by Brooks Riley
Monday, May 11, 2015
And then what happens?
by Brooks Riley
In the beginning was the story. It was a manuscript deeply embedded in the genes and it was all about survival, when instinct was the sole purveyor of instructions. It may be hard to conceive of a biological primer as an example of narrative, but getting by was, until then, the greatest story ever told, especially for the ones who got by. And if the story itself was somewhat schematic, didactic, too utilitarian, that too was necessary to the plan.
Then along came ‘show and tell’, as cleverer animals and Homo sapiens showed their young how things are done. With digital dexterity came ‘draw and tell’: Cave drawings were the first examples of what we now recognize as narrative—no longer so concerned with ‘how it’s done’, but more with ‘what he did’, what he encountered, what actually happened—history, his story, her story. And finally, when words were uttered, ‘speak and tell’. From then on, the story blossomed, thanks to the most astonishing technology ever achieved by a species: language (which eventually extended storytelling into ‘write and tell’ and last but not least ‘film and tell.’)
We know all this. What we may not know, is whether the need for narrative is still imbedded in our genes. It’s important to our conscious minds as distraction, as entertainment, but is it also a basic need that must be attended to, like eating, sleeping, dreaming?
The first thing a child wants after it learns to speak is to be told a story. If it’s truth or fantasy hardly matters, as long as it is outside the child’s range of experience. If the child is not told a story, it will eventually invent one on its own (a biological necessity?). Fairy tales have certain imbedded markers specifically aimed at children–an underlying morality, or recognizable patterns of living. For a child, fairy tales are the welcome mat to the human race with its complicated procedures and arrangements. But at the same time, fairy tales address the impossible, the improbable, and the ideal. They can reduce time itself to a plaything, a toy to be manipulated at will, whether it is the instantaneous transformation of a frog to a prince, the 100 years of Sleeping Beauty, the 900 years of Methuselah, or the creation of the world in six days.
CATSPEAK
by Brooks Riley
Corridor of Opportunity
by Ali Minai
For millennia, Balochistan – or Gedrosia as the Greeks called it – has been the land between lands: A vast and arid expanse lying between the West and the East that ambitious conquerors or hardy travelers have occasionally chosen to brave at their own risk. Eight millennia ago, one of Earth's oldest civilizations thrived in the north-central part of the province, leaving their traces in the ruins of Mehrgarh. At some ancient and uncertain date, a great pilgrimage site arose at Hinglaj on Balochistan's Arabian Sea coast. Revered as “Nani ka Mandir“, Hindus hold it sacred to the goddess Durga. Others have suggested that its original association was with the Sumerian goddess Inanna – also known as Ishtar, Nannai, Nana, Naina Devi, and possibly the same as the Persian Anahita – Naheed – and the Greek Athene. It is even reported that a Khariji hyper-Islamist state on the lines of today's ISIS once existed in the heart of this land, though time has erased its memory from the land much as it has largely erased the land of Balochistan from the historical memory of great civilizations. But that may be about to change.
A Hypothetical Situation
by Justin E. H. Smith
At this point, Americans would be right to say to those French dissenters: You ignorant fools, why don't you actually *learn* something about what this cover means, about who it is targeting and why? This is, mutatis mutandis, just what we are seeing now with the American PEN dissenters and their refusal to absorb any new information about Charlie Hebdo. We hear over and over again variations on the non-sequitur claim that PEN is honoring the “cultural arrogance of the French nation” (Peter Carey's words). How? By extending honors to a magazine whose primary function, as is clear to anyone who actually knows how to read and interpret it, is to satirize that nation's cultural arrogance? Again, this makes no more sense than to take the New Yorker cover as a symptom of, rather than a comment on, injustice and inequality in American society.
The Indignity of Monarchy
by Thomas R. Wells
The persistence of monarchy in modern Europe, even in weakened form, is astonishing and disappointing. How can it be that in the 21st century Dutch, British, even Canadian citizens must still describe ourselves as mere subjects? What does that medieval term even mean anyway, and who gets to decide? When are we going to get around to finishing the republican project and making a final separation of state and royal bodies?
