Laurel
Kitty Mama
- Joined
- Aug 27, 1999
- Posts
- 20,695
Nope. The crux of the article is much more interesting than that - about how gene reading may have more to do with the structure of a being than the actual genes themselves.
Kinda awesome, really.
Good Reads
- Thread starter Laurel
- Start date
Nope. The crux of the article is much more interesting than that - about how gene reading may have more to do with the structure of a being than the actual genes themselves.
Kinda awesome, really.
Saint Peter
shoots left
- Joined
- Apr 29, 2002
- Posts
- 94,074
Interesting and unsettling.
Laurel
Kitty Mama
- Joined
- Aug 27, 1999
- Posts
- 20,695
For real.
Laurel
Kitty Mama
- Joined
- Aug 27, 1999
- Posts
- 20,695
http://www.theawl.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/arsonsists.jpg
This August, a garage in Old Monroe, Missouri burst into flames. There had been more than a dozen similar fires over the past year, a suspiciously high number for a town with a population of 265. When police reviewed security footage, they spotted a white Chevrolet Lumina parked outside the building minutes before it caught fire. They traced the car back to local volunteer firefighter Dustin Grigsby, the 19-year-old son of a fire district captain. Grigsby told police that he set the fires because he "needed a release."
Every year, something like 100 firefighters are arrested for arson-related crimes. In one year, 1994, South Carolina alone charged 47 firefighter-arsonists, besting their 1993 record of 33 arrests. "It happens more than you think," former federal agent Daniel Hebert told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Really, it goes on way more than anyone knows. We don’t know about most of them."
One of the earliest recorded cases of firefighter arson took place in Shelford, an English village a few miles south of Cambridge. In 1828, a Shelford farmer’s haystack caught fire; then, six months later, Mr. Stacey’s haulm-stack burst into flames. Spectators lined up along Trumpington Road to watch local laborers work the hand-operated pump; water was brought in buckets from a nearby pond. In those days, fire trucks were owned and operated by insurance companies, which had a strong incentive to put the fire out and thus minimize insurance payouts. The fires were "the diabolical act of an incendiary," the local paper guessed.
This August, a garage in Old Monroe, Missouri burst into flames. There had been more than a dozen similar fires over the past year, a suspiciously high number for a town with a population of 265. When police reviewed security footage, they spotted a white Chevrolet Lumina parked outside the building minutes before it caught fire. They traced the car back to local volunteer firefighter Dustin Grigsby, the 19-year-old son of a fire district captain. Grigsby told police that he set the fires because he "needed a release."
Every year, something like 100 firefighters are arrested for arson-related crimes. In one year, 1994, South Carolina alone charged 47 firefighter-arsonists, besting their 1993 record of 33 arrests. "It happens more than you think," former federal agent Daniel Hebert told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "Really, it goes on way more than anyone knows. We don’t know about most of them."
One of the earliest recorded cases of firefighter arson took place in Shelford, an English village a few miles south of Cambridge. In 1828, a Shelford farmer’s haystack caught fire; then, six months later, Mr. Stacey’s haulm-stack burst into flames. Spectators lined up along Trumpington Road to watch local laborers work the hand-operated pump; water was brought in buckets from a nearby pond. In those days, fire trucks were owned and operated by insurance companies, which had a strong incentive to put the fire out and thus minimize insurance payouts. The fires were "the diabolical act of an incendiary," the local paper guessed.
- read the full article Fire Bugs (from The Awl)
J
JAMESBJOHNSON
Guest
Youre daft
Get a copy of Gerald Edelman's TOPOBIOLOGY to get an idea of how we change at the chemical level. Even genetic twins aren't identical.
I'm going out on a limb a little, but Edelman is almost as smart at PILOT.
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Topobiology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Edelman
Last edited by a moderator:
Laurel
Kitty Mama
- Joined
- Aug 27, 1999
- Posts
- 20,695
http://vogawoman.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/1209274clara_bow.jpg
A conclusive study by the Library of Congress reports that only 1,575 of the nearly 11,000 films produced during the silent era still exist in their complete form. The study was commissioned by the National Film Preservation Board and written by historian and archivist David Pierce.
