Two New Ways to Explore the Virtual Universe, in Vivid 3-D
N.Y. TIMES by STEVE LOHR, May 13
AND
Lightining strikes at the site of a volcanic eruption at REUTERS, by photographer CARLOS GUTIERREZ, noted at Drudge
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Awe and shock
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Mountain Goat Chews On Books
John Darnielle is blogging at Powell's this week, supporting the recent publication of his contribution to the 33 1/3 book series, a volume on Black Sabbath's Master of Reality. Each day of the week he's addressing Five Albums I Might Have Picked Instead of Master of Reality
The first entry is about Mercyful Fate's: Don't Break The Oath
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Color spectrum
Visible Man
N.Y. TIMES by COLSON WHITEHEAD, Apr. 24
EXCERPT: I TRY to keep a low profile. Maybe you see me in the hallway but don’t know my name. Say hi to me in the coffee room but don’t really know me. I break my silence now because of this election mess...pundits are lecturing “the common man” on how outraged they should be about Mr. Obama’s elitism. It’s all hokum, and I should know. For it is I, The Guy Who’s Where He Is Only Because He’s Black.Whitehead is one of the top contemporary novelists in this country. He's a fine writer without being at all difficult to read. His fiction is thought-provoking without being pretentious. And, he's got a blog!
Most folks don’t know much about me, apart from the feeling of injustice that hits when I walk into the room with my easy charisma and air of entitlement. I understand. It’s weird when your government passes legislation, like equal opportunity laws, that benefits one single person in the country — me, The Guy Who Got Where He Is Only Because He’s Black. People think I have it easy, but it’s surprisingly difficult being The Guy Who Got Where He Is Only Because He’s Black, what with the whole having to be everywhere in the country at once thing. One second I’m nodding enthusiastically in a sales conference in Boise, Idaho, and the next I’m separating conjoined triplets at the Institute For Terribly Complicated Surgery in Buchanan, N.Y.
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It’s exhausting, all that travel. Decent, hard-working folks out there have their religion and their xenophobia to cling to. All I have is a fistful of upgrades to first class and free headphones. Headphones That Should Have Gone to a More Deserving Passenger. Guns? I wish I had a gun! Ever run out of truffle oil before a dinner party and have to go to Whole Foods on a weekend? It’ll make you want to spread a little buckshot around, that’s for sure.
Read the entire op-ed. Its fun reading, although I have trouble with the idea that Obama is only the victim, never (or not significantly) the beneficiary of race issues.
James Taranto ran down some of that talk yesterday in pretty good fashion: Primary Colors
WALL STREET JOURNAL, Apr. 23
EXCERPT: ...it is possible to support Mrs. Clinton over Obama in part because she is white, without harboring any prejudice against blacks. To do so, we draw on the evolution of our own opinion of Obama. We have never been an Obama enthusiast; he has always seemed to us too left-wing and too inexperienced.See also Social Issues and Voting
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Two months later, however, we learned new information about Obama: that his "spiritual mentor" of 20 years, the pastor of the church where he sends his young daughters, has shouted from the pulpit, "God damn America!" and has claimed that AIDS is a product of a genocidal U.S. government plot to kill blacks and that the 9/11 attacks were "America's chickens . . . coming home to roost." Obama apparently chose this church, and continues to belong to it, because it fits his idea of what it means to "be black."
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Our view of Obama changed not because he is black (we knew this all along), but because we discovered that he countenances vile ideas. It seems reasonable to suppose that some Pennsylvania Democrats changed their minds about Obama for the same reason. It is important to say that this is not a case of prejudice, which consists of judging someone in the absence of knowledge, but of its opposite: changing one's mind in the face of new information. Voters who reject Obama for this reason can be relatively certain that Mrs. Clinton does not have the same problem. Because she is white, she has never faced the question of whether and how to develop a "black" identity. It may not be fair that Obama did face that question, but white Democrats in Pennsylvania are not the source of the problem. It may be true, too, that a significant number of white Pennsylvania Democrats "are uncomfortable with a black as president." But...facile stereotyping belies the complexity of race in America.
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Natalie Port-a-potty?
You read that correctly. Natalie Port-a-potty is the headline of this story at the N.Y. POST by ANDY SOLTIS today.
Also in the POST via REUTERS, Beware phony olive oil!
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Something for Record Store Day - Sex Pistols
E.M.I.
Record Stores Fight to Be Long-Playing
N.Y. TIMES by BEN SISARIO, Apr 18
Record Store Day, April 19
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Going nowhere
The Lives of Elevators
THE NEW YORKER by NICK PAUMGARTEN, April 21 Issue
Read about elevators and one man's 41-hour ordeal.
Watch the security video. More haunting than you would expect. Good elevator soundtrack.
C.f. Riding Toward Everywhere ; The Intuitionist
h/t geek press
Social issues and voting
Who's Bitter Now
N.Y. TIMES by LARRY M. BARTELS, April 17
An interesting essay about whether small-town Americans are more apt than others to vote primarily on social issues. They are apparently somewhat less likely. I suppose that is harder to see when you view your own social issues as vital and everyone else's as deluded.
UPDATE: Bartels' entire presentation in response to Thomas Frank's What's The Matter With Kansas.
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