I
The citizens of constitutional monarchies like Britain and other Western European countries are in an equivocal position, at once politically and legally equal members of the sovereign body and its feudal vassal. Functionally, most of the time we live in a democracy, but symbolically we still live in Saudi Arabia. We are so used to this that it feels normal.
But there are some moments when the contradiction is particularly hard to avoid.
Such as when an anti-racism protestor in the Netherlands – not Thailand – is arrested and hauled off a podium for shouting “Fuck the king, fuck the queen, fuck the monarchy”. He is still facing charges for Lèse-majesté. (Coverage, in Dutch.)
Or when new British citizens are charged £80 to swear an absurd oath of allegiance, originating in the Magna Carta, and updated in 1868, promising to be both subject and citizen:
“I (name) do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that on becoming a British citizen, I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her Heirs and Successors, according to law.”
Who could promise such a thing? What could it even mean?
Apparently the British government recognises the absurdity too. In the very same ceremony new citizens are also required to swear a more conventional republican pledge of citizenship.
“I will give my loyalty to the United Kingdom and respect its rights and freedoms. I will uphold its democratic values. I will observe its laws faithfully and fulfil my duties and obligations as a British citizen.”
But this hardly solves the problem. Which Britain are they promising loyalty to? Autocratic dynasty or democracy? How can someone who believes in ‘democratic values' also believe in hereditary monarchy? Obviously they can't, without corrupting the meaning of one or both. All we can say for sure is that anyone who swears to two such contradictory statements within 5 minutes must be lying and that this particular lie is imposed on them by Britain's naturalisation law. It seems to me that forcing new citizens to begin their official membership of your society by lying solemnly in public is a particularly repulsive and stupid thing to do.
Of course most British people – aside from police, priests, judges, MPs, and soldiers – are never confronted with the oath of allegiance in this way. But I suspect that many citizens who say they love their royals would nevertheless object to having to swear solemn allegiance to them. Then they would have to admit that officially the royals don't belong to us but we to them.
This puts the lie to the ‘democratic' argument for constitutional monarchy – that by being outside the domain of grubby political competition the monarchy is somehow above it, able to represent everyone by representing no one. You can't claim democratic support if you aren't willing to accept the sovereignty of the people by letting them choose. The monarchy is not a democratic institution but a popular one. Like a celebrity franchise it is sustained by the equivalent of Facebook likes – people who like it can express that, but people who don't like it have no opportunity to vote against it. The fact that the monarchy never takes a stand on anything is a sign of its democratic weakness not its strength – its public support is wider but also much shallower than that of the grubby politicians. The monarchy's only popular mandate is to look pretty and reproduce.
Unconditioned by the past
by Hari Balasubramanian
Exploring the Memoryless property of the Exponential Distribution.
Waiting For the Next Customer
Suppose you run a small business, a barber shop or a small restaurant that takes walk-ins only. A customer has just left, your place is empty, and you are waiting for the next customer to come in. You've figured out that on average the time between two successive arrivals is 15 minutes. However, there is variation and the variation follows the Exponential probability curve shown in the figure below. This is not an arbitrary choice: time between successive random and independent arrivals does actually follow the Exponential. The average time between arrivals depends on whether it is a busy or slow time of the day, but the general shape of the Exponential curve keeps showing up again and again when empirical data is plotted (one example here).
The height of the curve is an indicator of where the greatest probability densities are. Most arrivals happen in quick succession (the curve is tall when t is small), but there will be occasions when a long time elapses before the next arrival happens. At t=0, when the last customer just left, if you calculated the probability of the next customer arriving within 5 minutes (0 < t < 5) you would get the value 0.283. Equivalently you could say that the probability you will wait 5 minutes or more is (1 - 0.283) = 0.717.