It’s not just obscure films of little interest that are lost: Lon Chaney’s London After Midnight – directed by Freaks auteur Tod Browning — is mostly gone (although it can be reconstructed scene for scene using still photographs), 20 Clara Bow films, The Patriot, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, the adaptation of Edna Ferber’s So Big starring Colleen Moore, and many more are just gone forever.
There are myriad reasons for this. Many of these movies were filmed on nitrate, which deteriorates rapidly and is also highly flammable. In 1935, Fox Studios lost its entire film catalog in a fire, hundreds more were lost in a 1967 fire at MGM studios, in 1978, The Eastman House lost 329 nitrate prints of silent films in another fire. Also, many of the studios just did not invest in preserving these films until it was too late for many of them. Before the advent of television and home video, studios just really didn’t see the point in keeping them around for future release. Notable exceptions are the works of D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford, who all took it upon themselves to have their films preserved.
However, one reason that doesn’t seem to be popping up in any of the articles about this is the fact that many of these films were intentionally destroyed. The 1917 version of Cleopatra, starring Theda Bara, was not just lost to time, it didn’t just disintegrate. The two remaining copies of the film were set on fire, purposely, along with most of her other films by Fox Studios after the Hays Code went into effect – as they were deemed too risque for the new rules. Though she made more than 40 movies throughout her career, only about three and a half exist today. Which is only slightly better than the fate of her cinematic rival Valeska Surrat, whose entire oeuvre is lost forever.
A conclusive study by the Library of Congress reports that only 1,575 of the nearly 11,000 films produced during the silent era still exist in their complete form. The study was commissioned by the National Film Preservation Board and written by historian and archivist David Pierce.
It’s not just obscure films of little interest that are lost: Lon Chaney’s London After Midnight – directed by Freaks auteur Tod Browning — is mostly gone (although it can be reconstructed scene for scene using still photographs), 20 Clara Bow films, The Patriot, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, the adaptation of Edna Ferber’s So Big starring Colleen Moore, and many more are just gone forever.
There are myriad reasons for this. Many of these movies were filmed on nitrate, which deteriorates rapidly and is also highly flammable. In 1935, Fox Studios lost its entire film catalog in a fire, hundreds more were lost in a 1967 fire at MGM studios, in 1978, The Eastman House lost 329 nitrate prints of silent films in another fire. Also, many of the studios just did not invest in preserving these films until it was too late for many of them. Before the advent of television and home video, studios just really didn’t see the point in keeping them around for future release. Notable exceptions are the works of D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford, who all took it upon themselves to have their films preserved.
However, one reason that doesn’t seem to be popping up in any of the articles about this is the fact that many of these films were intentionally destroyed. The 1917 version of Cleopatra, starring Theda Bara, was not just lost to time, it didn’t just disintegrate. The two remaining copies of the film were set on fire, purposely, along with most of her other films by Fox Studios after the Hays Code went into effect – as they were deemed too risque for the new rules. Though she made more than 40 movies throughout her career, only about three and a half exist today. Which is only slightly better than the fate of her cinematic rival Valeska Surrat, whose entire oeuvre is lost forever.
- read the full article Library of Congress Reports 75% of Silent Films Lost Forever (from Mashable)
J
JAMESBJOHNSON
Guest
She looks like Louise Brooks.
Laurel
Kitty Mama
- Joined
- Aug 27, 1999
- Posts
- 20,695
http://img.washingtonpost.com/rf/image_606w/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2013/12/05/National-Enterprise/Images/cobalt_1386253785321.jpg
The theft of the material sparked international concern because of the possibility that the cobalt-60 could be used in a “dirty bomb.” But by Wednesday afternoon, authorities had found the stolen Volkswagen cargo truck and the radioactive material.
President Obama’s national security team monitored the situation in Mexico “very closely” Wednesday, and there is no reason to believe the stolen truck posed a threat to the United States, White House press secretary Jay Carney said.
“What's most important is that the vehicle and equipment were recovered and the situation was resolved,” Carney said.
The drivers of the cargo truck were sleeping at a gas station this week when gunmen assaulted them and stole their truck. Mexican nuclear safety officials said they believed the carjackers did not know what they were stealing and that they may die from exposure to the radioactive material.
The theft of the material sparked international concern because of the possibility that the cobalt-60 could be used in a “dirty bomb.” But by Wednesday afternoon, authorities had found the stolen Volkswagen cargo truck and the radioactive material.
