ministry of love

Mouse on Mars - They Know Your Name For your next warehouse...

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 03:40:22 -0500

Mouse on Mars - They Know Your Name

For your next warehouse rave.

I do not apologize.

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 00:37:06 -0400

I do not apologize.

YACHT - Shangri-La “Well if I can’t go to heaven,...

Tue, 11 Oct 2011 14:35:06 -0400

YACHT - Shangri-La

“Well if I can’t go to heaven, let me go to LA.”

Decemberists - Calamity Song

Mon, 22 Aug 2011 16:48:59 -0400

Decemberists - Calamity Song:

The Decemberist’s “Calamity Song” video is a surprisingly literal presentation of the YDAU Interdependence Day Eschaton scene from Infinite Jest. I was impressed by the attention to detail — Otis’ computer is even running Pink₂ — and Colin Meloy is an entertaining, if quite not a convincing, Michael Pemulis. But it wasn’t as gripping as I wanted it to be — I couldn’t make myself feel the tension on the court. Is a four-and-a-half-minute music video too short? It took DFW several hundred pages to get to that point. (And if you haven’t read the book, do, but probably don’t bother with the music video until you have.)

(And I really wanted to see Otis’ head get stuck in the monitor…)

Update: Lol, the director actually mourns that he couldn’t end the video that way.

Seeing even a portion of the beloved novel brought to life was “like a weird dream fugue,” he said, though he reluctantly accepted that his video could not end as the passage from “Infinite Jest” does, with a child’s having his head crashed into a computer monitor.

“They’re all flat screens now, and you can’t put your head through a flat screen,” he said.

link (nyt)

"I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is..."

Sun, 08 May 2011 21:20:40 -0400

““I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. If you knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think that you would have the courage to write it? What is true for writing and for a love relationship is true also for life. The game is worthwhile insofar as we don’t know what will be the end. My field is the history of thought. Man is a thinking being.””

- Truth, Power, Self : An Interview with Michel Foucault (via mfoucault)

Mostly I just want to point out Professor Noam Chomsky’s excellent use of the word...

Sun, 08 May 2011 20:51:00 -0400

Mostly I just want to point out Professor Noam Chomsky’s excellent use of the word “uncontroversially” below.

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

To be sure, a glance at http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ is sobering, but I don’t think that word means what Dr. Chomsky wants it to mean. ;p

Anyway, I don’t have very much to say vis-à-vis the legality of bin Laden’s assassination except to say that while we all know that assassination isn’t any kind of policy tool and if I were in charge of the US budget I probably wouldn’t have spent as many millions of taxpayer dollars on his head as we have, I’m having profound difficulty conjuring much sympathy for bin Laden’s fate. I’m cheered that people are willing to ask the tough questions about due process and international law because I think they’re important principles, but — and this is my American speaking — in this instance, I really just don’t care. I certainly don’t think bin Laden’s assassination was unjust or, well, surprising, and the relatively muted outcry seems to suggest it wasn’t exactly incompatible with American foreign policy goals.

The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We're All Going To Miss Almost Everything : Monkey See : NPR

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 18:06:37 -0400

The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We're All Going To Miss Almost Everything : Monkey See : NPR:

It is the recognition that well-read is not a destination; there is nowhere to get to, and if you assume there is somewhere to get to, you’d have to live a thousand years to even think about getting there, and by the time you got there, there would be a thousand years to catch up on.

Success is always built on shifting sands, though. [via, ironically, everybody]

North Vancouver man denied life-saving drug - British Columbia - CBC News

Sun, 10 Apr 2011 19:24:06 -0400

North Vancouver man denied life-saving drug - British Columbia - CBC News:

A 22-year-old North Vancouver man has said he is facing a death sentence because B.C. will not fund the only medical treatment that could save him. Garrett Shakespeare’s red blood cells have a protein deficiency that causes his immune system to attack them, but the drug to treat it effectively costs $500,000 a year.

We’re somehow going to have to get more comfortable, as a society, spending utterly absurd amounts of money on biologicals and being taxed accordingly (my entire annual Canadian tax liability, both federal and provincial, including HST and my Medical Services Plan premiums, would cover maybe a couple weeks of treatment for him)… or accepting some alternative.

Photo

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 00:13:35 -0500

"Yeah … sort of, um, who do I live for? What do I believe in, what do I want? I mean,..."

Sun, 20 Feb 2011 19:09:30 -0500

“

Yeah … sort of, um, who do I live for? What do I believe in, what do I want? I mean, they’re the sorts of questions so profound and so deep they sound banal when you say them out loud.