Now here's the interesting part. Suppose twenty minutes have now passed and the next customer still hasn't arrived. You are starting to get a little impatient; after all you don't want your productive time to be idle. So at t=20, you again calculate the probability of a customer arriving in the next 5 minutes (20 < t < 25), given that no one has come so far. You would think this new probability, based on how much time has elapsed, should be higher than 0.283. But, surprisingly, the probability that a customer will arrive in the next 5 minutes, given that twenty idle minutes have passed, is still 0.283! And the probability that you will wait 5 minutes or more is still 0.717.
This is precisely the Memoryless property of the Exponential: the past has been forgotten; the probability of when the next event will happen remains unconditioned by when the last event happened. Fast forward even more: let's say you've waited for half an hour. No one has shown up so far. Frustrated, you recalculate the probability of someone arriving in the next 5 minutes (30 < t < 35). Still 0.283!
London, 1641
by Charlie Huenemann
“Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased” – Daniel 12:4
London in the early 1640s
London was an exciting place to be in 1641. The political uncertainty was both thrilling and terrifying: many Puritans, convinced that their suspected crypto-catholic king, Charles I, was in league with the Anti-Christ, were pushing back against his high-handed policies. Their frustration was to lead to civil war within a year. A small circle of London intellectuals, led by Samuel Hartlib, seized the uncertainty of the time to push for what they hoped would be a middle way: a tolerant and enlightened Protestantism that could serve as a foundation for a pan-European utopia.
Hartlib had come to London in 1628 as a refugee from war-torn Poland. He was inspired by Francis Bacon’s vision of an enlightened society built around the pursuit of knowledge, and he saw that such a society could emerge only if education was completely reformed. He maintained an extensive correspondence with savants across Europe, introducing intellectuals with one another and promoting new works of scholarship. He eventually fell into company with John Williams, bishop of Lincoln, who shared his ideals and moreover had access to both money and Parliament. They hatched a plan.
The plan was to invite to London two intellectuals Hartlib knew from his days in Poland: John Dury and John Amos Comenius. Both men shared Hartlib’s zeal for reforming education and for uniting Protestants into common cause against the Catholics. With their energizing presence in London, it was thought that a new vision forward would spread throughout the land, and Parliament would seize upon a model that was more Calvinist than the king would like but less severe than the Puritanism of the would-be rebels: a just compromise.
There was more at stake than mere political stability. Many in Hartlib’s circle believed that the thousand-year rule of the Roman Anti-Christ (aka the Pope) was finally coming to an end, and the new thousand-year rule of Christ was coming into being. Unlike his dour counterparts, Hartlib believed that God rewarded human efforts to come to know the world through natural philosophy, and that piety and natural curiosity could go hand in hand.
The nostalgic appeal of simplicity
by Emrys Westacott
Nostalgia is a fascinating and remarkably common phenomenon. We have all heard older people comparing the present unfavorably with the past in spite of–or even because of–obvious material improvements in the standard of living. Most of us over the age of twenty-five have probably done this ourselves. Often the fond remembrance involves some account of how we lived more cheaply, were closer to nature, were more self-sufficient, enjoyed uncomplicated daily routines, or contented themselves with humble pleasures. The underlying idea is that things were better because they were simpler.
But nostalgia for simplicity is not confined to individuals reminiscing; across cultures it is also a persistent motif in oral and written literary traditions. In religion, philosophy and literature, it has often taken the form of harking back to an unsullied past or a golden age of happiness and virtue. The biblical account of Adam and Eve in paradise is paradigmatic, but there are many other examples. The Greek poet Hesiod, writing over two and half thousand years ago, laments the sorry condition of the world he lives in compared to that inhabited by the first humans, a “golden race of men,” who lived “free from toil and grief…..for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly.”[1] The Roman poet Ovid similarly describes a Golden Age when
…..of her own accord the earth produced
A store of every fruit. The harrow touched her not,
Nor did the ploughshare wound her fields.
And man content with given food,
And none compelling, gathered arbute fruits
And wild strawberries on the mountain sides…..[2]
The lines underscore not just the absence of toil or tools but also the way people desired little and lived harmoniously with nature. In these idyllic circumstances there was no need for laws, since “rectitude spontaneous in the heart prevailed.”
Not My Mother’s Home Cooking…Please
by Carol A. Westbrook
You get the picture. American cuisine was relatively impoverished in the early 1950's. We were just coming out of WWII, and many war-time brides had grown up learning to cook when there were shortages of crucial ingredients–sugar, eggs, butter, meat–so poor quality food was a way of life. The war effort required rations for thousands of men, and this spurred the development of many ways to preserve food in a ready-to-eat condition, from canned beans to Spam, to boxed cheese sauces and dehydrated potatoes.
After the war ended, the soldiers came home to settle down and have children–lots of them–giving rise to the term “Baby Boomer,” and the wives gave up their jobs to stay home. Moms like mine had large families to feed, and welcomed these cooking short cuts, especially when they were cheaper than making them from scratch. As a large Catholic family, with only one income and parochial school tuition to pay, our food budget was exceptionally tight. Mom had to be very parsimonious about her food choices; we didn't eat out or take in, and cheap McDonald's food hadn't yet been invented. Spam was cheaper than beef (we ate a lot of Spam in our home, since my dad, a WWII veteran, loved it!). Canned vegetables were cheaper than fresh produce except, of course, in the summer, when our large backyard city garden produced a bumper crop of beans, tomatoes, zucchini, peppers and peas. At these times we shared and traded with neighbors and friends, or took family outings that included stops in orchards and farm stands. I remember when we purchased our first deep freezer, enabling us to stock up on meat and TV dinners when they were on sale, or freeze our surplus garden vegetables –no canning for the modern wife.
An Intro to Supertasks
by Carl Pierer
In a beautiful article, Max Black[i] argued that supertasks are logically impossible. Very eloquently, he attempts to show that to think otherwise leads to a contradiction. The first step in his argument is to suggest that if it is possible that one infinity machine exists, then it is possible that two exist. An infinity machine, simply, is a machine able to finish an infinite sequence of tasks in a finite amount of time. He continues to demonstrate that if two infinity machines should be set up to work against each other, it is impossible that both should finish their task.
Suppose we have an infinity machine, Beta. Beta is a feat of engineering, or rather, a feat of imagination. Beta is beyond the limits imposed by physics, engineering or any other subject that pays taxes to the real world. Beta is a subject of what is conceivable. There seems to be no problem involved in thinking that such a machine should exist, let us claim. Now, Beta is put between two bowls, one containing a marble, the other empty. Beta's task is to take the marble and move it from the one (right, say) bowl into the other (left). After Beta has done so, it rests for a little while. Now, take a different infinity machine, Gamma, whose task is to transfers the marble back (from left to right) whenever Beta is resting. Of course, this is an infinite task. Suppose, however, that Beta & Gamma are working ever faster. For the first ball, Beta takes half a minute to move it, then rests for half a minute. In the meantime, Gamma starts to work, taking half a minute, then resting for half a minute. For the second ball, Beta takes a quarter of a minute to move it, then rests for a quarter of a minute. For the third ball, Beta takes an eighth of a minute to move it, then rests for an eighth of a minute. For the fourth ball, you get the idea…
Fish
by Maniza Naqvi
At the end of Manhattan, across the Atlantic breakwaters, or at the beginning, swim fish from Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi. Those bodies which, appeared, of water, almost touched each other, on account of Plates moving, shifting, rocking; Rift Valley you know. But there they are, these fish, here. Go figure. At the end of Manhattan or at its beginning. To and fro, to and fro—Wearing expressions of ‘Who cares bro' or of worry, the more you stare, some anxious. Some not so much. Like it's hard to find your feet here. You know? Some look like they're happy. Yes. Like fish in water. Like this is exactly where they want to be. Aye? Others, eh it's not a bad place to end up, as places go. Some not so much…Blue with bulging foreheads. Yellow too. Colors for which I don't know names yet. Even. Wide eyed, aware, not a muscle twitching—just the fins or are they wings—swishing, wishing, shimmering. It's