ain't got time to take a fast train

It’s a little clearer now. Nice digs.

Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs on board the presidential plane that took Obama and his entourage to Washington over the weekend. Gibbs was cited in the New York Times piece Emotional Trip on Plane Bound for the Presidency on "the realization that Mr. Obama had won the presidency."


p.s. entitled

speaking of coins

You can't just say, 'I have a model for tremors that works great, I just can't explain earthquakes.'

Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff, speaking of the crisis of faith that's rumbling through the academic economics community as a result of their general failure to see the financial crisis coming, in Paradigm Lost in the 21 December issue of the Boston Globe.

In the same piece Justin Wolfers of the University of Pennsylvania, "describes these intellectually challenging but less policy-relevant questions" that have occupied the academic community since the 1980s, "as a sort of scholarly 'luxury good.' 'During good times we all consume more luxuries,' he says, 'but during a bad economy, it feels to macroeconomists that what we should be doing is stuff to help today.'"

The Globe continues: "Some economists have suggested that this focus may account for why so many failed to see the warning signs of the financial crisis, and to predict the size and scope of its fallout."


Update: Krugman links to a few who had an inkling »

orange you glad

My parents were, like, ‘Sorry, no gifts, we’re doing a piñata and, here, have an orange. And that made me cry.

Brooklyn native Daniel Pantaleon whose parents hail from Chinantla, Mexico, cited in a really lovely piece about the Christmas celebration in Chinantla in this morning's New York Times.

Having a lovely Christmas. Hope you are too.

full metal flak

s.trooper1
Originally uploaded by Scotch! ©

Podium alums share a bipartisan kinship, signified by the ceremonial flak jacket that hangs in the closet of the press secretary’s West Wing office. It was placed there originally by Gerald Ford’s podium man, Ron Nessen.

Outgoing press secretaries write notes of advice for their successors and leave them in one pocket. Every previous note remains there, neatly arranged and tied together in a ribbon.

Mark Leibovich writing in Between Obama and the Press in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

the et cetera of history

He was always concerned with what he called the ‘et cetera’ of history. The people left out.

Historian Howard Zinn speaking of Studs Terkel yesterday at a memorial in his honor at the Great Hall at Cooper Union in New York. The memorial was sponsored by the Nation and the Indypendent.

Yesterday in Chicago while Mr. Zinn spoke in New York, 250 workers occupied their factory, Republic Windows and Doors, on the North side of the city, just off Division -- the long divide that served as the landscape for Mr. Terkel’s first book, Division Street: America.

The factory shut its doors on Friday and laid off its entire workforce with only three days advance notice, rather than the 60 days mandated by Federal law. Workers have been denied the severance and vacation pay that they earned.

The workers have vowed not to leave until things are set right.

Company officials could not be reached for comment, and none were present on the site yesterday where, according to the New York Times, “30 workers sat in folding chairs on the factory floor. ... They came in shifts around the clock. They tidied things. They shoveled snow.”

Et cetera.

golden parachutes

In Raleigh, executives at RBC Bank canceled the parachuters that were supposed to appear at the grand opening of its new headquarters, saying it was not an appropriate time to have people jumping off a bank building.

For Two Longtime Bank Rivals in Charlotte, Competition Turns to Concern in today's New York Times.

shhh.

The Web is not just a way to shout, it is a way to listen, one that can lead to deeper, more effective journalism.

David Carr paraphrasing Jeff Jarvis in All of Us, The Arbiters of News in this morning's New York Times.

PPT

These are usually very smart people, and they are very good at PowerPoint presentations.

But you shouldn't rely on them more than the people in your own company.

Former Coca-Cola exec Donald R. Keough speaking about consultants in today's New York Times. He was interviewed about his new book: The Ten Commandments of Business Failure.

Amen.

(Full disclosure: I'm a consultant.)

equitable terrain

When you construct a good sidewalk, you are constructing democracy. A sidewalk is a symbol of equality.

Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, in Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

don't tread on me

[The Danes] appear to underestimate the importance of floor-coverings.

An Ikea spokesperson responding in the Times Online on the research findings of a Copenhagen academic who uncovered that:

Sweden's all-conquering furniture firm quite shamelessly names its fanciest futons, tables and chairs after Swedish, Finnish or Norwegian places, while reserving Danish place names for doormats, draught-excluders and cheap carpets.

Double-posting a comment response, given the sizable social significance of this finding.

Many thanks to @dianeburnett for passing it along.

fallout

Each cell is a time capsule of sorts.

Neurobiologist Kirsty L. Spalding of the Karolinsky Institute in Sweden commenting on the way the C14 carbon isotope left its timestamp on human DNA cells as the result of nuclear bomb testing, in this morning's New York Times.

By way of explanation the piece goes on:

The method for dating human cells takes advantage of an effect caused by above-ground nuclear bomb testing that took place from 1955 to 1963.

When the bombs were tested, their radioactivity created a spike in the amount of a carbon isotope, C14, in the atmosphere. The C14 made its way into plants and animals that ate the plants.

When people ate those plants and meat from the animals, the C14 was incorporated into their human DNA. After the nuclear test ban, C14 levels started to drop. The result is that every cell has a C14 level that reflects the level in the atmosphere at the time the cell was born.

non-sequitur

Welcome to Chicago O'Hare International Airport ... Curbside waiting is prohibited ... NO CURBSIDE WAITING ... All vehicles subject to search ... Welcome ...

The Welcome message on the electronic reader board on the approach to O'Hare.