President Obama’s national security team monitored the situation in Mexico “very closely” Wednesday, and there is no reason to believe the stolen truck posed a threat to the United States, White House press secretary Jay Carney said.
“What's most important is that the vehicle and equipment were recovered and the situation was resolved,” Carney said.
The drivers of the cargo truck were sleeping at a gas station this week when gunmen assaulted them and stole their truck. Mexican nuclear safety officials said they believed the carjackers did not know what they were stealing and that they may die from exposure to the radioactive material.
- read the full article
Stolen cobalt-60 found in Mexico; thieves may be doomed (from The Washington Post)
Stolen cobalt-60 found in Mexico; thieves may be doomed (from The Washington Post)
J
JAMESBJOHNSON
Guest
Back in 1999 I had a trainee who looks like this woman. A freshly minted PhD hired by the state. She looked like trouble so they gave her to me. What a vision. Swiss and Italian. She kept a stuffed vulture on her desk.
Anyway she went with me to a call made by the sheriff. What a shithole it was. The deputy says to me, SMELLS LIKE SOMETHING DIED UP UNDER THAT TRAILER. So I says to my trainee, DARLIN, CRAWL UP UNDER THERE AND SEE WHAT DIED. She had on heels and hose and a cashmere sweater.
And she says to me, DARLIN, WHY DONT YOU KISS MY ASS.
A few days later we went to a carnival where all the toothless carnies were checking her out closely. I whispered to her, I KNOW I COULD GET A LIFE TIME PASS IF I LET THEM KIDNAP YOU. THEY DONT EVEN DREAM ABOUT WOMEN LIKE YOU! WOMEN LIKE YOU AINT IN THEIR IDEA OF HEAVEN.
We did lunch every week for years. Never got any of it.
Laurel
Kitty Mama
- Joined
- Aug 27, 1999
- Posts
- 20,695
Laurel
Kitty Mama
- Joined
- Aug 27, 1999
- Posts
- 20,695
http://media.tumblr.com/2a02d179ff1748e65405cc9fdb833907/tumblr_inline_mxe9s3U2Dt1qzll1y.jpg
A sunny afternoon, 1977. The torturers have arranged for some of the prisoners to be photographed. They lead them to an arid patch of land (away from their own tiny garden within the walls) and give them shovels. The press is told: this is a garden. A photographer takes a picture and captions it: ’n Gevangene werksaam in die tuin. “A prisoner working in the garden.” The prisoner is not working. He stands erect, faces forward. He wears a floppy hat and dark glasses (when they let him go thirteen years later, he will be unable to shed tears: the limestone quarry will have ruined his eyes). He is a contained fury.
On the island, the tour guide mentions names. Each falls like a stroke of the cane. Sobukwe, Sisulu, Mbeki, Kathrada. On the other side of the island—the island which is surprisingly big, surprisingly wild—the waves break their heads against the rocks repeatedly, trying to forget. From time to time we see ruined ships.
[...]
White supremacy has its uses. Because of its great care and its thoughtful strategy, because of the tireless way it hoards its hatred, it is good at making heroes. Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Desmond Tutu: what would our lives have meant without theirs? No wheel moves without friction. Without the obscenity of white supremacy to resist, they might have been mere happy family men. Nevertheless:Whoever was tortured, stays tortured. Torture is ineradicably burned into him, even when no clinically objective traces can be detected. (2)
A sunny afternoon, 1977. The torturers have arranged for some of the prisoners to be photographed. They lead them to an arid patch of land (away from their own tiny garden within the walls) and give them shovels. The press is told: this is a garden. A photographer takes a picture and captions it: ’n Gevangene werksaam in die tuin. “A prisoner working in the garden.” The prisoner is not working. He stands erect, faces forward. He wears a floppy hat and dark glasses (when they let him go thirteen years later, he will be unable to shed tears: the limestone quarry will have ruined his eyes). He is a contained fury.
On the island, the tour guide mentions names. Each falls like a stroke of the cane. Sobukwe, Sisulu, Mbeki, Kathrada. On the other side of the island—the island which is surprisingly big, surprisingly wild—the waves break their heads against the rocks repeatedly, trying to forget. From time to time we see ruined ships.
