Many of Bersuit’s lyrics pack the punch of poetry and their music can be as moving as that of the best bands.
Toco y me voy is likely my favorite of theirs, a wonderful tribute to soccer – a sport I don’t even follow.
On a related note, the recent movie Rudo y Cursi is a happy reflection on celebrity, football and sibling rivalry. I most enjoyed Guillermo Francella in the role of a middle-aged talent agent and wisecracking hedonist.
Jill Lepore: “Germ theory, which secularized infectious diseases, had a side effect: it sacralized epidemiology.”
The notion of god is like a bubble trapped under film. You can push it down and out of sight but then it just pops up elsewhere and otherwise. Even the declaration “God is dead” or “There was never a God” requires that you recognize a God, that you give it a shape, a definition, an identity. Imaginary entities exist. If not, what’s a triangle?
Part of the pleasure of witnessing a magic trick is bumping up against the limits of consciousness: you can think up to here but no further. Curiously, recognizing that “blind spot” is liberating.
This strange freedom must have weighed heavily on George Herbert when he wrote The Collar in 1633. To which a modern might respond as Nelson Muntz does on The Simpsons. Or as Woody Allen does in most of his films.
In a much discussed and very provocative essay about health care, Atul Gawande makes two very compelling arguments.
First, that doctors and hospitals don’t share enough information and are thus very inefficient. This claim should not be controversial. Whenever humans have shared information the outcome has been greater life, liberty and happiness. The second observation, however, gets at a fundamental point of contention in American society: does the profit motive ensure the greatest efficiency in every kind of transaction?
Gawande answers “no,” pointing out how revenue-driven heath-care leads doctors and patients alike to engage in transactions that, while profitable for the doctors, do not lead to better health outcomes for the patients. The wealthier the doctor does not necessarily mean the healthier his or her patients.
If you believe Max Weber had us modern Americans pegged when he said we confuse the size of our bank accounts with the brightness of our halos (or, that the wealthy have values the poor lack) the origins of this mistake are clear-cut. What to do about that confusion is not as clear. There is certainly a humanistic counterpoint to the Protestant work ethic in American culture. From a theological perspective, “all men are created equal” is quite the claim. But it is only in fits and starts that we affirm concern for our fellow man as the goal of our founding compact – and caritas a defining characteristic of a more perfect union.
Doctors are more fundamental to our democracy than we realize. If each man has an inalienable right to life, what of the life sciences?
We may already have a precedent in our justice system. Private lawyers can make wildly varying incomes. But are the most just judges, the best paid? We don’t appear to think that way. And that might be a good place to start thinking.
I just found this slidesow from 2005 about visiting dog show. It might even be cheaper now to edit out the dogs.
someone is building a house on the hill behind us. at first, when the work was tedious, the music was loud and mexican. now the music is quieter and 80s pop, punctuated by nail guns and the occasional table saw.
It’s official: Italy is a parody of itself.
The [new] Italian National Guard uniforms feature an imperial eagle, a symbol often associated with Fascism. In addition, on the armband is a black-rayed sun, or Sonnenrad, an image found in a castle used by the Nazi’s paramilitary SS. The guard was introduced by the right-wing fringe Italian Social Movement at a Milan party conference during which at least two speakers gave the straight-armed Fascist salute…However, government officials said they would go ahead with legislation allowing unarmed citizen patrols to help beef up security in Italian cities and towns. The plan is part of a crackdown by the conservative administration on illegal immigration.
The odds are always with whoever has control of the army and airwaves. People can be forgiven for already assuming that the hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating today in Tehran will fail in contesting the election results. Perhaps they will. But then again, perhaps they won’t. Mir-Hossein Mousavi has a lot of people on his side and we don’t just mean the throngs in the street. He was accompanied today in his appearance in Tehran in front of his supporters with former President Mohamed Khatami and the other rival presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi. Even the right wing candidate (to the right of Ahmadinejad), Mohsen Razaee (a former leader of the Revolutionary Guard), has contested the election results. And these aren’t necessarily soft touches…. Each was involved in the revolution that brought down the US supported monarchy and still remembers how that went.
