La demora

Apparently, apart from being a wonderful human being, my UBA practico professor, Carlos Battilana, is also a poet :

(credit Male)

Colonia

Los plásticos
cubren la casa:
el viento trabaja
a mi favor. Veo
por pequeños orificios
retazos de la ciudad.
Me han contado
amorosamente
antiguas historias romanas
y les he creído;
sin embargo
sólo comprendo lo que miro:
un muro raído, el recorte
de algo oscuro y profundo,
y los autos, incesantes,
en torno.

Urbanization in the 21st Century

"...one school in remote southeast Alaska survived only by advertising on Craiglist for families with school-aged children."

Article
Video

The Doldrums

"This cheerless sea between them, and the calmness of the weather whose only purpose seems to be to allow evil forces to gather fresh strength, are the last mystical barriers between to regions so diametrically opposed to each other through different conditions that the first people to become aware of the fact could not believe that they were equally human. A continent barely touched by man lay exposed to men whose greed could no longer be satisfied by their own continent. Everything would be called into question by this second sin: God, morality, and law. In simultaneous yet contradictory fashion, everything would be verified in practice and revoked in principle: the Garden of Eden, the Golden Age of antiquity, the Fountain of Youth, Atlantis, the Hesperides, the Islands of the Blessed, would be found to be true; but revelation, salvation, customs, and law would be challenged by the spectacle of a purer, happier race of men (who, of course, were not really purer or happier, although a deep-seated remorse made them appear so). Never had humanity experienced such a harrowing test, and it will never experience such another, unless, some day, millions of miles from our own world, we discover some other globe, inhabited by thinking beings. We have at least the advantage of knowing that the distance can in theory be bridged, whereas the early navigators feared they might be venturing into the void."

- Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, on the colonial encounter at the Equator

Precise Order

Berkeley Sit In

In solidarity from Argentina

Gay marriage advances in argentina

"Después del fallo de la Justicia que declaró inconstitucional el impedimento de casarse a dos personas del mismo sexo y que ordenó al Registro Civil de la ciudad a celebrar la unión de la pareja que lo había solicitado, el jefe de Gobierno porteño anunció que no apelará la decisión."

"After the Judicial ruling, which delcared it unconstitutional to prevent the marriage of two people of the same sex and, also, ordered the Civil Register to celebrate the union of the couple which had filed the request, the mayor of Buenos Aires (Macri) said he would not appeal the decision."

-Pagina 12

So good

For Daniel - In Response to the Tea Party Video

I am continually shocked at how quickly Liberals lost the tone of political discourse in the country after Obama was elected. The casual use of "fascism", "Nazi", "socialist healthcare", and pictures of Nazi death camps are no longer even surprising as a tool of the Right. When confronted, individual Republican politicians claim that they don't quite support it. But by not stopping it in the act, they effectively claim it as their own. It's a little bit like file sharing, actually. Torrent sites rely on the input of individuals, but refuse to police their own populations. They only remove illegal torrents when confronted by the large media organizations or courts. Technically, torrent sites are not responsible for the input of their individuals, though they are providing a platform for the individuals' actions. Perhaps some Republicans actually do use the Internet....

Paul Krugman wrote a great NYT editorial today about how the paranoid tone of the Right could play out. It doesn't look good.

(Plus Paul Krugman saves cats from burning buildings.)

Lin-Manuel Miranda at White House

UGH

I have no words:



And yet they're still allowed to be the Christian Right...

Appendices

Jon Stewart and The Daily Show are actually still the best thing on TV.

Watch some Glenn Beck videos on YouTube to get a dose of the strange, manic, paranoid ramblings and the body language, and then watch Jon Stewart make you laugh.

The Hiss

He chopped the vegetables rhythmically, each slice hissing like cool raw fish. Fingers clenched and clumsily tumbled the chunks into an oily pan. The hiss grew yellow, like fur rubbed in the wrong direction. As the body moved about the empty kitchen, the cooked vegetables hissed with echoless, murmuring voices. The faucet hissed victoriously, scattering juice from the knife and grease from the pan. On the bare table, the vegetables hissed quiet ghostly steam on a clean white plate.