June32012
“Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay. In the modern state there are very few sites where this is possible. The only others that come readily to my mind require belief in an omnipotent creator as a condition for membership. It would seem the most obvious thing in the world to say that the reason why the market is not an efficient solution to libraries is because the market has no use for a library. But it seems we need, right now, to keep re-stating the obvious. There aren’t many institutions left that fit so precisely Keynes’ definition of things that no one else but the state is willing to take on. Nor can the experience of library life be recreated online. It’s not just a matter of free books. A library is a different kind of social reality (of the three dimensional kind), which by its very existence teaches a system of values beyond the fiscal.”
Zadie Smith, in the New York Review of Books. (via thebronzemedal)(via thelifeguardlibrarian)
June12012
“Sure, they may be saying women aren’t commonly reporting sexual battery. But if you’re asking me to PAY to attend, I expect a fun experience, not a weekend of putting up with a herd of clueless clods, the likes of Wolowitz. Yes, yes, I understand he’s not dangerous. I didn’t say he’s harmful. He doesn’t scare me. I’m not saying I’m afraid he’ll rape me. I’m only saying he’s the guy I want to avoid like The Plague when I’m trying to enjoy myself. “What’s wrong with walking up to a woman you don’t know and asking her to come back to your room with you?” Nothing, if you’re goal is to be a Wolowitz clone. In fact, if that’s your goal, then “Bravo!” and “Well done!” So, take it, leave it, love it, hate it, piss all over it. I couldn’t care less these days. I was asked by Kazim to put it down for the blog, and that’s the reason you’re reading it. If you’re Howard Wolowitz, don’t sit beside me, don’t speak to me, don’t write to me, don’t tell me how you masturbate to my TAE presentations, don’t interact with me at all, or I’m getting up and leaving. Follow me, and I’ll introduce you to security. And if you’re 100 Howard Wolowitzes at a skeptic convention, then the convention, as far as I’m concerned, is all yours. You’re welcome to it. Enjoy. And, without an ounce of sarcasm, I add a hearty “thank you” for warning me in advance—with your flood of truly unbelievable comments at multiple skeptic blogs and social sites—before I had dropped real money and time on what sounds like a truly tedious weekend of being surrounded by unbearable personalities. Now, where did I put that book?”
I want to be Howard Wolowitz when (if) I grow up | The Atheist Experience
May312012
“When someone works for less pay than she can live on - when, for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply and conveniently - then she has made a great sacrifice for you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her health, and her life. The “working poor,” as there are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society. They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else.”
Barbara Ehrenreich, “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America”
I recently read this book, and while several observations and statistics stuck out to me, this quote, on the last page, I believe really sums things up quite well.
(via lostgrrrls)
Forget the billionaire “job creators” — our working poor are really the ones supporting our economy.
(via stfuconservatives)
(via mamaatheist)
May292012
“I don’t think it’s terribly controversial to note that women, from a young age, are required to consider the reality of the opposite gender’s consciousness in a way that men aren’t. This isn’t to say that women don’t often misunderstand, mistreat, and stereotype men, both in literature and in life. But on a basic level, functioning in society requires that women register that men are fully conscious; it is not really possible for a woman to throw up her hands and write men off as eternally unknowable space aliens — and even if she says she has, she cannot really behave as though she has. Every element of her life — from reading books about boys and men to writing papers about the motivations of male characters to being attentive to her own safety to navigating most any institutional or professional or economic sphere — demands an ironclad familiarity with, and belief in, the idea that men really are fully human entities. And no matter how many men come to the same conclusions about women, the structure of society simply does not demand so strenuously that they do so. If you didn’t really deep down believe that women were, in general, exactly as conscious as you, you could probably still get by in life. You could probably still get a book deal. You could probably still get elected to office.”
Jennifer duBois, Writing Across Gender
(via literarynerd)
(Source: florida-uterati, via inkdot)
May272012
“Strip away the hype and you’re left with a reasonably good video podcast with delusions of grandeur. For most of the millions of people who watch TED videos at the office, it’s a middlebrow diversion and a source of factoids to use on your friends. Except TED thinks it’s changing the world, like if “This American Life” suddenly mistook itself for Doctors Without Borders.”
Why TED Is a Massive, Money-Soaked Orgy of Self-Congratulatory Futurism | Media | AlterNet
May252012
“It isn’t that our politicians and pundits have suddenly become great liars. Lying for political advantage is as old as the hills. What has changed, however, is that politicians used to worry about getting caught. But there came a point when politicians discovered that if you simply kept repeating the same thing, over and over again, people would come to believe it regardless of whether it was true.”
Head vs. heart