Much more:
It was an incredible sight. A huge crowd, hundreds of thousands of people maybe even millions of people there in defiance of open threats from the government that they should not assemble. The security forces were staying well away – we were even able to film and usually the secret police come in straight away and stop you. But the crowds were so enormous they were stepping back.
And a wonderful moment caught on tape: a spontaneous demonstration.
Heartbreaking. Conservatives in Iran steal the election, cut off all media and give police orders to shoot to kill protesters. Analysis of the stolen election by Juan Cole and, in a sense, of the stolen revolution by Laura Secor, both via Josh Marshall.
you may have read Google’s paper on predicting the present? the web has given the invisible hand of the market an opposable thumb, if you will, by allow the market to more clearly articulate its desires.
beforehand, it was all too common for a few people to be given the responsibility of deciding what “the masses” want. often to miserable results.
in a recollection of the music industry in the 1960s, Frank Zappa credits the older generation for allowing the market to decide what music was cool. Zappa then ridicules the young, supposedly hip music executives who think they know what the kids want – but never think to just ask them.
when it was hard to find things (before the web), an idea had to be either very popular (the more people who believe X, the more likely you’ll run into someone who believes X) or it had to be popular with a few powerful people (the kind who program radio, TV, newspapers, etc.) for it to spread quickly.
today, so many things have been indexed on the web that you can find and/or stumble upon all sorts of “obscure” ideas very easily. searching has also become a kind of past-time. (we now say and do “google it” far more often than we ever did “go to the library and look it up.”) likewise navigating social networks to meet and/or interact with more people.
so we have a population that is constantly searching a bottomless treasure chest of ideas and knowledge (other people). never mind the “long tail,” what’s happening inside that collective mind? what connections are being made?
(an analogy: psychoactive drugs like LSD, famed for their ability to induce altered states and cognitive shifts, merely connect parts of the brain that are usually not connected – and, possibly, have no business being or staying connected.)
the web is full of people, bumping up against each other in the dark. there are still only a few architectures in place to create more structured encounters. for centuries, cities, buildings and rooms have created a myriad of opportunities for people to interact in many different ways. want to spend three hours with a thousand strangers? go to a coliseum. want to bump and grind with a stranger? go to a discotheque. want to look at people? go to a promenade. want to bump and grind with a stranger? go to a public basketball court. etc.
online presents even more opportunities for strangers to come together, interact in new ways and then drift apart. to date, relatively few such opportunities have been created.
Jim Rossignol proposes a stunningly simple and brilliant hypothesis in Videogames And The Impossibility Of Escape From Planet Earth. Hint: inner space.
More on intelligence: this time plants. Previously: animals.
Charlie Kaufman has a proposal: consciousness is a retaining wall against emotion. He wants to use paradox and absurdity to hammer out the pins that keep that retaining wall intact thus flooding the viewer with feeling. It’s a clever trick. Unfortunately, he is apparently mostly interested in feelings of despair and despondency.
The same technique could be used to release joy or wonder.
Along with Mr. Colbert, who arrived Friday, came 30 members of the show’s production staff. That’s one-third of the usual, but still a large operation that takes over several rooms at a former palace of Saddam Hussein, where the show is being taped: skinny comedy writers and producers milling around Camp Victory in vintage sneakers and peasant blouses give the sprawling compound a jarring touch of Williamsburg.
And in the same edition:
Famed for its concentration of heavily subsidized 20-something residents — also nicknamed trust-funders or trustafarians — Williamsburg is showing signs of trouble.
The paper of record can be very quaint parochial.
The history of psychology suggests that we know very little about our brains. Eventually, this history will include what we didn’t yet know about the intelligence of other animals:
“We think it is fair to assume that chimpanzees can remember the exact location of probably thousands of trees ,” says Normand.
Culture clash:
One indigenous leader, Luis Huansi, told Reuters news agency on Saturday that about 8,500 protesters had taken up strategic positions around the city of Yurimaguas.
He said the protesters would not be using guns: “We are counting on our traditional weapons which our forefathers left to us for defence, weapons to fight. They are spears.”
heart-breaking ecstasy:
Elliot Smith – Independence Day
Devendra Banhart – The Body Breaks
Feist – I Feel It All
Of Montreal – Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games
videos about the making of videos: