a chemical stress

"And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully! Smoothed by long..."

Tue, 19 Aug 2008 00:35:57 -0400

“And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep…tired…or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon
a platter,
I am no prophet —- and here’s no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.”

- The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock - 3quarksdaily

In Changing Harlem, Soul Food Struggles - NYTimes.com

Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:24:57 -0400

In Changing Harlem, Soul Food Struggles - NYTimes.com

Splitting. (via Autumn Leaf { MaryFelicity })

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 22:41:32 -0400

Splitting. (via Autumn Leaf { MaryFelicity })

The Art of Alex CF

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 22:35:48 -0400

The Art of Alex CF

"At first, Raj tried to create an address using his own name, but, remarkably, both gururaj@gmail.com..."

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 16:51:30 -0400

“At first, Raj tried to create an address using his own name, but, remarkably, both gururaj@gmail.com and rajguru@gmail.com were already taken. So he tried the name of the young senator from Illinois who was giving the Democratic keynote address on TV. To his surprise, it worked, and, moments later, barackobama@gmail.com was quietly born.”

- Squatters: Obama’s In-box: The Talk of the Town: The New Yorker

Inside Professor Obama’s Classroom - The Caucus - Politics - New York Times Blog

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 21:04:13 -0400

Inside Professor Obama’s Classroom - The Caucus - Politics - New York Times Blog

"Let me raise a voice of dissent. Wall-E is an innovative and visually stunning film, but the..."

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:37:00 -0400

“Let me raise a voice of dissent. Wall-E is an innovative and visually stunning film, but the “satire” it draws is simple-minded. It plays off the easy analogy between obesity and ecological catastrophe, pushing the notion that Western culture has sickened both our bodies and our planet with the same disease of affluence. According to this lazy logic, a fat body stands in for a distended culture: We gain weight and the Earth suffers. If only society could get off its big, fat ass and go on a diet!”

- fatshionista: More about Wall-E

"And now we’ve reached the next stage of our seemingly never-ending financial crisis. This time..."

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:16:00 -0400

“

And now we’ve reached the next stage of our seemingly never-ending financial crisis. This time Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are in the headlines, with dire warnings of imminent collapse. How worried should we be?

Well, I’m going to take a contrarian position: the storm over these particular lenders is overblown. Fannie and Freddie probably will need a government rescue. But since it’s already clear that that rescue will take place, their problems won’t take down the economy.

”

- Op-Ed Columnist - Fannie, Freddie and You - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

"There is much work women can do on a farm with perfect propriety,” Laura Clay, a bluegrass farmer..."

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:14:00 -0400

““There is much work women can do on a farm with perfect propriety,” Laura Clay, a bluegrass farmer and veteran suffragist was quoted as saying in The New York Times on Nov. 18, 1917. Nearly a century later, Clay’s statement rings vibrantly true. There are 80 percent more women who are farmers than there were 20 years ago in the United States, even as the number of farms has decreased, according to the Department of Agriculture.”

- The Way We Eat - Out of the Kitchen, Into the Field - Female Farmers of the Northeast - NYTimes.com

"The jubilation felt by some Egyptians after 9/11 was tied, in part, to a hope that their lives would..."

Tue, 27 May 2008 17:13:13 -0400

“The jubilation felt by some Egyptians after 9/11 was tied, in part, to a hope that their lives would finally change, no doubt for the better. They expected that America, having been bloodied, would loosen its grip on the Muslim world. Without American support, the tyrants of the Middle East would be pushed aside by the Islamists, who posed the only potent alternative. But the U.S., instead of withdrawing, invaded two Muslim countries and became even more enmeshed in the politics of the region. Nevertheless, the audacity of Al Qaeda’s attacks helped give radical Islamists credibility among people who were desperate for change. The years immediately after 9/11 presented an opportunity for the Islamists to offer their vision of a redeemed political system that brought about real improvements in people’s lives. Instead, they continued to propagate their fantasies of theocracy and a caliphate, which had little chance of ever happening, and did nothing to address the actual problems facing the Egyptians: illiteracy, joblessness, and the desperation that came from watching the rest of the world pass them by. As a result, the young were eager for fresh thinking—a way to escape the dead end of radical Islam.”

- A Reporter at Large: The Rebellion Within: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

"In a culture that hails mobile phones and plasma-screen televisions as the great innovations of our..."

Thu, 08 May 2008 23:23:39 -0400

“In a culture that hails mobile phones and plasma-screen televisions as the great innovations of our time, Smith is gloriously out of step. She designs medical devices and labor-saving machines for people who live at the far end of dirt roads in Africa. Her inventions cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to a few pennies. ”You can’t understand how important a grain mill is,” she says, ”until you’ve spent three hours pounding grain and gotten a cup and a half of flour.” It is this kind of understanding — of tedium, of tired muscles, of hunger pangs — that Smith brings to her work.”

