Updated: 5/1/2005; 9:06:51 AM

 Friday, April 08, 2005

The Strange Economics of Travel 

Dispatches from the New World of Work —

Notice lately that you can get dirt cheap US airfares coast-to-coast, like $200, but once you get to the other end, the local cab ride between airport and hotel can run you $100!?!

What's the math about when the 10 mile cab fare is half the cost of a 3,000 mile plane ride?

Posted by Halley Suitt

Dispatches from the New World of Work
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 10:53:07 AM -

Oh, have I... 

Talking Points Memo by Joshua Micah Marshall — Oh, have I criticized her. But I'm willing to do homage to Maureen Dowd for these three peerless sentences: "Before, Republicans just scared other people. Now, they're starting to scare themselves. When Dick Cheney tells you you've gone too far,...

Talking Points Memo by Joshua Micah Marshall
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 10:49:24 AM -

Desolation Row 

Whiskey Bar —

It is sobering and enlightening to re-read . . . two earlier futurist visions – Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. These books have been extraordinarily influential, both on generations of readers whose political consciousness has been affected by them, and on generations of writers, in non-fiction as well as fiction. A re-reading today yields some very striking lessons in assessing our present, and in thinking about our future . . .

My view . . . is that in fact both writers were ‘right’ – that we are living in a Janus-faced present that features the fundamental characteristics of both their visions. We are living in Brave New Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Varda Burstyn
The New Imperial Order Foretold
December 2004?

Via Manic Net Preacher and Histologion.


Jeez Louise, and I thought I was a pessimist. Think about it: Big Brother and test tube babies. Mindless materialism and ruthlessly efficient propaganda machines. Telescreens and genetic stratification. Victory gin and soma.

Yeah, I guess she nailed it. Except I'm not even getting any stiinkin' soma.

If you people will excuse me, I think I'll just go kill myself now -- and avoid the freakin' rush.


Now at midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart-attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row.

Bob Dylan
Desolation Row
1965


Whiskey Bar
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 10:48:51 AM -

Google Sightseeing 

The J-Walk Blog —

Here's a blog devoted to pointing out interesting sights on Google satellite photos: Google Sightseeing.


The J-Walk Blog
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 10:47:18 AM -

Online multimedia short "Craziest" 

Boing Boing — Xeni Jardin: "Craziest" is an intriguing first in a series of short stories offered online in Flash and in audio podcast. The subject, loosely speaking: braniacs who think too much. Editor Liz Dubelman sez:
The inspiration for CRAZIEST came one day while I was listening to Bookworm with Michael Silverblatt on KCRW (my local NPR station). I am an NPR junkie. I feel lonely when I don’t have it on in my car or streaming out of my computer speakers. Anyway, his guest was Myla Goldberg, who wrote "The Bee Season." I thought, if spelling bee champions are weird, Scrabble players are at least as weird. I began to explore people who build “thought castles” ­ people who take thinking too far. What would make someone need to create her own order? Who would that person be that would have such a strong need for magical thinking?


Link to CRAZIEST, and here's the vidlit project site: Link (Thanks, redjar)

Boing Boing
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 10:46:27 AM -