Zeitoun Amazing how one book can so illuminate two of the great tragedies of early-2000s America. Beautifully written, human, entertaining... just a wonderful book.  ¶ 9:20 AM 0 Comments

  Only ashes emerge from some crucibles From a disturbing piece by a Canadian convicted of murder, who claims innocence and is serving three consecutive life sentences in Washington State:

The ecstasy of agony is now clichéd: everyone has heard — though not from Nietzsche, surely — that what does not kill them makes them stronger, and “No pain, no gain” is the mantra of fitness buffs and corporate raiders alike. But we know the lessons of psychology. Harlow’s monkeys rarely recover from their deprivations; they bury their heads and scream and scream. So much that is precious is also fragile, and only ashes emerge from some crucibles.

And a description that can be read with this article that talks of the growing use of solitary confinement:

To grasp the indifference of the universe is one thing; to understand the open malevolence of an entire society of human beings is quite another. In the segregation cell, you are confronted with the terrible confluence of both. The world is narrowed to a single dirty room. However many times you are moved, the room is always the same; only the dirt is different. The days are the same as well, and they operate on the same, repeated plan. The food comes in on a tray, the tray goes out. The brief gleam of our lives between dark eternities seems not glimmer but dingy waste. The self and the spirit, you come to realize, do not exist deep within, but extend far beyond you; they exist only through the connection with all of that with which you share an interest.

  ¶ 9:54 AM 0 Comments

  Enter through the pirate shop Saw David Eggers last night at the beautiful Playhouse Square in Cleveland (thanks to Harrison Kalodimos and friends). Wonderfully entertaining and inspiring, especially the questions asked by the eighth-graders in the room. Appropriate, given Eggers' project, 826 National, which provides sanctuaries in various cities across the country where kids can get one-on-one attention for their creative writing. To meet the commercial coding restrictions of their first location, they opened a pirate supply store. Supply-needing pirates fund the center, and the kids get to do creative writing amidst glass eyes and buccaneer swords and planks sized for humans, parrots, and... kittens. As Eggers said, kids who walk into a creative writing hideaway through a pirate shop know that "these people know how my strange brain works."

Other 826 locations include a superhero supply shop, a 'museum of unnatural history,' and a time travel supply shop (duty free).  ¶ 9:01 AM 0 Comments

  the finest poetry

A self-immolating street vendor, millions protesting across the region, a small crew of organizers meeting in a sweet shop to outmaneuver the Egyptian security service, an imprisoned Google executive, charging camels, a human chain protecting millennia-old Pharaonic mummies, a tent-city in Tahrir Square, and finally a tyrant fleeing to a coastal resort as Swiss bankers seize his billions and the hundreds of millions of people celebrate. Truth has once again shown fiction who's boss.  ¶ 2:17 PM 0 Comments

  My bro's radio debut

Check out the Stowaways at http://www.myspace.com/windpoweredtour  ¶ 8:35 AM 0 Comments

  Where our brimstone comes from Bad day in the office? Check out these guys. They chop sulfur rocks off a volcano in the midst of geysers of steam and gas then carry some 70 to 90 kilos of rocks down to the weigh scales at the bottom. That a goat's head is the necessary annual sacrifice to prevent people from falling into one of the hot spots is a propos for a land that more than smells of sulfur. Baphomet nods.



From the Al Jazeera series, Working Man's Death.  ¶ 2:56 PM 0 Comments

  At the office Aside from getting to discuss how to change large systems, the emergence of social structures, organizational change, and the nature of consciousness on a daily basis, coming to 'work' has some other perks...


  ¶ 2:52 PM 0 Comments

  Double standard much? That the comments and actions of Martin Peretz weren't immediately denounced by anyone with even a pretension of respectability was repulsive enough. His 'apology' was embarrassingly transparent, as the stench of self-righteousness and melodramatic humility barely covered his lecturing the rest of us for 'committing the same transgressions.' But that Harvard is so resolute in honouring him is just depressing. From an article in Foreign Policy:

And why? Because Peretz has a lot of wealthy and well-connected friends. Bear in mind that in 2003 Harvard suspended and eventually returned a $2.5 million dollar gift from the president of the United Arab Emirates, after it learned that he was connected to a think tank that had sponsored talks featuring anti-Semitic and anti-American themes. As the Harvard Crimson said at the time, "no donation is worth indebting the university to practitioners of hate and bigotry." So the University clearly has some standards, it just doesn't apply them consistently.

For all my Harvard friends, you can find the petition here:

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/peretzletter/  ¶ 7:02 PM 0 Comments