Jon Stewart on American Perspectives
Posted by Ben on November 12, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/jon-stewart-on-american-perspectives/
Death Row Diaries
Danny Gregory creates a gallery of portraits based on headshots of death row inmates. The Morning News hosts.
Writes Gregory:
I was surprised by what I discovered in their stories. Instead of evil genius, I found stupidity, dreadful planning, and a childishness surrender to id and immediate gratification. While some of the condemned are brooding and long-term bad, most just lashed out in some asinine way that led straight to the gallows.
Should anyone be killed by the state? I think not. Can this level of poor judgment be reformed? I doubt it. What should be done with these folks? I dunno, so I drew them. Here’s the beginning of roll call for the current graduating class and a synopsis of their extracurriculars.
(The Morning News: “Death Row Diaries,” by Danny Gregory [October 19, 2004])
Posted by Ben on November 10, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/death-row-diaries/
Who’s on your dollar bill?
Apologies for this poorly cobbled-together graph, but what it shows is interesting (even if it’s not immediately obvious).
Allow me to deobfuscate:
What you’re seeing is based on exit polls. It shows the correlation between income and vote choice. Bush and Kerry, in this case. (Who, bowing to recent “tradition,” are red and blue, respectively.)
The percentages essentially translate into the fraction of people in their income group voting for whatever party. So where Bush receives a 63% for the $200,000-and-over people, it means that 63% of those people voted for him. (I’m pointing this out because I’m not sure how readily apparent this convention is.)
The connection isn’t linear, but it’s fairly, surprisingly, straightforward. People with higher incomes voted overwhelmingly for G. Bush, and people with lower incomes voted overwhelmingly for J. Kerry.
Also interesting—though not pictured on this graph—is that the only income levels where Ralph Nader pulled any percentage points were $100-150,000 and the $200,000-and-over group.
Just thought I’d share.
(Also, please note that the Y axis does not go from 0 to 100%. While this does in fact accentuate the trends [or what-have-you], it was done mostly to save space.)
Posted by Ben on November 8, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/the-last-one-i-promise/
James Howard Kunstler Speaks
James Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere (previously quoted elsewhere on this blog) has a blog of sorts.
“Of sorts,” because it has none of the easy navigation or granularity typically associated with blogs (much less the links, blogroll, etc.); if you want to adhere to the author’s intent, it’s probably best to do away with analogy and just say that it’s called The Clusterfuck Nation Chronicle.
If The Geography of Nowhere‘s any indication of typical, the aforementioned TCNC is typically gloomy, cynical, and darkly funny.
The following is a snippet:
I was in Dallas two weeks ago, a wilderness of eight-lane freeways and sodium vapor lamps. I had to remind myself that this is how most Americans live. The so-called “city” was a product of the late 20th century cheap oil fiesta. If you live there, driving is mandatory, and lots of it, over heroic distances. It took me half an hour (and forty bucks) to get across just the north side of the sprawling town to the airport at five-thirty in the morning when the traffic was still light. This is exactly the kind of place that is going to be in deep trouble over the next four years. There are scores of places like it all over America. The people who live in them will be full of consternation and gall when their chosen living arrangement begins to fail them. They will blame whoever is sitting in the oval office.
“Why didn’t you tell us something awful was going to happen?”
“Why didn’t you ask?”
The main pretension of the Presidential campaigns is the idea that the next President will have any ability to control the events that will most determine how we live in this country. The federal government is likely to become more impotent and therefore increasingly irrelevent.
“Why didn’t you do something?”
“We didn’t want to upset you.”
What was the “truth” about the American condition in 2004? The truth was that we had made some bad choices about how we live and that events would soon compel us to change drastically whether we liked it or not. Nobody wanted to hear that, and no political leader dared say it.
(Clusterfuck Nation by James Howard Kunstler; …and about the “navigation” thing… if you want to read previous entries, you ought to go straight to the archives )
Posted by Ben on November 8, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/james-howard-kunstler-speaks/
It’s a draw
Imagination3 is neat. Also not particularly useful. It’s a place to do collaborative drawing online (though if you’re anti-social, you can do it yourself). Which, I dunno—it might someday evolve into something truly useful. For the moment all it has going for it is novelty. Take it or leave it.
(via Everyday Matters)
Posted by Ben on November 8, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/its-a-draw/
Oh, the Tragedy
More lit on The Commons* than you could ever conceivably want to read. Ever.
(The Digital Library of the Commons)
Note:
* same Commons as in, e.g., the near-infamous Tragedy of the Commons.