I think the reason why people behave in an ugly manner is that it’s really scary to be alive and to be human, and people are really really afraid… . That the fear is the basic condition, and there are all kinds of reasons for why we’re so afraid. But the fact of the matter is, is that, is that the job that we’re here to do is to learn how to live in a way that we’re not terrified all the time. And not in a position of using all kinds of different things, and using people to keep that kind of terror at bay. That is my personal opinion.
Well for me, as an American male, the face I’d put on the terror is the dawning realization that nothing’s enough, you know? That no pleasure is enough, that no achievement is enough. That there’s a kind of queer dissatisfaction or emptiness at the core of the self that is unassuagable by outside stuff… . And that our particular challenge is that there’s never been more and better stuff comin’ from the oustide, that seems temporarily to sort of fill the hole or drown out the hole.
I think it’s probably assuagable by internal means. I think those internal means have to be earned and developed, and it has something to do with, um, um, the pop-psych phrase is lovin’ yourself.
It’s more like, if you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it’s probably possible to achieve that. I think part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do it. I know that sounds a little pious.

”

- David Foster Wallace, typed out by hand (just so you know) from “Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself.”

Documents Show Congressman David Wu’s Staff “Threatened to...

Fri, 18 Feb 2011 22:08:10 -0500

Documents Show Congressman David Wu’s Staff “Threatened to Shut Down His Campaign”

Oh dear.

seanbonner: Accidentally

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 21:59:27 -0500

seanbonner:

Accidentally

"Do you know what, it was cultural,” he concludes. “I never came from the place that those people..."

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 21:44:52 -0500

““Do you know what, it was cultural,” he concludes. “I never came from the place that those people came from, so to come in and go, ‘I’m just going to try and make this stuff’ was probably a bit naive.” He’s at pains to point out that the divide wasn’t racial […] but one of geography and background; Blake comes from Enfield, dubstep started 27 miles away in Croydon.”

-
James Blake, from this Guardian interview.

As a North American, the concept of being an unwanted, uncomprehending outsider because you’re from twenty-seven miles away makes me boggle. I actually thought this might be a very deadpan joke; Dan Hancox has been kind enough to enlighten me about UK musical microregionalism.

(via zedequalszee)

27 miles was like my daily commute to high school! I guess Centreville just wasn’t a happening scene on its own?

Telekinesis - Dirty Thing This is essentially a Death Cab song...

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 21:40:44 -0500

Telekinesis - Dirty Thing

This is essentially a Death Cab song (cf. “Photobooth”, “Summer Skin”, lIterally like half of their catalog) but it’s really well done and if you don’t like it there isn’t anything I can do for you, I don’t think.

Join Dana Milkbank's Sarah Palin moratorium

Sat, 22 Jan 2011 12:43:24 -0500

I feel powerless to control my obsession, even though it cheapens and demeans me. But today is the first day of the rest of my life. And so, I hereby pledge that, beginning on Feb. 1, 2011, I will not mention Sarah Palin — in print, online or on television — for one month. Furthermore, I call on others in the news media to join me in this pledge of a Palin-free February. With enough support, I believe we may even be able to extend the moratorium beyond one month, but we are up against a powerful compulsion, and we must take this struggle day by day.

YES THIS DEAR GOD

CAFFEINE NICOTINATE it’s not quite what you expect it to...

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 20:33:00 -0500

CAFFEINE NICOTINATE

it’s not quite what you expect it to be (it’s a niacin [nicotinic acid] salt, not a nicotine salt) but it’s a pretty good name anyway

Synthetic Spirits

Sat, 15 Jan 2011 20:25:06 -0500

Synthetic Spirits:

Why is alcohol so widely available if it is so toxic and what can we do about it? … I think it is time to use the now-considerable knowledge of the neuropsychopharmacology of alcohol to develop safer, alternative intoxicants whose effects can be reversed by antidotes.

The Scientist; free registration required.

File under: pretty things you can see from my window, some...

Fri, 14 Jan 2011 02:27:00 -0500

North Shore, face of the Wall Centre

Reflections!

File under: pretty things you can see from my window, some days.

My window, which I am desperately hoping the building is going to have cleaned, soon.

"It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea..."

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 16:05:30 -0500

“It is facile and mistaken to attribute this particular madman’s act directly to Republicans or Tea Party members. But it is legitimate to hold Republicans and particularly their most virulent supporters in the media responsible for the gale of anger that has produced the vast majority of these threats, setting the nation on edge. Many on the right have exploited the arguments of division, reaping political power by demonizing immigrants, or welfare recipients, or bureaucrats. They seem to have persuaded many Americans that the government is not just misguided, but the enemy of the people.”

- NYT

Pretty much my thoughts exactly.

—

Late update: … and The Shrill One jumps on board:

It’s important to be clear here about the nature of our sickness. It’s not a general lack of “civility,” the favorite term of pundits who want to wish away fundamental policy disagreements. Politeness may be a virtue, but there’s a big difference between bad manners and calls, explicit or implicit, for violence; insults aren’t the same as incitement.

(via langer)

Piltdown medicine: The missing link between MMR and autism

Fri, 07 Jan 2011 13:04:40 -0500

Piltdown medicine: The missing link between MMR and autism:

Revealing the layers of fraud and deception behind the Wakefield MMR jab paper that sparked the autism-vaccine hysteria that refuses to die no matter how extensively it’s debunked. This blog entry serves as an introduction to the article published in BMJ; read both.