easy to see how fish out of water, might be us. Me. In a glass aquarium in the Staten Island Ferry Terminal. Now as I wrap my arm around the pole on a swaying speeding 2 train wondering if I should switch to the R or stay on this one—or maybe take the Shuttle to the 6 or move to the M and the E train. I'm on my way to City Hall, Not used to going to work here. To talk to folks, about how they care for those who haven't been born yet, for those on their way to growing up. For those done growing, for those in between all this, the work and the emotions, the business of living. In between good and bad days and limbs. In need of a helping hand, a fair shake, I'm on my way to exchange with the good folks there, cross pollinate. We are birds of a feather, same kettle of fish, they'll tell me and I'll tell them what in the World we are up to elsewhere. In this city they spend 9.7 billion—that's dollars, on such care. On 3 million—good people here. Elsewhere, whole countries, on billions not so much is spent….I wonder how the Cichlids got here. Fully formed and born already? Brought across the salty oceans in jars sloshing fresh water or what? Or, did they arrive as eggs here? I look around me at the morning commuters. This car is quiet, heads mostly down, dangling ear plugs, some sleeping, some reading novels or staring at IPhones. I glance at possible subjects; that face there, should be painted with gold leaf or silver. Maybe. Suddenly a man, beyond my vision on the other side of this thicket of passengers screams out ‘Aargh, Death squad, Stop!'—Some bite; Glance over— No one flinches, Some shrug. I nonplussed, smile and exchange glances with a fellow straphanger–a strapper I guess–who says reassuringly, unimpressed—‘He's just trying to get attention. That's all'. In silence the car hurtles on. Three stops later, with each periodic outburst, the car load leans towards the scream, glances become compassionate. The load here on this car understands. All these faces, from other places, on their way to fixing life, understand. Hurtling through the city, this life blood of the city in this vein—the artery—flowing, flying, moving fast from one end to the other, now leaning, now bumping, now brushing, jostling, jolting— now rocking against each other. Towards, a better life. This car load, understands. Train stops, doors open, a fresh pack loads on. And I resolve to return to the Ferry Terminal, take a photograph—wondering, still, about those colors, what shape they arrived in here, hatched or waiting to be. To spend their life—to live it watching commuters go by.
Painting by: Esma Djutovic
Seditious Sounds: On Conlon Nancarrow
by Gautam Pemmaraju
In a desultory speculative history, an affliction caused by the febrile May heat here in Bombay, I imagined a current day encounter between two old scheming radicals who spent their entire lifetimes up to no good—from global-trotting revolutionary activity to cloistered tomfoolery. I saw MN Roy, a founder of the Communist Party of India and the Mexican Communist Party slowly sipping tequila out of a slender glass with Conlon Nancarrow, a music composer of extraordinary conceptual depth and at one time, an American communist. Apart from a shared ideological space, these two remarkable men also shared a love for Mexico City—while Roy spent two intellectually formative, even revelatory, years in the sprawling city from 1917 to 1919, Nancarrow left America in protest twenty years later in 1940. He subsequently became a Mexican citizen and spent the rest of his life there. In my heat-induced visions, I saw the two eating fresh papaya (Nancarrow reportedly was very fond of them) and shooting the breeze. Perhaps they spoke of British spies, Bolsheviks, Hegelian dialectics, and radical humanism; my delirium did not reveal the nature of the conversation. I am more inclined to attribute things of a mundane nature to the encounter—the pleasing weather, Louis Armstrong, and seasonal fruits. It could well be that they were planning a night out at MN Roy's former house No 186, now a well-known ‘clandestine', ‘hip' night club in Mexico City (thanks to 3QD editor Robin Varghese for this gem), the irony of which is fecund with wild discursive possibilities.
Monday, May 4, 2015
A Love Letter from Baltimore
by Akim Reinhardt
That essay primarily focused on the riot itself, not the protests that followed or the de facto police state Baltimore has become since then. I considered the conditions in Baltimore that led to the riot and and examined rioting as a form of social violence.
