"To know and yet think we do not know is the highest attainment; not to know and yet think we do know is a disease."
— Lao-Tzu
2:17 pm • 15 November 2010
"On a purely material economic level processes of globalization bring forth a condition in which the funding for a Godard film derives from and is to a certain extent dependent on the success of ‘American Pie 2.’"
— Randall Halle, German Film After Germany
8:08 am • 11 November 2010
"Suppose we continue with building, and with deliberate rebuilding, of unsafe cities. How do we live with this insecurity? From the evidence thus far, there seem to be three modes of living with it; maybe in time others will be invented, but I suspect these three will simply be further developed, if that is the word for it.
The first mode is to let danger hold sway, and let those unfortunate enough to be stuck with it take the consequences. This is the policy now followed with respect to low-income housing projects, and to many middle-income housing projects.
The second mode is to take refuge in vehicles. This is a technique practiced in the big wild-animal reservations of Africa, where tourists are warned to leave their cars under no circumstances until they reach a lodge. It is also the technique practiced in Los Angeles. Surprised visitors to that city are forever recounting how the police of Beverly Hills stopped them, making them prove their reasons for being afoot, and warned them of the danger. This technique of public safety does not seem to work too effectively yet in Los Angeles, as the crime rate shows, but in time it may. And think what the crime figures might be if more people without metal shells were helpless upon the vast, blind-eyed reservation of Los Angeles."
— Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Vintage Books, 1961). This book should be required reading for every person who lives, has ever lived, or ever plans to live in a city. I try to read it every time I move. Do yourself a favor and buy it now.
11:50 am • 17 October 2010
"A guppy might be a good example of a pet fish, but a bad example of a pet, and a bad example of a fish."
— George Lakoff
11:17 am • 23 September 2010
"When they moved to Los Angeles, he and A had spent only a few days there as visitors before. They might have hated it; their maid did, and went back to England almost immediately, while their cook, infected by a wildness in the southern California air, went off to become a chiropractor."
11:28 pm • 17 September 2010
"What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out."
— Alfred Hitchcock
12:58 pm • 23 August 2010
"But Nolan always reaches with two hands: with the left one for the gimmick he’s going to employ, and with the right one for the means to clearly explain it. (He’s like a training bra for experimental art.)"
— A D Jameson, “Seventeen Ways of Criticizing Inception”
2:58 pm • 18 August 2010
I Write Like David Foster Wallace.
Just picked this up from a Paul Constant SLOG post. Pasted in my six favorite PubliCola reviews. One returned Vonnegut, one returned William Gibson (?), and four returned David Foster Wallace. I decided to do a control with non-journalistic writing and pasted in a grad school app essay: David Foster Wallace. Never read anything by him, but I guess it’s an incentive to start.
Regardless, color me flattered.
1:50 pm • 16 July 2010