[...]
White supremacy has its uses. Because of its great care and its thoughtful strategy, because of the tireless way it hoards its hatred, it is good at making heroes. Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, Desmond Tutu: what would our lives have meant without theirs? No wheel moves without friction. Without the obscenity of white supremacy to resist, they might have been mere happy family men. Nevertheless:Whoever was tortured, stays tortured. Torture is ineradicably burned into him, even when no clinically objective traces can be detected. (2)
- read the full article The Island (from The New Inquiry)
Laurel
Kitty Mama
- Joined
- Aug 27, 1999
- Posts
- 20,695
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/12/08/magazine/08well/mag-08well-t_CA0-tmagArticle.jpg
The issue of sex as exercise, however, has remained largely unexplored. “There are these myths,” including that sex burns at least 100 calories per session, said Antony D. Karelis, a professor of exercise science at the University of Quebec at Montreal who undertook a study, published in PLOS One in October, to look at how much energy is actually exerted during sex. “But nobody had tested” those assumptions.
To do so, Karelis and his colleagues recruited 21 young heterosexual committed couples from the local area and had them jog on treadmills for 30 minutes, while researchers monitored their energy expenditure and other metrics, in order to provide a comparison for the physical demands of sex. The scientists next gave their volunteers unobtrusive armband activity monitors that gauge exertion in terms of calories and METs, or metabolic equivalent of task, a physiological measure comparing an activity to sitting perfectly still, which is a 1-MET task. Then the scientists sent the couples home, instructing them to complete at least one sex act a week for a month while wearing the armbands, and to fill out questionnaires about how each session made them feel, physically and psychologically, especially compared with running on the treadmill.
When the researchers analyzed all of the resulting data, it was clear, Karelis said, that sex qualified as “moderate exercise,” a 6-MET activity for men and 5.6-MET activity for women. That’s the equivalent, according to various estimates, of playing doubles tennis or walking uphill. The jogging, by comparison, was more strenuous, an 8.5-MET activity for the men in the study and 8.4 for women. (Though some men, according to their activity monitors, used more energy for brief periods during sex than they did jogging.) The sex also burned four calories per minute for men and three per minute for women, during sessions that ranged from 10 to 57 minutes, including foreplay. (The average was 25 minutes.) Men burned about 9 calories per minute jogging and women about 7.
The issue of sex as exercise, however, has remained largely unexplored. “There are these myths,” including that sex burns at least 100 calories per session, said Antony D. Karelis, a professor of exercise science at the University of Quebec at Montreal who undertook a study, published in PLOS One in October, to look at how much energy is actually exerted during sex. “But nobody had tested” those assumptions.
To do so, Karelis and his colleagues recruited 21 young heterosexual committed couples from the local area and had them jog on treadmills for 30 minutes, while researchers monitored their energy expenditure and other metrics, in order to provide a comparison for the physical demands of sex. The scientists next gave their volunteers unobtrusive armband activity monitors that gauge exertion in terms of calories and METs, or metabolic equivalent of task, a physiological measure comparing an activity to sitting perfectly still, which is a 1-MET task. Then the scientists sent the couples home, instructing them to complete at least one sex act a week for a month while wearing the armbands, and to fill out questionnaires about how each session made them feel, physically and psychologically, especially compared with running on the treadmill.
When the researchers analyzed all of the resulting data, it was clear, Karelis said, that sex qualified as “moderate exercise,” a 6-MET activity for men and 5.6-MET activity for women. That’s the equivalent, according to various estimates, of playing doubles tennis or walking uphill. The jogging, by comparison, was more strenuous, an 8.5-MET activity for the men in the study and 8.4 for women. (Though some men, according to their activity monitors, used more energy for brief periods during sex than they did jogging.) The sex also burned four calories per minute for men and three per minute for women, during sessions that ranged from 10 to 57 minutes, including foreplay. (The average was 25 minutes.) Men burned about 9 calories per minute jogging and women about 7.
- read the full article Sex as Exercise (from The New York Times Magazine)
Lorilei
asexual prude
- Joined
- Nov 4, 2007
- Posts
- 24,649
Radiohead
You look so tired-unhappy
- Joined
- Dec 5, 2005
- Posts
- 9,779
Theres not enough sex in there, Tweethehehe
Laurel
Kitty Mama
- Joined
- Aug 27, 1999
- Posts
- 20,695
This makes me so sad.
