Ok, I’m hoping that at least one of you curious readers has access to Los Angeles, a small digitial video camera, and the American Cinemateque theater. According to this, Southlander, a movie starring Beck, is being screened on June 6th. If one of you can get a bootleg of this, I will pay money for it. Well, let me put it this way–anything of worth that Matt has will be yours if you get me a copy.
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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is requiring its incoming freshman to read “Approaching the Qur’án,” an introductory book on Islam’s holy book. According to the local newspaper, the News and Observer, the book contains 35 excerpts from the Koran. Since I live in North Carolina, basically right down the road from UNC in fact, the issue is buzzing in everyone’s ears. Some say it’s wrong to exclude Christianity (not to mention all the other religions of the world), some say it’s misguided, and some think it’s constitutionally wrong.
Personally, I think it’s a good idea. Islam ranks, by some, as the second largest religion in the world. That alone justifies learning about it in my mind. Secondly, after all the rhetoric following the terrorist attacks, shouldn’t it be necessary to learn about the religion that certain fanatic terrorists claim as their inspiration? Thirdly, I believe that the university is a place to expose oneself to new, and not necessarily comfortable, experiences and ideas. From this comes a greater understanding of the world, and from that comes a better person.
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It’s always exciting to me when art is used in this way, outside of a museum. In Stockholm, Sweden, a group of artists constructed a gate with two entrances to a night club. One entrance was labelled “Cultural Elite,” and the other “Immigrants, Ordinary People.” Read about the results.
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Stephan Wolfram is smart. In fact, he’s so smart, he published his first paper (on subatomic particle behavior) at age 15, and at 21, became the youngest person ever to win a MacArthur genius grant. Now 41, he’s published a book entitled “A New Kind of Science,” in which he explains to us why the last 300 years of developing increasingly complex mathematical equations will never lead us to a greater understanding of the universe. He introduces his theory of “cellular automata,” to demonstrate that the origin of our universe was actually a simple “program,” and billions of iterations later, has developed into an impossibly intertwined and complex system with predicable rules and laws. This sounds a lot like the “theory of everything,” the movement that’s been gaining in popularity among the world’s scientists, but Wolfram goes into greater detail in his book. Of course I haven’t read it, and doubt I will in the near future. I’ll just stick to the load of reviews and summaries it’s sure to generate.
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I just read an interview with author Barbara Ehrenreich in our local (Raleigh, NC) lefty newspaper, The Independent. Ehrenreich wrote Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, an interesting study she conducted by working only low paying, menial labor jobs for an extended period of time. Aside from the dissertations on the injustices low wage earners face, the last question posed was the most thought provoking:
Interviewer: Do you think the poor have disappeared from the culture at large?
Ehrenreich: The poor and working class generally have vanished from the entertainment spectacle–from movies and sitcoms. Newspapers carry “business” news but not labor news. Financial cable channels proliferate, but they’re all about investing, not surviving as a worker.
This got me thinking: if true, isn’t this a dangerous thing? What portions of our society exist to benefit the working class? It seems to me that life in America is structured to cater to the middle and upper middle classes. As the needs of those classes expand, the cost of living steadily rises. Not a big issue if you earn a yearly salary above $30,000, and don’t have to worry about medical coverage, but what about those forced to work at $5.15/hour without any coverage? These workers are vital to our economy, yet are largely ignored. I don’t mean to sound any false alarms, but if the economic gap continues to widen, and the working classes are continually swept under the rug, eventually those people will organize and revolt. And if that time comes, who will blame them?
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I just made a really cool discovery. This may not be news to some, but it certainly is to me. I was reading through my big ‘ol coffee table art book, boldly named “The Art Book,” and I came across a painting by Theo van Doesburg. It’s a real minimalist number created in part by using a simple mathematical formula. Anyway, in the short blurb next to the piece, the term De Stijl popped up, and as we dedicated White Stripes fans know, that’s the name of their second album. Turns out De Stijl was originally a Dutch art movement prominent between 1917 and 1931, and this Theo van Doesburg guy was a founding member.
During the tumultuous decade following World War I, De Stijl artists set out to create a universal style in painting, architecture and design, using rectangles and squares in flat planes of bold primary colors and black, gray and white, all carefully orchestrated with straight lines.
(from MODERNISM)
After reading this, I grabbed the White Stripes album of the same name, and lo and behold, it’s obviously named after the art movement. Nifty!
Another example.
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I read this Sports By Brooks article today, and though I think Brooks tends to be a bit too cynical in general, this take is spot on. High profile Division 1 college athletes want cash, and they want it now. If they don’t go to the school that offers them the greatest opportunity for a shot at the NFL/NBA/MLB, they go to whichever school comes with the friendliest boosters.
I’d be willing to bet that 80% of top draftees playing in professional sports today took some kind of illegal gift from a deep pocketed booster, reporter, or agent while in college.
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Found this extremely disturbing article on the topic of eating disorders in the U.S., and thought I’d post it here as sort of a followup to my Matt Lauer rant.
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This morning I was watching NBC’s Today, and as part of their “Where In the World Is Matt Lauer” segment, Katie Couric’s sidekick is traveling around the world, filing various reports of marginal importance. Anyway, citing some fact about the high concentration of plastic surgeons in Brazil, Mr. Lauer seeks out the chief authority on the subject of the country’s obsession with beauty, a soap opera star. He then proceeds to drill her with questions like (paraphrased): “I’ve seen young girls here on the beach with obviously enhanced body parts. Is that healthy?”
Give me a goddamned break. While at home in the US, Matty must not spend much time walking down the street, in front of a television, or standing in a line at the grocery store. Brazil has an unhealthy obsession with beauty? No, we (Americans) have an unhealthy obsession with beauty. Our billboards, t.v. commercials, magazine covers, web advertisements, etc., are saturated with airbrushed, exaggerated, and unrealistic images of beauty. Let’s take a look at our own country’s health: It’s en vogue for parents to give the wonderful gift of plastic surgery as a birthday gift (one of my ex-girlfriend’s got breast implants as a graduation gift). The rate of diagnosed cases of bulimia and anorexia in both males and females continues to rise. And what about the fifty infomercial wonder diets we hear about every day?
As I was watching the show, the question that many Americans must ask themselves these days kept popping into my head: “Is this why the world hates us?” Way to break the stereotype, Lauer.
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