Category

Short and Inconsequential

• 09.07.08
  Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity
  Short and Inconsequential (0)

  "For some years I've been troubled by an apparent decline in the standards of intellectual rigor in certain precincts of the American academic humanities. But I'm a mere physicist: if I find myself unable to make head or tail of jouissance and différance, perhaps that just reflects my own inadequacy. So, to test the prevailing intellectual standards, I decided to try a modest (though admittedly uncontrolled) experiment: Would a leading North American journal of cultural studies -- whose editorial collective includes such luminaries as Fredric Jameson and Andrew Ross -- publish an article liberally salted with nonsense if (a) it sounded ...
  
  
• 07.10.08
  There Will Be Corruption
  Short and Inconsequential (0)

  How Oil, Labor, and Government Mix in Mexico While Pemex has all the appearances of a real business, at least from the looks of its gleaming high-rise headquarters in Mexico City, the reality is that it isn't permitted to behave like one. Aside from paying heavy tribute to the government, the company doesn't have the freedom to hire and fire at will. Indeed, it often finds itself, thanks to union and government pressure, paying employees for doing little or nothing. Example: At the Pemex ammonia processing plant in Ciudad Camargo, closed for a half-dozen years, paid workers still show up, waiting ...
  
  
• 06.25.08
  A History of Malt Liquor
  Short and Inconsequential (0)

  "In recent years malt liquor is mostly for teenagers, alcoholics needing a fix, and broke people, even though its success still depends on the black (and now Latino) community. Due to negative press from the hip-hop and scientific communities (a 40 actually contains as much alcohol as five shots of hard liquor), it just isn't very "cool" to guzzle such swill. The advertising for malt liquor proper has all but disappeared, and my guess is that's because the stuff pretty much sells itself (as anything with the nickname "liquid crack" ought to). The $1.00 - $3.00 price can't be beat, ...
  
  
• 06.12.08
  Last Rites of Bokononism
  Short and Inconsequential (0)

  The Last Rites of the Bokononist Faith Performed in the Boko-Maru posture, both parties repeat one after the other: "God made mud, God got lonesome, So God said to some of the mud, "Sit up!", "See all I've made," said God, "the hills, the sea, the sky, the stars." And I was some of the mud that got to sit up and look around. Lucky me, lucky mud. I, mud, sat up and saw what a nice job God had done. Nice going, God! Nobody but You could have done it, God! I certainly couldn't have. I feel very unimportant compared to ...
  
  
• 05.28.08
  All The Rowboats
  Short and Inconsequential (0)

  "All the galleries, the museums Here's your ticket, welcome to the tombs They're just public mausoleums The living dead fill every room But the most special are the most lonely God, I pity the violins! In glass coffins they keep coughing They've forgotten, forgotten how to sing They will hang there in their gold frames For forever, forever and a day All the rowboats in the oil paintings They keep trying to row away, row away" Regina Spektor - All the Rowboats (Live) 01-26-2005, Los Angeles, CA | Hotel Cafe http://www.isitobvious.com/audio/music/rowboats.mp3
  
  
• 03.30.08
  High School
  Short and Inconsequential (0)

  "Your teachers are always telling you to behave like adults. I wonder if they'd like it if you did. You may be loud and disorganized, but you're very docile compared to adults. If you actually started acting like adults, it would be just as if a bunch of adults had been transposed into your bodies. Imagine the reaction of an FBI agent or taxi driver or reporter to being told they had to ask permission to go the bathroom, and only one person could go at a time. To say nothing of the things you're taught. If a bunch of ...
  
  
• 03.26.08
  Pick Your Battles
  Short and Inconsequential (0)

  "Suppose in the future there is a movement to ban the color yellow. Proposals to paint anything yellow are denounced as "yellowist", as is anyone suspected of liking the color. People who like orange are tolerated but viewed with suspicion. Suppose you realize there is nothing wrong with yellow. If you go around saying this, you'll be denounced as a yellowist too, and you'll find yourself having a lot of arguments with anti-yellowists. If your aim in life is to rehabilitate the color yellow, that may be what you want. But if you're mostly interested in other questions, being labeled ...