Me too. And that's history that's gone forever and ever, all because the people in charge didn't foresee a time when those reels would be valuable. Sort of makes you understand hoarders' motivations.
There never is.
Laurel
Kitty Mama
- Joined
- Aug 27, 1999
- Posts
- 20,695
The most universal secret is, “I hurt.” Everyone has a secret, and it’s a secret for a reason.
Secrets exist to protect oneself or others from hurt. They are most deeply rooted when felt with guilt or shame.
If you can’t think of a question to ask when judging a decision, it is fair for someone to expect you to have been in the same situation.
One may exercise a lesser hurt in order to quiet a greater hurt.
Hurt is not wrong. Hurt is not something you fix but rather process. You cannot un-hurt no matter how vaguely or clearly the reasons are understood. You can only feel it and eventually not feel it so much.
If someone is eerily wise for their age, love them.
Love is unconditional. If there are conditions, it is business.
Sometimes you have to love from a safe distance.
You will be misunderstood. You will misunderstand. Hurt does not require intent.
Nearly all relationships founded in hurt and healing exist for the purpose of ending. One does not visit a doctor or take medicine once one is feeling well.
Sometimes you just have to sit silently and let your friend know you’re sitting silently.
One of the worst things you can do to help a person who is feeling hurt is to try to understand why before you understand how much.
If someone isn’t in the mood to talk, let them know that you will be back to check up with them. Return, and check up with them.
“I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable answer. Silence, however, will almost always result in misunderstanding.
Hope is absolutely necessary. Hope is useless.
Disappointments result from expectations.
You get to hurt, too. The word “selfish” is not evil. Both hurt and compassion take effort that must be restored with rest and nutrition.
Your legacy has little to do with parenthood and has much more to do with the passion(s) you inspire in others.
You are never more alive than the moments spent following a passion for which you would give your life.
Eyesight is the least intimate of all the senses. Compare the number of people you have seen in your life to the number you have tasted.
Do not confuse beauty and attractiveness.
Secrets exist to protect oneself or others from hurt. They are most deeply rooted when felt with guilt or shame.
If you can’t think of a question to ask when judging a decision, it is fair for someone to expect you to have been in the same situation.
One may exercise a lesser hurt in order to quiet a greater hurt.
Hurt is not wrong. Hurt is not something you fix but rather process. You cannot un-hurt no matter how vaguely or clearly the reasons are understood. You can only feel it and eventually not feel it so much.
If someone is eerily wise for their age, love them.
Love is unconditional. If there are conditions, it is business.
Sometimes you have to love from a safe distance.
You will be misunderstood. You will misunderstand. Hurt does not require intent.
Nearly all relationships founded in hurt and healing exist for the purpose of ending. One does not visit a doctor or take medicine once one is feeling well.
Sometimes you just have to sit silently and let your friend know you’re sitting silently.
One of the worst things you can do to help a person who is feeling hurt is to try to understand why before you understand how much.
If someone isn’t in the mood to talk, let them know that you will be back to check up with them. Return, and check up with them.
“I don’t know” is a perfectly acceptable answer. Silence, however, will almost always result in misunderstanding.
Hope is absolutely necessary. Hope is useless.
Disappointments result from expectations.
You get to hurt, too. The word “selfish” is not evil. Both hurt and compassion take effort that must be restored with rest and nutrition.
Your legacy has little to do with parenthood and has much more to do with the passion(s) you inspire in others.
You are never more alive than the moments spent following a passion for which you would give your life.
Eyesight is the least intimate of all the senses. Compare the number of people you have seen in your life to the number you have tasted.
Do not confuse beauty and attractiveness.
- read the full article 34 Ideas About Love And Other Facets Of The Human Condition Worth Considering, by Troy R. (from Thought Catalog)
Laurel
Kitty Mama
- Joined
- Aug 27, 1999
- Posts
- 20,695
When second-grader Christian Bucks noticed that some of his friends didn’t have anyone to play with on the playground at Roundtown Elementary School in York, Pa., he decided to take action to help foster friendships at his school, setting forth to acquire a buddy bench.