In this essay, however, I would like to offer a more personalized reaction to the events of the past two weeks: fragments of thought and experience amid the choppers circling overhead, parks filled with protestors, and streets lined with soldiers.
—
Unleashing a Beast?: The Legitimizing of Governor Larry Hogan.
The night of the riot, a dear friend and fellow historian called me up and said: “This legitimizes Hogan.”
That's a very prescient insight.
When 9-11 happened, Bush the Younger was woefully unqualified to handle the situation. In the end, he seriously botched it in numerous ways. But it didn't matter. He was the man in charge. People turned to him, and he played it macho, maintaining his image enough to reap the political benefits. He was instantly legitimized, and despite all of his bungling over the next three years, was able to win re-election in 2004.
Eight months ago, Larry Hogan was kind of a nobody. Until 2003, he was just a businessman working in commercial real estate. Then, when Bob Erlich became the first Republican governor of Maryland since Spiro Agnew (yes, former disgraced Richard Nixon VP Spiro Agnew), Hogan finagled a spot as Secretary of Appointments. In other words, he was responsible for patronage appointments in the Erlich administration.
Monday Poem
“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” —Carl Sagan on a photo taken of Earth by Voyager 1 as it left our solar system
.
Pale Blue Dot
pale blue
dot
in the dark of a well,
spot on the mirror sent years ago
into a depth stiller than hell
reflecting our lonely circumstance
home glows tenuous
small as the period
at this sentence end.
◦
vague lucent
point
a place of cruel, small thoughts
as well as those sublime enough
to catch light from billions of years back
closed only by a shortfall of time,
a breadth of scarcity we can’t imagine,
which might require something as
short as an instant’s instant to reveal
if only light were quicker,
the laws of physics fully peeled
and god were not so much a
silent ruthless tricker
.
by Jim Culleny
4/23/15
Utopia, Frame By Frame
“A map of the world that does not include Utopia
is not worth even glancing at.”
~Oscar Wilde
I've recently become obsessed with a TV show, which is rather unusual for me. I like to tell people that, after HBO wrapped The Wire, I went ahead and sold my TV. Perhaps more melodramatic than true, but this is nevertheless close enough for essayistic purposes. The present show, however, could not be more different than the gritty realism of David Simon's character-driven creation. Created by Dennis Kelly and broadcast by Channel 4, the UK's fourth public service broadcaster, Utopia had a short run – only two seasons of six episodes each. Late in 2014, it was decisively announced that the series would not be renewed for a third season, but I think this was for the best. My grandfather once related an old Arab proverb to me: “One should always stop eating when it tastes the sweetest”. I don't know if this is really an old Arab proverb, but there are certain things one just isn't inclined to Google.
At any rate, one thing that is certainly true for Utopia and shows like it: if you thrive on massively complex, increasingly far-fetched scenarios, the longer you go on, the more likely you are to trip over your own plotlines, and all hopes for a tightly orchestrated dramatic tension eventually evaporate. The most instructive recent example, which still rankles with fans, is how Lost wrecked itself on reefs of its own devising, despite the impressive hermeneutical gymnastics deployed by some in its defense. I would imagine that few producers and executives enjoy contemplating a similar fate for their own endeavors.
The hazard for Utopia's genre – the paranoid thriller – is especially acute. And settling on the proverbial ‘shadowy international conspiracy' as the principal plot mechanism only doubles down on the risk, since it is tempting to mop up any inconveniences using said conspiracy. Nevertheless, I have always had great faith in the British when it comes to the respect required to make conspiracies, erm, plausible. That's right – a conspiracy needs to be treated respectfully if it is to have any currency.
