Sarah Palin: Huh?

The liberal media machine is wringing its hands over McCain’s choice.  While sentiments range from, “Huh.  McCain may just be a little smart.” to, “Huh.  This is proof positive that McCain is an idiot.”  I think the operative word at either end of the spectrum is almost certainly “Huh.”

What I’m reading today

The Arts & Letters Daily (featured on my blog already) is a good way to find new knowledge.  Today I’m pushing my way through Martin Amis’ piece for the WSJ titled “Terrorism’s New Structure“.

Obama’s Demographic Problem

I promised that I would write about this, but unfortunately I haven’t had the time to do the proper research on it.  Maybe just writing my thoughts down will prompt someone to do some due diligence on the matter.  Anyway, the issue is this: Obama (and by extension the Democratic party) has been selling itself as ‘the party of the common man’.  In essence, Obama and the Democrats are banking on the American voter punishing the Republicans for the current state of the economy.  The Democrats have found their example cases to feature in commercials: “people just like you” who have lost their homes, lost their jobs, their way of life, etc.  These ads are meant to cause empathy between the average voter and the Democratic party.

The problem: who is going to empathize?

Thoughts so far on the Democratic Convention

I haven’t been paying the level of attention necessary to parse all of the small talk and deal-making that surrounds the convention of any party.  However, here are some of my thoughts about all of the recent coverage:

Segue…

Sorry folks, I know you’ve all been waiting with bated breath for my next post.  However I am now in a rush to get all my things packed up to move from Manhattan to Poughkeepsie.  I’ll be pretty unengaged over the course of this week, however, so expect more posts.  A few hints at what I’m going to be writing on:

• Consumerism, and how to avoid it?
• The mind-body problem in science (a possible topic for my thesis)
• Obama’s demographic problems

So, get excited!  Or not.  I think there’s about 30 people who visit me on a more or less daily basis.  Or just six who visit me five times a day.  Regardless, I know you all are out there, and I appreciate being read.  So please keep coming, and I promise!  By tuesday I will have something up.  Until then, wish me luck on my dreaded move-out-move-in.

Your friday morning reading

Hello everyone, I just woke up.  I love sleeping late!  The Times has a perplexing article about a man who stole thousands and thousands of bicycles in Toronto.  Naturally, since Toronto (and the area he lived in) is being overrun by the Hipster Hordes, someone is making a documentary about him, and people are quoted as believing him to be a “neighborhood philosopher”, a relic of a seemingly bygone era.

I just think it’s amusing that this guy stole so many bikes.  What was he planning to do with them?  That is likely to be one of those questions that will never have an answer.

things I’m looking at: Vice fashion

One of the original aims of this blog was to collect all of the various websites and objects I come across over the course of my internet travels.  Typically however these things are in and out of my mind before I can remember that someone else might appreciate them.  I’m trying to turn over a new leaf, but until then you all will have to do with sporadic updates of this sort.  In any case, I was drawn to the photography in the latest Vice magazine fashion shoot:

a last ‘hurrah!’

This week marked the last in what my friend has termed quite appropriately “the fastest summer ever.”  It’s to be expected of the synonymous “last summer ever”, as it precedes my senior (and, barring any major academic catastrophes) and final school year.  Graduate school may yet appear on the horizon, but as of now I’m staring down the abyss of post-school life, and it’s filled me with more than a little trepidation, but also a glimpse of readiness and excitement.

Zach came into town from Southampton for a few sundries and we decided to have a really decent meal before we both took our departures from the great city.  We went to Cookshop for dinner.  Waiting for our table, we had some St. Germaine’s Collinses.  After we sat down, we had a carafe of 2000 Bordeaux Sauvignon Blanc (actually the cheapest wine on the list) to wash down the glorious squid and scallop salad and tuna steak.  Our digestion was helped along by a glass of 2003 Sauterne.  I ordered this wine wholly on account of the fact that it was the first wine my Uncle drank after recovering from throat cancer (yes, it really is that good).

Afterwards, Zach and I hung out in his Uncle’s well-appointed apartment, watching (in steady, unwavering alternation) the new VH1 show “G’s to Gents” (in which, on a play on the time-tested cinderella tale, uncultured and typically Black men compete to affect the greatest transformation of etiquette and diction), and Cartoon Network’s “Adult Swim”.

The next day Zach and I had breakfast at Jackson Hole, a local diner, and then set off for the New Museum, located on the Bowery:

in defense of the new authoritarianism

This past Sunday’s New York Times’ “Week in Review” printed a feature about the reinvigoration of “soft authoritarianism” (my own term).  The Times’ argument more or less rests upon the recent Russian invasion of Georgia, and the relative ease with which the Chinese pulled off the Olympics without having to ease any of their restrictions on freedom of speech and protest.

Now, before I begin any real exculpatory remarks in defense of Russia and China’s seemingly ‘new’ form of governance, I think a small amount of perspective on these two events would do well to put peoples’ minds to rest on the matter.

Sundays are for interesting reading.

Hello everyone, all apologies for my recent reticence.  I’ve been busy with my last week of work at Vanity Fair, and I’ve contented myself lately with writing in my journal as well as a few books.  They’ve diverted me enough to pay no real mind to my blog’s forlorn state.

Instead of putting forward some mid-length post about whatever’s been in the news lately (not much besides Phelps’ not-that-impressive 8 gold medals and Russia’s war of aggression/self-defense against Georgia), I’m going to point your way to a compelling piece in The American Spectator by Mark Gauvreau Judge.  Judge argues that the widely accepted idea that rock music is the perpetrator of social change is a farce, especially when applied to Hip-Hop music.