mini bloggy

"Sure, “Skin Fruit” includes several outstanding artworks by significant talents, and there are a few..."

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:17:33 -0500

“Sure, “Skin Fruit” includes several outstanding artworks by significant talents, and there are a few genuine surprises. But whether the artists are 1980s stars like Mike Kelley and Cindy Sherman or relative newcomers like John Bock, Nathalie Djurberg and Dan Colen, nearly all are well-known quantities in New York, widely supported by other museums and high on many collectors’ must-have lists. Nearly all emanate from one stratum of the art world: the one where the money is.”

- Art Review - ‘Skin Fruit’ - A Mainstream Show at the Anti-Mainstream New Museum - NYTimes.com

"In 1994 Clinton lost Congress. He lost it in large part because of NAFTA, failing at health care..."

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 13:07:31 -0500

“In 1994 Clinton lost Congress. He lost it in large part because of NAFTA, failing at health care reform and the the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell fiasco. Democratic base voters stayed home and Republicans were motivated. Doing “moderate” things didn’t make Republicans not vote against Democrats, but it did make Democrats not vote Democrats.”

- Number of Democrats thinking of not voting in 2010 up to 45% | Ian Welsh

"No, you have a different attitude towards waste than I do. Waste is good, important. Especially in..."

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:47:27 -0500

“No, you have a different attitude towards waste than I do. Waste is good, important. Especially in art. It’s not the perfectly placed and chosen object that rules. It’s a pile of things and one might catch your eye but its always in context. We need too much. As long as we have hands and bodies.”

- The Rumpus Interview With Poetry Rock Star Eileen Myles - The Rumpus.net

"Our war in the border regions is being fought by drone assassinations. A man at the control sits in..."

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:25:54 -0500

“Our war in the border regions is being fought by drone assassinations. A man at the control sits in front of a screen in Las Vegas, and fires when he has a certain shot. To a primitive mind (but not only to a primitive mind), this experiment on a country not our own has the trappings a video game played in hell. But the procedure was here embraced by the president in the antiseptic idiom of a practiced technocrat. He gave no sign of the effects of such killings by a foreign power out of reach in the sky. To assassinate one major operative, Baitullah Mehsud, as Jane Mayer showed in a recent article in the New Yorker, 16 strikes were necessary, over 14 months, killing a total of as many as 538 persons, of whom 200-300 were bystanders. What comes of the reputation of policemen in a crime-ridden neighborhood when they conduct themselves like that? And what makes anyone suppose the reaction will be less extreme when the policeman comes from another country? And yet, from the president’s West Point speech, one would not guess that he has reflected what our mere presence in West Asia does to increase the enchantment of violent resistance and to heat the anger that turns into terrorists people who have lost parents, children, cousins, clansmen, and friends to the Americans. The total number of Muslims killed by Americans in revenge for the attacks of September 11th now numbers more than a hundred thousand. Of those, few were members of Al Qaeda, and few harbored any intention, for good or ill, toward the United States before we crossed the ocean as an occupying power.”

- David Bromwich: The Afghanistan Parenthesis

"The country is ill served by a president who fails to meet his responsibility for the rigorous, open..."

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 11:57:33 -0500

“The country is ill served by a president who fails to meet his responsibility for the rigorous, open debate on matters of great consequence that he pledged and that is imperative for avoiding more dismal failure. What is the value of a 150 I.Q. when bereft of wisdom or conviction to guide it? Obama’s audacity in pursuing his ambition is one thing; political and intellectual courage is quite another.”

- Michael Brenner: Afghanistan: Obama Drops The Other Shoe

"First there was Medicare for all 300 million of us. But that was a non-starter because private..."

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 00:34:50 -0500

“

First there was Medicare for all 300 million of us. But that was a non-starter because private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn’t hear of it, and Republicans and “centrists” thought it was too much like what they have up in Canada — which, by the way, cost Canadians only 10 percent of their GDP and covers every Canadian. (Our current system of private for-profit insurers costs 16 percent of GDP and leaves out 45 million people.)

So the compromise was to give all Americans the option of buying into a “Medicare-like plan” that competed with private insurers. Who could be against freedom of choice? Fully 70 percent of Americans polled supported the idea. Open to all Americans, such a plan would have the scale and authority to negotiate low prices with drug companies and other providers, and force private insurers to provide better service at lower costs. But private insurers and Big Pharma wouldn’t hear of it, and Republicans and “centrists” thought it would end up too much like what they have up in Canada.

”

- Robert Reich: The Ersatz Public Option

"Before being shipped out to Britain’s distant dominion, many of the children were told their..."

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 18:31:20 -0500

“

Before being shipped out to Britain’s distant dominion, many of the children were told their parents were dead, and that a more abundant life awaited them in Australia.

Most were deported without the consent of their parents, and commonly, mothers and fathers were led to believe that their children had been adopted somewhere in Britain.

On arrival in Australia, the policy was to separate brothers and sisters.

And many of the young children ended up in what felt like labour camps, where they were physically, psychologically and often sexually abused.

”

- BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Ordeal of Australia’s child migrants

"If next time some Republican politician rails against subsidies for the arts, using this NuMU..."

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 12:30:27 -0500

“If next time some Republican politician rails against subsidies for the arts, using this NuMU “brouhaha” as an example of how taxpayer money is wasted, how will we be able to counter that? I’m curious to especially hear from those people - Regina Hackett comes to mind - who think opposing the NuMu show makes you a member of the “purity police”.”