The Looty-Wallahs (Who Owns Antiquities?)
by Leanne Ogasawara
He was one of the most famous art connoisseurs in Chinese history. And he was also known for walking the streets of Hangzhou dressed in the fashions of 500 years earlier. When asked why he did it, he replied, “Because I like the styles from back then.” But, in fact, everyone knew there was more to it than that. Madman Mi, as Mi Fu was also lovingly known to people of his time, served for a brief time at the court of Emperor Huizong, just prior to the fall of the Empire. Believed to be of Sogdian blood, it was through his mother’s connections at Court as a Lady-in-Waiting and Consort of Emperor Shenzong that he was able to enter the official bureaucracy without ever having had to take any of the official examinations.
But –alas– despite his excellent connections, Mi Fu was never particularly “career-oriented” –as he remained till the very end devoted to the creation, study and collection of art. His passion started while he was still quite young, and he has described in his writings how his mother more than once sold her ornamental hair combs in order to fund his collecting while he was still only a child.
To call him an eccentric would only be an understatement.
For not only did he walk the streets dressed in clothes from the Tang dynasty, but he was also known for introducing himself and bowing to especially fine specimens of garden rocks, which were of the type he collected; often addressing them politely as “elder brother.” Greatly admired by Emperor Huizong for his knowledge and style, he was appointed Director of the Calligraphy and Painting Institute at Court, where the Prime Minister was said to have observed, “Mi Fu is the kind of person we must have one of, but cannot afford to have two of!” Even though his knowledge was formidable, his personality was such that he didn’t last long at Court.
OK to Destroy: Jersey City’s Graffiti Jam of April 2015
by Bill Benzon
On Saturday April 25, 2015, some 20-30 graffiti writers and street artists converged on the now empty Newport Pep Boys store in Jersey City, New Jersey. What were they there for? To “get up” as the lingo has it. To spray paint on walls.
That activity is vandalism in Jersey City, as in most other cities America (though, like a number of cities, Jersey City also has a public mural program). And a number of these artists have police records for committing such vandalism. For that matter, I once got a summons for “aggravated trespassing” for taking photographs of graffiti on posted land belong to CSX, the large railroad conglomerate.
But it’s not vandalism if you have permission. And these writers had permission. The permission was arranged by Greg Edgell, proprietor of Green Villain, “a small group of social entrepreneurs and creatives that in the past few years have developed a diverse portfolio of projects and partnerships.” Those projects include a number of mural projects in Jersey City, where Edgell lives, and across the Hudson River in New York City.
Disclosure: I’ve known Edgell for several years and collaborate with him on projects.
In the Fall of 2014 Edgell had contacted the owner of Pep Boys about putting art on the rear wall. Why? Because it is very visible, facing the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail where it is seen by thousands of commuters everyday. He got permission and by the end of November the wall had been covered.
Winter rolled on through, gave way to Spring, and Edgell learned that that Pep Boys building was going to be torn down to make way for new construction. This wasn’t a big surprise, as he already knew the building would be coming down. But not so soon.
CATSPEAK
by Brooks Riley
Strained Analogies Between Recently Released Films and Current Events: Ex Machina, Xfinity, and a Lot of Spoilers
by Matt McKenna
Ex Machina stars Oscar Isaacs as Nathan, the hard-bodied ultra-genius who has just maybe created an artificially intelligent robot named Ava played by Alicia Vikander, and Domhnall Gleeson as Caleb, the relatively-smart weakling who Nathan handpicks to test Ava's sentience. The film is mostly sympathetic towards Caleb, who lays it on pretty thick as a wide-eyed kid gaga over being invited to Nathan's enormous estate after winning a nebulously defined contest sort of like Charlie in a Willy Wonka cyberpunk robot factory. After being equal parts confused and excited over Nathan's bizarre behavior and the paranoid security features at the isolated compound, Caleb is ecstatic to learn his role in this adventure will be to perform psychoanalysis on Nathan's potentially self-aware humanoid computer.
The similarities between Nathan and Caleb to Comcast and Time Warner Cable (TWC) should be immediately obvious. Nathan, the unlikeable punching-bag-pummeling, iron-pumping fitness enthusiast, is physically gargantuan the way Comcast is gargantuan with its 23 million subscribers. Caleb, by comparison is weak like TWC and its relatively miniscule 14 million subscribers.