Luke's Commonplace Book

Yeasayer sometimes amazes me. Thank to Andrew for alerting me...

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 01:48:36 -0500

Yeasayer sometimes amazes me. Thank to Andrew for alerting me to this.

"a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few..."

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:45:37 -0500

“a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months”

- The official definition of “recession,” which we may have actually started a half a year ago. So says this NYT article.

from Frank Chimero’s Flickr

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:28:17 -0500

from Frank Chimero’s Flickr

Dennis Darzacq’s photo. Read about it at Kottke.

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:23:35 -0500

Dennis Darzacq’s photo. Read about it at Kottke.

"A Christian, a Jew and Barack Obama are in a rowboat in the middle of the ocean. Barack Obama says,..."

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:18:20 -0500

“A Christian, a Jew and Barack Obama are in a rowboat in the middle of the ocean. Barack Obama says, “This joke isn’t going to work because there’s no Muslim in this boat.””

- From the list of jokes approved by Obama.

"Language has not the power to speak what love indites: The soul lies buried in the ink that writes."

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:42:14 -0500

“Language has not the power to speak what love indites:
The soul lies buried in the ink that writes.”

- John Clare

"Researches (sic) have looked at just about every possible determinant of teaching success, and it..."

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 01:05:36 -0500

“Researches (sic) have looked at just about every possible determinant of teaching success, and it seems there’s nothing on a prospective teacher’s résumé that indicates how he or she will do in the classroom.”

- from Slate’s “Hot for the Wrong Teacher”

from the NYT’s The Boys and the Subway. Very cool.

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 13:48:00 -0500

from the NYT’s The Boys and the Subway. Very cool.

"And why does EVE pack heat? Her function is to look for vegetation and, if she finds some, shut down..."

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:34:51 -0500

“And why does EVE pack heat? Her function is to look for vegetation and, if she finds some, shut down and wait to be picked up. The Earth is uninhabited, so there are no enemies or wildlife to worry about. Why should she be heavily armed? Apart from the obvious need to make her more like Angelina Jolie, I mean. But that’s another way of expressing a problem that pervades the movie: over and over, the creators made choices that were cool over choices that made their created world more persuasive. A minor example: the liberation of the robots from the psych ward. Forget the fact that it doesn’t make any sense to celebrate the release of these malfunctioning machines – why is there a robot psych ward at all? Why aren’t these machines just, you know – turned off?”

- Noah Millman at TAS, which has had some good Wall•E discussion going on. I loved Wall•E, but it does disappoint in some of its “created world” aspects.

"We were unaware, Sir, that the corridors of our palace were damp."

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:25:00 -0500

“We were unaware, Sir, that the corridors of our palace were damp.”

- “Attributed to George V. on contemplating a visitor at a time when turned-up trousers had just become fashionable.”
—from Auden’s commonplace book A Certain World

"By the 2012-2013 fiscal year, $15.4 billion will be spent on incarcerating Californians, as compared..."

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 12:15:12 -0500

“By the 2012-2013 fiscal year, $15.4 billion will be spent on incarcerating Californians, as compared with $15.3 billion spent on educating them.”

- here

"We Who Prayed and Wept" by Wendell Berry

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:27:00 -0500

We who prayed and wept
for liberty from kings
and yoke of liberty
accept the tyranny of things
we do not need.
In plenitude too free,
we have become adept
beneath the yoke of greed.

Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray,
send Thy necessity.

"Someone selected Ryan Adams. This made me happy for two reasons. The first is that I suspect Adams..."

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 01:26:00 -0500

“Someone selected Ryan Adams. This made me happy for two reasons. The first is that I suspect Adams is something of an underrated semi-genius, and I like the fact that he’s more appreciated in places where nobody cares whether or not Paul Westerberg hates him. The other reason is that I think there’s probably a 98 percent likelihood that Ryan Adams will read this sentence, put down the magazine, walk over to his four-track, and immediately write a psychedelic country song titled “Hey Little Leipzig Girl (I’m Glad You Dug Those Whiskeytown Bootlegs),” which I will be able to listen to on the Internet forty minutes from right now.”

- Chuck Klosterman on the answer one of his German students gave to the question: “Who do you consider the most interesting twentieth-century American — not necessarily the most historically important, but the individual you find most personally compelling?” The whole article is short, but I liked that little part, because I’d probably say Ryan Adams too.

excerpts from "Where does your Faith lie?" by Jon Hatch

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 19:57:55 -0500

Does your faith lie in the belief that the universe was created in six 24-hour days?

Does your faith lie in the hope that heaven is full of people like you?

Does your faith lie in God once wiping out a city of thousands because it had homosexuals living in it?

Does your faith lie in the next president of the United States?

Does your faith lie in the belief that ‘follower of Jesus’ and ‘member of a church’ being synonymous?

[found here on the Ikon wiki, which is worth exploration]

portraitoftheartistasayoungman: “The strongest argument...

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:55:00 -0500

portraitoftheartistasayoungman:

“The strongest argument for agnosticism that I’ve come across.”

here

Eric L. Santer from here

Sun, 22 Jun 2008 21:35:01 -0500

Eric L. Santer from here

Photo

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:57:06 -0500

Lilypad archipelagos for climate refugees and those of us with...

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 11:56:30 -0500

Lilypad archipelagos for climate refugees and those of us with ongoing obsessions with Atlantis.

"Barack Obama’s skin is the color of AMERICAN SOIL."

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 09:56:31 -0500

“Barack Obama’s skin is the color of AMERICAN SOIL.”

- From Slate’s The Truth About Barack Obama: Rumors the Obama campaign shouldn’t try to correct.

“Perhaps then the next film will not have Batman running...

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 21:24:03 -0500

“Perhaps then the next film will not have Batman running around beating up drug dealers and pimps (an impotent project anyway as there is only one Batman for the whole city), but rather dissolving Wayne Industries, setting up free health care and campaigning for radically different socio-political structures.”
—Peter Rollins, read the comments on the post as well.

Rollins has ruined Batman for me. He used to be my favorite superhero (bat cave, cool gadgets, “people need dramatic examples to shake them out of their apathy,” etc.), but I can now no longer support Batman.