On Fun With Maps: Seven Peculiar U.S. Borders
Dunno if this is still true, but in the 1990 Census, Kalawao County - the Hawaiian site of the former leper colony - was the only county in the U.S. with a more unequal distribution of income than Manhattan.
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On Summer Weddings, Belts, How to Pack and Tucking in Shirts
Wow, Choire, you've convinced me. I've got a summer wedding to go to - my sister-in-law's, the one who once sent you what you called the funniest resume you ever read - and I was wondering what to wear. It's off to Brooks Bros.
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On Handicapping the Grammys: Best New Age Album
I can no longer tell when things are a put-on.
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On We Need A Good Smoking Word
Don't have a good answer, but I will say the word "antitabagism" should be in wider use.
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On Media Industry Perfect Training For Running School System, Apparently
Clearly when you have a large surplus population you don't give a shit about, running the schools becomes an exercise in cost minimization and bullshit. Who needs educators to run schools? You need managers with a talent for lying.
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On Telling Old Jokes About Catholics
Hmm, Alexander Cockburn recites the same joke in Corruptions of Empire, only with Francis Cardinal Spelman as the bitch.
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On Firefox Eats Its Own Tail
Why would Mac users use Firefox? Safari runs just fine and it doesn't advise you to update it every other day. And it scores 100 on Acid Test, vs. Firefox's 94 (http://acid3.acidtests.org/).
Though Safari isn't totally at peace with The Awl. Every time I sign on, the page loads, then reloads (and takes its time to do it). And then I can't break the damn link with Facebook. If I try to post a comment, I get some bullshit error message from Facebook too. I'm sure I'm about to experience it now. In fact, I think I'll play "I Predict" by The Sparks just to have a soundtrack.
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On The Problem with the New Culture War is Being on the Side of the $50,000 Fish Tank
Walter Benn Michaels writes some good stuff on this, though not always very deftly. He argues that advocacy of "tolerance" and "diversity" have replaced a critique of inequality and exploitation. The first isn't merely compatible with neoliberalism, it's a selling point of its more enlightened wing. (Corporate American supports affirmative action, and every big company has a diversity program.) In the enlightened neoliberal's world, it would be ideal if the poor were made up of the same racial, gender, etc., proportions of the general population. Too bad there'd still be poor people, though - they should just study harder in school or something. Next to the unenlightened wing of the neoliberals (e.g., Republicans), the enlightened wing looks good.
A problem with Michaels is that he doesn't see that racial, gender, etc., equality aren't really good in themselves. But he's onto something with the neoliberal appropriation of these ideas. So we end up defending $50,000 fishtanks, because, otherwise, Pat Robertson.
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On 32 Greatest Recorded Performances of Johann Sebastian Bach's Goldberg Variations
I'm moved that this post even exists.
I'm not sure whether it would make the 32 cut, but Keith Jarrett's version is lovely.
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On NYC's 'Saved' Libraries Experience Deja Vu
My late friend Bob Fitch used to call the melodrama around funding libraries "fiscal dwarf tossing." They'd threaten big library cuts only to retreat at the last instance - thereby distracting attention from the rest of the (bigger) cuts.