hosted a tinyvices exhibition earlier this year.
Although I spent an hour or so at the site, I feel as if I hardly got my feet wet. Supernatural by Aurel Schmidt stopped me in my tracks, and the illustrations of The Lions, a drawing group in Vancouver, did my head and eyes in. I intend to get back there soon and go deeper.
The most frustrating thing about the Democrats — even more frustrating than their lack of a telegenic leader, a coherent plan, a clue — is their utter lack of courage. That’s why Clinton’s so-called ‘outburst’ on Fox News was so very gratifying to so many. Paul Bergala hits the nail on the head in today’s “Week in Review” in the NYT: “’Clinton tapped into something in the Democratic zeitgeist,’ Mr. Begala said. ‘We’re really tired of being bullied, particularly by Fox.’”
There’s a lot of legitimate rage out there. Howard Dean tapped into it in 2003/4. John Kerry had a historical opportunity to surf it into the White House — instead, the holder of three Purple Hearts politely allowed himself to be swiftboated. Since then, the finest display of courage I’ve seen in the public sphere has been Stephen Colbert’s White House Correspondents Dinner speech. Millions of Democrats would abandon their party if only there were somewhere to turn. But unless the party musters some courage, they’re just going to turn off.
More than one pundit has noted that Clinton’s outburst could re-energize the Republicans. I say, bring ‘em on.
02138 is a new magazine for Harvard alums. The big feature in the launch issue is “The Harvard 100,” a list of the 100 most influential Harvard people of the moment. The editors claim to have “made peace with the fact that we could place most of the names on the list in any order, and someone would still have a problem with it.” All the same, the list is crap. One thing I took from it, though, was the name David Javerbaum (no. 25). He’s the head writer for the Daily Show, and if it means helping more Americans understand what a fuckup is our president (no. 2 on the list, though he’s so obviously more influential than no. 1, Bill Gates), then I hope David Javerbaum’s influence only grows.
It’s 1973. You’re a kid. You’re watching this. Imagine it.
You get the government you deserve, as my recent trip to the homeland confirmed for me. You also get the media you deserve. Thank god for yesterday’s editorial NYT editorial, Running Off a Cliff, which offers a stark reminder of the kind of government we have and a precious glimpse of the kind of media we can aspire to:
Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.
Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.
It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.
Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.
Vida and I had dinner two nights ago with our friends Joerg and Sandra of the magazine 032c. The cover story of their current issue is a profile of architect David Adjaye by writer/artist Kodwo Eshun. I saw Kodwo at a friend’s party in New York about two weeks back, and we had a chance to talk about his contribution (with the Otolith Group, which he co-founded) to the Ecotopia show at the ICP and share our enthusiasm for 032c.
Joerg remarked over hot slices of homemade flamenküchen that in Berlin the byline Kodwo Eshun gets him more kudos than contributions by the likes of Matthew Barney. And it’s true, Kodwo has — or at least had — intellectual rock-star status here.
The talk of Kodwo and my recent sighting made we want to flip through his first book again, More Brilliant Than the Sun, its writing so dazzling you almost need sunglasses to read it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find my copy. It must be down in the boxes in the basement. We’ve moved so many times (we didn’t even bother unpacking after our latest move to Berlin, knowing we would leave again within a year) that I’ve all but given up on ever having all my books together in a single place. Further Reading is a way for me to remember the things I mean to read, or re-read, even if I never do manage to get (back) around to them. I’m not sure if it’s the thought that counts, but I console myself with the possibility that it might be.
FURTHER READING is things to read, not to read, start to read before getting distracted, intend to read one day, and more. It’s things to look at and to watch. It’s research and references. It’s a record of the places my Internet A.D.D. takes me. It’s quite possibly a waste of your time. Read on.
