On the news everyone keeps saying the problem with Haiti’s economy – and thus with its post-earthquake recovery – is that Haiti doesn’t have enough of a government.
Really? On this see Tom Knapp and Maggie Koerth-Baker.
Archive | 2010
The Storm Fiend Did Loudly Bray
On a stormy winter night in 1879, the bridge over the Firth of Tay collapsed while a passenger train was crossing it (thus prompting the cancellation of the builder’s contract to complete a similar bridge over the Firth of Forth).
Adding insult to injury, the Scottish poet William McGonagall quickly commemorated the disaster with a remarkably bad poem.
Opinions differ as to whether McGonagall’s badness was deliberate and conscious (in the manner of William Shatner’s song stylings, perhaps) or merely the product of incompetence.
Anyway, read the poem if you dare.
Zoo Story
Rebecca West on John Maynard Keynes:
He closely resembled a handsome, elderly seal, in the long fluence of his outline, the sinuosity of his strength, the roundness of his brow, and the projection of his gray moustache. Had his destiny placed him on a rocky eminence in a zoo, he would have caught the fish that an entranced public would certainly have thrown him in unprecedented amounts, with a dexterity all his own. (“From England,” Harper’s, June 1946.)
Coin-Operated Sandman
Check out Neil Gaiman’s short film Statuesque, starring Bill Nighy, Amanda Palmer, and Emilie Béra.
In related news Gaiman and Palmer are getting married. (A step up, says I, from Palmer’s previous partnership.) Congratulations!
Now Wreaking Slightly Less Evil For a Limited Period
In the wake of the earthquake, a number of countries – including the u.s., France, and the Dominican Republic – are calling a temporary halt to the deportation of Haitian immigrants.
While this falls far short of the freeing-up of the borders that justice and compassion alike demand, it represents a little bit of very welcome decency.
Liberty 5-3000, Meet Pennsylvania 6-5000
Has anyone noticed before that the names in Anthem are all in the format of old-style telephone exchanges?
Also, Directive 10-289 from Atlas can be converted to the same format just by shifting the hyphen.
Now all we need is a song titled “Union 7-5309.”