The way the buddy bench works is if students feel lonely on the playground without anything to do, they can go to the buddy bench, and another student will come to the bench and ask if they want to play or talk.
If two people are sitting at the bench, they could ask each other if they want to play, Christian said.
He described the buddy bench as having a purpose to “grow our dream circle of friends.”
The way the buddy bench works is if students feel lonely on the playground without anything to do, they can go to the buddy bench, and another student will come to the bench and ask if they want to play or talk.
If two people are sitting at the bench, they could ask each other if they want to play, Christian said.
He described the buddy bench as having a purpose to “grow our dream circle of friends.”
- read the full article 2nd-grader's buddy bench helps lonely classmates make friends (from The Saratogian)
Laurel
Kitty Mama
- Joined
- Aug 27, 1999
- Posts
- 20,695
http://media2.newsobserver.com/smedia/2013/08/29/16/13/40Alp.AuSt.156.jpeg
Let me tell you about this one stretch of Hillsborough Road in Durham, North Carolina. It’s between two freeways, just a short drive from the noble towers of Duke University, and in the space of about a mile, you will find a McDonald’s, a Cracker Barrel, a Wendy’s, a Chick-fil-A, an Arby’s, a Waffle House, a Bojangles’, a Biscuitville, a Subway, a Taco Bell, and a KFC. As you walk down this roaring thoroughfare, you’ll notice that the ground is littered with napkins and bright yellow paper cups. But then again, you aren’t really supposed to be walking along this portion of Hillsborough Road and noticing things like those cups, or that abandoned concrete pedestal for some vanished logo, or the empty Aristocrat Vodka bottle hidden behind that broken Motel 6 sign. This is a landscape meant to be viewed through a windshield and with the stereo turned up. In fact, drivers here sometimes seem bewildered by the very presence of pedestrians, which may be the reason I was almost run down twice.
But it wasn’t a car that struck me on Hillsborough Road, it was a vision: a spontaneous understanding of fast-food efficiency. I was gazing on a simple yellow structure that contained the workings of a Waffle House when it came to me — the meaning of this whole panorama of chain restaurants. The modular construction, the application of assembly-line techniques to food service, the twin-basket fryers and bulk condiment dispensers, even the clever plastic lids on the coffee cups, with their fold-back sip tabs: these were all triumphs of human ingenuity. You had to admire them. And yet that intense, concentrated efficiency also demanded a fantastic wastefulness elsewhere — of fuel, of air-conditioning, of land, of landfill. Inside the box was a masterpiece of industrial engineering; outside the box were things and people that existed merely to be used up.
I tried to imagine the great national efforts that had made such lunatic efficiency possible. There were the agricultural subsidies and the irrigation projects and the many highway-construction programs, not to mention the mass media, without which our greatest brands could probably never have been built. Had all these mighty enterprises been undertaken simply to create the amazing but utterly typical landscape of Hillsborough Road? To ensure that certain parties might make tons of money while others made almost nothing at all?
I was in Durham on August 29 to observe something unusual in this particular industry: a strike. What made it especially unusual is that it was happening in North Carolina, which is both hostile to unions and — as the birthplace of Hardee’s, Bojangles’, and Krispy Kreme — a kind of fast-food Athens.
Let me tell you about this one stretch of Hillsborough Road in Durham, North Carolina. It’s between two freeways, just a short drive from the noble towers of Duke University, and in the space of about a mile, you will find a McDonald’s, a Cracker Barrel, a Wendy’s, a Chick-fil-A, an Arby’s, a Waffle House, a Bojangles’, a Biscuitville, a Subway, a Taco Bell, and a KFC. As you walk down this roaring thoroughfare, you’ll notice that the ground is littered with napkins and bright yellow paper cups. But then again, you aren’t really supposed to be walking along this portion of Hillsborough Road and noticing things like those cups, or that abandoned concrete pedestal for some vanished logo, or the empty Aristocrat Vodka bottle hidden behind that broken Motel 6 sign. This is a landscape meant to be viewed through a windshield and with the stereo turned up. In fact, drivers here sometimes seem bewildered by the very presence of pedestrians, which may be the reason I was almost run down twice.
