December 2010
43 posts
“Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped...”
– Lewis Hyde (via andyinabox)
What's the real poverty rate in Minnesota? Higher... →
minnpost:
You may have heard recent reports that the poverty rate in Minnesota is about 10 percent. But Brian Rusche, who makes his living advocating for the poor, has helped devise what he thinks is a more telling way of demonstrating the health of the American economy. Called the Job Market Failure Index, this analysis includes both the numbers of unemployed and those who are working but not...
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“One pair of anthropologists, for example, actually crunched the numbers,...”
– Jesse Bering makes An Evolutionary Case for Cannibalism. I admittedly need to give this one a closer read. I had to stop, because I started dry-heaving. Oh, and because I have work to do.
Aitkin County is home to Minnesota National Golf... →
I don’t know how I stumbled on this, but I thought it was funny. Nice way to pitch real estate in the Northland, I tell ya.
“We’re poor but we’re not losers”
– The mayor of the tiny city of Landfall in an MPR story about the metro area’s poorest community, which also sounds like an alright place to live. Having grown-up in an alright place myself (a small working-class town in one of Minnesota’s poorest counties) I can relate to this sentiment....
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“I know multiple people who moved to Minneapolis and left it because of...”
– Urbanophile assesses the social landscape of the Twin Cities and finds a few things worth thinking about. Those of you who have lived here: what do you think? Are we really such a hard bunch to get to know?
A friend of mine who moved to MSP from New York (by way of Portland) always said that those...
Execution of Dakota Indian Nearly 150 Years Ago... →
A little Minnesota History Lesson.
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“I regret that you have put us in this position, but there is no other course we...”
– Joel Wachs, President of The Andy Warhol Foundation in an open letter to Wayne Clough, Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, which recently censored the work of artist David Wojnarowicz. NYT Op-Ed Columnist Frank Rich writes more here.
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“Because sudoku has simple rules, we felt that maybe bacteria could solve it for...”
– Ryo Taniuchi, leader of a team of scientists in Tokyo who taught bacteria how to solve sodoku puzzles. (via andyinabox)
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WatchZainab Salbi reminds us of another side of war, that of women working through fear, and with courage, to keep their families and communities together.
Zainab Salbi: Women, wartime and the dream of peace
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“do you know that people fall in love in war? and go to school, and go to...”
– Zainab Salbi: Women, wartime and the dream of peace (thank you heathermm for sharing this)
“Two examples of recent COI [conflict-of-interest] controversies that have...”
– From a letter written by one of the UMN graduate student representatives to the Board of Regents. According to UMN spokesperson Dan Wolter (remember him?) students are not concerned with these cases, and the author of the letter is just pushing his agenda. Hey…don’t student...
Arsenic about face →
Martin Robbins details the NASA arsenic debacle, and points out yet another place where PR officials of the old media era are getting blindsided by the way things work now. It’s particularly disastrous when it comes to science communication, which is already a tricky (but very important) thing to translate for a public audience. Time for NASA and AAAS to hire some new media consultants?
“For me the main motivation is personal shame. I just feel embarrassed to work at...”
– UMN Professor and Bioethicist Carl Elliott (in ScienceInsider) on his motivation for signing the recent letter to UofM Board of Regents calling for an independent investigation into the death of a research subject, and possible conflicts-of-interest surrounding University Pharmaceutical Research.
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Tomorrow Night at Ye Olde Bell Museum...
…we’ll host the second ‘Bell Museum Social’ from 6-9PM. If you’re in Minneapolis, stop by for a little art, a little science, maybe a beer or two? And to say hello to me in the midst of my last month of work here!
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“When I am working on a book or story I write every morning as soon after first...”
– Ernest Hemingway on the merits of getting up early. (via ideas are awesome)
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WatchSeduce Me, Isabella Rossellini’s new series about animal attraction is just as hilarious and amazing as Green Porno. I love it.
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DECEMBER 3 - MOMENT
“Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail.”
It was during the whole ‘Troubled Waters’ film debacle and I was a mess. It’s incredible what sleep deprivation and constant stress will do to your mind, especially when you’re already prone to making intuitive leaps. People kept asking what was going on, and each time I answered, I was less certain that...
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DECEMBER 2 - WRITING
“What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?”
I GO TO MY JOB.
done & done.
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Reverb 10 →
Okay, I will try this. One prompt a day for 31 days asking you to reflect on the year, and to manifest what’s next. It will probably be yet another of those things I start, and don’t finish, but it seems like good timing.
Thanks again to nomadfarm for finding the cool stuff. Looking forward to your Mpls visit!
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Minnesota Identity and the Arts: A Public Salon →
Thanks to MNoriginal for recording and putting the event online!
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“… it’s not much of a leap to surmise that if “we” are conversant in the...”
– Jim Walsh in a great summary of Tuesday night’s ‘Minnesota Identity and the Arts’ event, which Works Progress helped to create. You can read the whole article here: Why is Minnesota such a hotbed of creativity? Artists take a crack at it. The event certainly gave me a lot to think...
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“To listen to enough Radiolab is to see that scientists haven’t simply...”
– My gosh, who hasn’t experienced The ‘Radiolab’ Effect? It totally happened to me.
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“When we think about changing internal states, we think about education and...”
– David Roberts (Grist) on why behavior change is so important. It should follow, then, that modeling behavior is more important than slapping a bumper sticker on your car. And making it easier for people to change or even just try a new behavior is more important than arguing the idea that you think...