- Conscientious Redux - ‘New Museum Brouhaha Goes Supernova’

"However much Powhida the character flails in his anxious ambition, Powhida the maker stays well..."

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:03:50 -0500

“However much Powhida the character flails in his anxious ambition, Powhida the maker stays well grounded in art historical tradition. He is a social satirist in the manner of Daumier and Hogarth, up-to-date, up-to-speed, up to some pretty cutting commentary.”

- Art review: William Powhida at the Charlie James Gallery | Culture Monster | Los Angeles Times

"Increasingly desperate and impossibly sad, radio advertising surely stands as the nadir of Capital’s..."

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 14:21:13 -0500

“Increasingly desperate and impossibly sad, radio advertising surely stands as the nadir of Capital’s endless performance of indispensability, confessing its historical precariousness in bursts of hysterical, hyper-syllabic soliloquy.”

- Signs Taken for Wonders

"The party that really has something to answer for is the New Museum. Inaugurated as an upstart..."

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:45:39 -0500

“The party that really has something to answer for is the New Museum. Inaugurated as an upstart venture with aims to realign the art world’s chi (or at least disintegrate a bit of its ossified power), 30 years later, it is following the standard template: anointing white, male, European artists in an attempt to build a reciprocally beneficial art history. And, more importantly, doing the reciprocity thing with benefactors like Dakis Joannou, a major Fischer collector and museum trustee who is also showing his collection at the New Museum (curated by Koons, to close the circle) next February.”

- New York Art - Urs Fischer, Bowery Bad Boy - Martha Schwendener

"The United States ranks 31st in life expectancy (tied with Kuwait and Chile), according to the..."

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:56:00 -0500

“The United States ranks 31st in life expectancy (tied with Kuwait and Chile), according to the latest World Health Organization figures. We rank 37th in infant mortality (partly because of many premature births) and 34th in maternal mortality. A child in the United States is two-and-a-half times as likely to die by age 5 as in Singapore or Sweden, and an American woman is 11 times as likely to die in childbirth as a woman in Ireland.”

- Nicholas D. Kristof - Unhealthy America - NYTimes.com

"She said the United States should be a “democracy of superiors only,” with superiority..."

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:54:26 -0500

“She said the United States should be a “democracy of superiors only,” with superiority defined by being rich. Well, we got it. As the health care crisis has shown, today, the rich have the real power: The vote that matters is expressed with a checkbook and a lobbyist. We get to vote only for the candidates they have pre-funded and receive the legislation they have preapproved. It’s useful—if daunting—to know that there is a substantial slice of the American public who believe this is not a problem to be put right, but morally admirable.”

- Two biographies of Ayn Rand. - By Johann Hari - Slate Magazine

"Ayn Rand is one of America’s great mysteries. She was an amphetamine-addicted author of..."

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:47:53 -0500

“Ayn Rand is one of America’s great mysteries. She was an amphetamine-addicted author of sub-Dan Brown potboilers, who in her spare time wrote lavish torrents of praise for serial killers and the Bernie Madoff-style embezzlers of her day. She opposed democracy on the grounds that “the masses”—her readers—were “lice” and “parasites” who scarcely deserved to live. Yet she remains one of the most popular writers in the United States, still selling 800,000 books a year from beyond the grave.”

- Two biographies of Ayn Rand. - By Johann Hari - Slate Magazine

"Poor Ed Koch: He was trashed as a miserable miser in multiple front-page stories because he had some..."

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:26:41 -0400

“Poor Ed Koch: He was trashed as a miserable miser in multiple front-page stories because he had some 2,000 homeless families sleeping in shelters. Mike Bloomberg has five times as many, and no one even knows about it.”

- Wayne Barret in the Village Voice - The Mayor’s Press Pass

"Linux, the free operating system that Mr. Burroughs compared with Alcoholics Anonymous: “You can get..."

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 11:47:00 -0400

“Linux, the free operating system that Mr. Burroughs compared with Alcoholics Anonymous: “You can get help from total strangers anywhere in the world.””

- At Home With Augusten Burroughs - At Home With Augusten Burroughs - Ensconced in Chaos - NYTimes.com

"The contractors who built the New Museum’s two-year-old, $50 million facility on..."

Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:15:35 -0400

“The contractors who built the New Museum’s two-year-old, $50 million facility on Manhattan’s Lower East Side returned this week. Their task: lower the second floor gallery’s ceiling by 2 feet. The change order came from artist Urs Fischer, whose upcoming exhibition requires the museum to upend everything from its lighting to its architectural plans. Last-minute changes and delays have meant shipping thousands of pounds of metal sculptures by airplane instead of by boat, at the museum’s expense, says the show’s curator Massimiliano Gioni.”

- New Museum Installs ‘Urs Fischer: Marguerite de Ponty’ - WSJ.com

"Bicyclist and pedestrian traffic fatalities are up, while traffic summonses are down: that’s..."

Thu, 15 Oct 2009 12:39:24 -0400

“Bicyclist and pedestrian traffic fatalities are up, while traffic summonses are down: that’s the terrifying fact buried deep in the numbers of this year’s Mayor’s Management Report.”

- T.A. StreetBeat

Outside Of Mayoral Debate, Police Threaten Arrests of Public and Press

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 14:43:34 -0400

Outside Of Mayoral Debate, Police Threaten Arrests of Public and Press

Max-Carlos Martinez

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:46:38 -0400

Max-Carlos Martinez