- Necessity Is the Mother Of Invention - New York Times

"In the course of the campaign, Clinton has tried out at least a dozen lines of attack against Obama,..."

Thu, 08 May 2008 00:09:35 -0400

“In the course of the campaign, Clinton has tried out at least a dozen lines of attack against Obama, from ridiculing his message of hope—“The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing”—to questioning his preparedness. “One of us is ready to be Commander-in-Chief,” she told a crowd in New York. “Let’s get real.” The attacks in themselves have not been especially effective and, as is so often the case, they have had a damaging effect on their instigator; according to a recent Washington Post/ABC News poll, the proportion of Americans who view Clinton negatively has risen to a record high of fifty-four per cent.”

- No Endgame: Comment: The New Yorker

50 Ways to Help the Planet

Thu, 01 May 2008 21:28:54 -0400

50 Ways to Help the Planet

Little Billy seeks life advice, and America’s most...

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:12:07 -0400

Little Billy seeks life advice, and America’s most notorious killers are happy to oblige

Rising Tide North America » Blog Archive » Greenwash...

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 19:07:49 -0400

Rising Tide North America » Blog Archive » Greenwash Guerrillas Pie Thomas Friedman on Earth Day

"Hemingway liked Cuban rum in general and frozen daiquiris—which provoked him into a small..."

Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:25:02 -0400

“

Hemingway liked Cuban rum in general and frozen daiquiris—which provoked him into a small rhapsody—in particular. “This frozen daiquiri,” he wrote in Islands in the Stream, “so well beaten as it is, looks like the sea where the wave falls away from the bow of a ship when she is doing thirty knots.”

The daiquiri as we know it is a sort of alcoholic sherbet, often extruded from vast, Dairy Queen—like dispensers. It is associated with sundresses and strawberries, linked more to ice-cream headaches than hangovers. One wonders: How did the manliest of bare-fisted fighting men fall in with such a beverage?

Seeking the answer to a simple question can give a pilgrim great stamina. So it was with my quest.

”

- The Old Man and the Daiquiri

"Hash-browns are dismissed as “ghastly manifestations of American imperialism” (damned uppity..."

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 23:16:06 -0400

“Hash-browns are dismissed as “ghastly manifestations of American imperialism” (damned uppity colonials), and Sir Winston Churchill himself might as well be playing Elgar in his Union Jack underpants as we read that: “A good English breakfast never lets you down.” No, it kills you. That’s what an English breakfast does. The current £7.25 “Olympic” breakfast at Little Chef comprises: “two rashers of crisp backbacon, British outdoor-reared pork sausage, two griddled eggs, whole-cup mushrooms, crispy sauté potatoes, fresh griddled tomato, Heinz baked beans and toasted or fried extra-thick bloomer bread”. Olympic? What the hell event do they have in mind, the 3,000m casualty dash? The Triple Barf (also called the hop, skip and vomit)? The Synchronised Massive Coronary? Ye Gods, if that’s what our young athletes are going to be packing down daily in advance of 2012 then we’ll win even fewer gold medals than the, er, none, which I believe is currently predicted for this whey-faced generation of feckless British fatties.”

- Why the great British breakfast is a killer - Times Online

"When me get back to apartment, after cookie binge, me can’t stand looking in mirror—fur matted..."

Thu, 17 Apr 2008 22:18:04 -0400

“When me get back to apartment, after cookie binge, me can’t stand looking in mirror—fur matted with chocolate-chip smears and infested with crumbs. Me try but me never able to wash all of them out. Me don’t think me is monster. Me just furry blue person who love cookies too much. Me no ask for it. Me just born that way.”

- McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Cookie Monster Searches Deep Within Himself and Asks: Is Me Really Monster?

"The libertarian aspect of the approach lies in the straightforward insistence that, in general,..."

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:02:54 -0400

“The libertarian aspect of the approach lies in the straightforward insistence that, in general, people should be free to do what they like. They should be permitted to opt out of arrangements they dislike, and even make a mess of their lives if they want to. The paternalistic aspect acknowledges that it is legitimate for choice architects to try to influence people’s behavior in order to make their lives longer, healthier and better.”

- Designing better choices - Los Angeles Times

"In its company literature, Monsanto now refers to itself disingenuously as a “relatively new..."

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:35:32 -0400

“In its company literature, Monsanto now refers to itself disingenuously as a “relatively new company” whose primary goal is helping “farmers around the world in their mission to feed, clothe, and fuel” a growing planet. In its list of corporate milestones, all but a handful are from the recent era. As for the company’s early history, the decades when it grew into an industrial powerhouse now held potentially responsible for more than 50 Environmental Protection Agency Superfund sites—none of that is mentioned. It’s as though the original Monsanto, the company that long had the word “chemical” as part of its name, never existed.”

- Monsanto’s Harvest of Fear: Politics & Power: vanityfair.com