But it wasn’t a car that struck me on Hillsborough Road, it was a vision: a spontaneous understanding of fast-food efficiency. I was gazing on a simple yellow structure that contained the workings of a Waffle House when it came to me — the meaning of this whole panorama of chain restaurants. The modular construction, the application of assembly-line techniques to food service, the twin-basket fryers and bulk condiment dispensers, even the clever plastic lids on the coffee cups, with their fold-back sip tabs: these were all triumphs of human ingenuity. You had to admire them. And yet that intense, concentrated efficiency also demanded a fantastic wastefulness elsewhere — of fuel, of air-conditioning, of land, of landfill. Inside the box was a masterpiece of industrial engineering; outside the box were things and people that existed merely to be used up.
I tried to imagine the great national efforts that had made such lunatic efficiency possible. There were the agricultural subsidies and the irrigation projects and the many highway-construction programs, not to mention the mass media, without which our greatest brands could probably never have been built. Had all these mighty enterprises been undertaken simply to create the amazing but utterly typical landscape of Hillsborough Road? To ensure that certain parties might make tons of money while others made almost nothing at all?
I was in Durham on August 29 to observe something unusual in this particular industry: a strike. What made it especially unusual is that it was happening in North Carolina, which is both hostile to unions and — as the birthplace of Hardee’s, Bojangles’, and Krispy Kreme — a kind of fast-food Athens.
- read the full article Home of the Whopper (from Harper's Magazine)
rosco rathbone
1. f3e5 2. g4??
- Joined
- Aug 30, 2002
- Posts
- 42,431
love tom frank, altho his last book was a major dissapointment
trysail
Catch Me Who Can
- Joined
- Nov 8, 2005
- Posts
- 25,593
Me too. And that's history that's gone forever and ever, all because the people in charge didn't foresee a time when those reels would be valuable. Sort of makes you understand hoarders' motivations.
Read H. L. Mencken's essay Exeunt Omnes. It is contained in Prejudices: Second Series. New York (Knopf), 1920.
This is an effective antidote.
oggbashan
Dying Truth seeker
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2002
- Posts
- 56,017
The London MOMI - gone but not forgotten...
The Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) was a museum of the history of technology and media, including cinema and its forerunners. MOMI was opened on 15 September 1988 by Prince Charles and became an instant international hit and winning 18 awards.[citation needed] The museum was sited below Waterloo Bridge and formed part of the cultural complex on the South Bank of the River Thames, London, England. MOMI was mainly funded by private subscription and operated by the British Film Institute. MOMI continued to be praised internationally but despite its worldwide acclaim, after the retirement of its founders, the British Film Institute simply lost interest in its popular appeal. MOMI was closed "temporarily" in 1999 (a letter to the London Evening Standard on 31 August 1999 claimed this was cultural vandalism by the BFI), with the closure becoming permanent soon after. An article in the Magic Lantern Society Journal claimed "(MOMI was)... born out of love and generosity, but it seems you have passed away stifled by mediocrity and indifference."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_the_Moving_Image_(London)
Laurel
Kitty Mama
- Joined
- Aug 27, 1999
- Posts
- 20,695
I've only read "One Market Under God", but I like his stuff for Harpers quite a bit.
Why was it a disappointment?
RobDownSouth
BoycotDivestSanctio
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2002
- Posts
- 78,974
Let me share a slice of "Holy shit, it's a small world"....
In 1999, I was doing contract work as a program mgr. for the old Central Carolina Bank (CCB). My band of itinerant project mgrs and I were holed up at the Durham Hilton on Hillsborough Drive...the bank ops center was a mile up the road in a "secure area" in the middle of a NC pine forest. We'd hit the restaurant row hard each day...Biscuitville for breakfast stands out, and I most definitely remember the Waffle House next to the Interstate entrance because I ate a chicken breast sandwich there one day and cracked and spit out most of a molar tooth.
The only other thing I recall about Hillsborough drive was that it had a "porn warehouse" on the other side of the Interstate. First time I'd ever been in a "warehouse" full of porn.
Laurel
Kitty Mama
- Joined
- Aug 27, 1999
- Posts
- 20,695
oggbashan
Dying Truth seeker
- Joined
- Jul 3, 2002
- Posts
- 56,017
Indeed. MOMI was finding and preserving old nitrate film stock, mainly UK produced. Thanks to MOMI many old British films are available on DVD which would otherwise have been lost.