Hopped off a redeye from Vegas at 5.30AM, now back again for my 7.30PM flight to Detroit. I think this may be a record for me. I've arrived in the evening and departed the next morning, but never vice versa with only a nap in between.

For what it's worth: It was a really nice nap.

about that tooth remark

... I just have it -- I have no choice -- it seems to be right in my teeth.

-- Georgia O'Keefe talking about the "life spirit" that runs through her work.

land of lincoln

Lest we forget, he came to Washington from Illinois. Even though we think of him as the American Jesus, he had a little Mayor Daley in him too.

Sarah Vowell writing about, er, Abraham Lincoln and his Gettysburgh Address in The Partly Cloudy Patriot.

I picked up Vowell's book hard on the heels of reading Garry Wills' Two Speeches on Race in the 1 May 2008 issue of the New York Review of Books, in which Wills favorably compares Obama's speech on race and Lincoln's 1860 Cooper Union speech in which Lincoln addressed his association with John Brown and commented on the Dred Scott Decision. Says Wills:

What is of lasting interest is their similar strategy for meeting the charge of extremism.

Both argued against the politics of fear. Neither denied the darker aspects of our history, yet they held out hope for what Lincoln called here the better 'lights of current experience' -- what he would later call the 'better angels of our nature.'

Each looked for larger patterns under the surface bitternesses of their day. Each forged a moral position that rose above the occasions for their speaking.

Apologies for the lack of linkage & the funky formatting -- queuing this up en route to Vegas. Will update soon.

Update: Linked.

barack & the blues

Q. As a self-declared Blues Man -- someone who is distrustful of superficial optimism -- what do you think of Obama's message about "hope"?

A. I do worry at times that our culture confuses mature hope with naive audacity. It is important to remember that the blues conception of hope is in no way identical with the optimism of the American Dream.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream was not the American Dream. It was rooted in the American Dream -- it incorporated the need to work hard, defer gratification and aspire to be the best. But it was also a rejection of crass materialism, hedonism and narcissism.

At times, Obama's talk about "the audacity of hope" oscillates between the deep blues conception of hope and the thin hope of American optimism. It concerns me, but it doesn't trouble me.

Professor Cornel West, as interviewed in the 20 March issue of Rolling Stone Magazine.

Rolling Stone has endorsed Obama's candidacy for President -- which "marks the first time we've chosen a candidate during the primary season."

of ice caps & queens

We keep churning out warm coats,
but people don't need them any longer.

Fashion Designer Miuccia Prada referring to global warming, as cited by Beppe Severgnini in The Economist's 'World in 2008' annual.

of mice and men (or what henry said)

One of the highlights of our brief trip to Richmond was running into a fellow named Ray who gives walking tours of St. John’s Episcopal Church where Patrick Henry gave his rousing Give Me Liberty... call to arms in March of 1775.

Ray’s passionate telling -- he broke the story down frame by frame -- brought the history alive and won my love forever. He even gave us a snippet of Henry’s speech, which I looked up online on my return home and whittled down excessively (this being the abbreviated age of the Internet) for your reading pleasure, below:

Different men often see the same subject in different lights ... This is no time for ceremony ... it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery ... it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts ... Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not ... whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it ... I know of no way of judging of the future but by the past ... We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne ... our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne! In vain ... may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation.

There is no longer any room for hope.

Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace -- but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

except for scenic designers

When you see an aging building or a rusted bridge, you are seeing nature and man working together. If you paint over a building, there is no more magic to that building. But if it is allowed to age, then man has built it and nature has added into it — it's so organic.

But often people wouldn't think to permit that, except for scenic designers.

Film director David Lynch speaking of Beauty in Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity. Another one from the Tattered Cover haul.

Which I summarized in brief in an email to a friend in which I suggested he was welcome to the book now that I'd finished it:

p.s. & unrelated: just finished the david lynch book. strangely rambling & yet concise take on the connection between his meditation practise and his work in film/the creative process. a really light but enjoyable read. with some bizarreness like a chapter entitled: "The box & the key"[1] followed by a single sentence: "I don't have a clue what those are."

the book's a little like a david lynch film, actually.

Needless to say, he didn't take me up on my offer.

[1] A Mullholland Drive reference, no?



Update: Speaking of David Lynch, @vasta just tweeted this: David Lynch on the iPhone »

make snow, not war

But people are fed up with war. They just want to live in peace, and to ski.

Skier Shkelzen Domi, commenting on the tension surrounding the possibility that Kosovo will declare independence from Serbia, in this morning's New York Times.

turning over the bowl

Young Monk with Alms Bowl
Originally uploaded by zrim.

One has to recognize that within the Buddhist sangha, there is only one act that is permitted by their rules of conduct, and that is patta-nikkujjana-kamma, the turning over of the bowl. And it's the proper response of the sangha as the penultimate rebuke of laity when they threaten the teachings of the Buddha or threatened to split the sangha.

And so, in a sense, by turning over the bowl, they were rebuking the very foundations of the way in which this regime was trying to claim it had the moral authority to rule. And I think that that makes it more difficult after this crisis settles down in whatever way. It will make it impossible for them to return to the everyday forms of legitimacy, making, and seeking that they had been doing.

Ingrid Jordt, assistant professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, former Buddhist nun, and author of Burma's Mass Lay Meditation Movement, speaking on Speaking of Faith, Burma: Buddhism + Power of the monks who turned over their bowls this last September in Myanmar.

Lot of good content on the website »