Posted by Ben on November 8, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/oh-the-tragedy/
Downtown
Pete Hamill’s Downtown is billed as something of a historical and personal portrait of New York City, though that’s almost unfair. The book is historical—rooted in history—but it’s much more than that.
Hamill boils it down in his first sentence: “This is a book about my home city.”*
Which, it is and it isn’t.
Downtown is well-written. Thoughtful. Insightful. Curious. Interested.
That it’s in any way a reflection of reality is a happy coincidence: Downtown would be just as interesting if it described a city that didn’t exist, or one that was destroyed centuries past.
(As it happens—you may have caught on to this fact—the book describes New York City. Past, current & future, and definitely extant. Anyone ordinarly held rapt in fascination by anything relating to the history of New York would obviously take issue with my saying the book would be just as interesting if New York didn’t exist; I hope you know what I mean.)
The history you’re exposed to is an interesting mix of the highly idiosyncratic and the broadly general. There’s the history of New York City—old, new, and ever-changing—but there’s also something more intangible. Which, as intangible things are wont to be, is difficult to describe. In between the people, buildings, dates, newspapers, trends, anecdotes, and geographies, Hamill brings in a broader perspective, simultaneously New York and Not. It’s this characteristic, mostly, that makes Downtown immensely readable, appealing not only to history buffs or devoted NY fans, but also to Ilda, Amos, and Malka (etc., etc., etc.) . In short: everyone.
It’s nostalgic but never saccharine, thoughtful but never stuffy or dry, and dark at times but never without hope.
So, if you get a chance, read it. I highly recommend Downtown.
Downtown: My Manhattan, by Pete Hamill
due to be released Dec 1, 2004 by Little, Brown
Note:
* Actual quote subject to change pending release of finished book, etc., blah blah.
Posted by Ben on November 6, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/downtown/
On snakes
An article about a snake popping up at a movie theater during a showing of (what else?) “Anacondas” has at least three juicy tidbits that lend themselves rather well to snarky commentary, what commentary you’re unfortunately going to have to supply yourself. The three bits are as follows:
- the snake people believe it could be a Burmese python
- “Just because we didn’t see one doesn’t mean it’s not there”
- it was unlikely a python would have just wandered in
Posted by Ben on November 6, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/on-snakes/
e-Sick
While the internet may help some people with various chronic conditions, a new study seems to indicate that “cyber-medicine” may actually leave others worse off than if they’d simply listened to their doctors.
(EurekAlert/University College London: “Knowledge may be hazardous to web consumers’ health” [October 17, 2004])
Posted by Ben on November 6, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/e-sick/
Point / Counterpoint
Momus aka Nick Currie writes:
For those of you thinking of leaving America today — and there are many, I’m sure — I’d say just do it. Walk away.
…
So just leave. America doesn’t deserve you. Walk away. America doesn’t need your talent, your creativity and your intelligence. Or rather, it needs them desperately, but it will never acknowledge that. It’s too stupid to understand that. If it calls for you, it will call for you for the wrong reasons. It will call you up as a soldier. It will call for you as canon-fodder in some spurious and unnecessary war that serves the interests of 1% of its population and an even smaller percentage of the world’s population. Even if it lets you live in relative peace as a mere civilian, it will force you to live in ways that destroy the world’s weather systems and its environment. It will use your tax to fund pre-emptive wars of aggressive imperialism against impoverished nations with energy resources.
Sarah Anderson, of the Institute for Policy Studies, dissents:
Ready to say screw this country and buy a one-way ticket north? Here are some reasons to stay in the belly of the beast.
1. The Rest of the World. After the February 2003 antiwar protests, the New York Times described the global peace movement as the world’s second superpower. Their actions didn’t prevent the war, but protestors in nine countries have succeeded in pressuring their governments to pull their troops from Iraq and/or withdraw from the so-called “coalition of the willing”. Antiwar Americans owe it to themajority of the people on this planet who agree with them to stay and do what they can to end the suffering in Iraq and prevent future pre-emptive wars.
Momus/Currie’s “Exit this Roman shell” post is worth reading in its entirety, and Anderson’s plea, called “Ten Reasons Not to Move to Canada”, presents a number of cogent points.
On a much more lighthearted note, Paris Hilton appears to still be among the living despite:
- appearing in the whole “Vote or Die!” campaign and
- subsequently failing to vote
Was VOTE OR DIE too ambiguous, perhaps?
Posted by Ben on November 4, 2004
https://www.swordbilled.com/point-counterpoint/