Schwarz
View current page
...more recent posts
The first thing we talked about was that NOAA report. Steiner said it was obviously full of guesswork -- and bad guesswork at that. "They shouldn't have even tried to issue these numbers right now," he said. "I smell politics all over it. The only plausible explanation is they were in a rush to hang the 'Mission Accomplished' banner."
And Steiner suspects the 10 percent recovery rate for BP is actually overstated. The report based its conclusions on operational reports showing that 11.1 million gallons of oil were burned and 34.7 million gallons of oily water were recovered through skimming.
But Steiner said the actual amount of oil recovered could be about half what the report claims. The oil-water mix, which officials evidently assumed was 20 percent oil, could well have been closer to 10 percent, he said. As for the burned oil figures, "they are simply coming from the BP contractors out there and then put into the Incident Command reports as gospel. As far as I know, there was no independent observation or estimation of those numbers."
Housing will eventually recover from its great swoon. But many real estate experts now believe that home ownership will never again yield rewards like those enjoyed in the second half of the 20th century, when houses not only provided shelter but also a plump nest egg.analysis
keep these off the usa
he who gets slapped
1967 sunbeam alpine series V
easton 1884 stone church / Commercial & Office Space for Sale Sq feet: 14,584 sq. ft. / $125k
easton 3 story brick end townhouse 4 br / $60k
Q: In the '60s, you were among the first to try to bridge the
gap between high and low cultures. Now, after three decades,
we've seen high culture, or the so-called canon, besieged by
popular culture and multiculturalism. We have today a new
sensibility that, depending on one's perspective, either
surpasses or parodies the kind of sensibility that you heralded
in the last essay of Against Interpretation (1966). We now live
in an age of total eclecticism and global interpenetration,
which many people, including myself, call the postmodern. So
far, your reaction to postmodernism seems largely inimical. And
you refused to allow the Camp sensibility that you helped make
famous to be co-opted by the postmodernists because "Camp
taste... still presupposes the older, high standards of
discrimination" ("Writing Itself" 439).
SS: I never thought I was bridging the gap between high and low
cultures. I am unquestioningly, without any ambiguity or irony,
loyal to the canon of high culture in literature, music, and the
visual and performing arts. But I've also enjoyed a lot of
popular music, for example. It seemed we were trying to
understand why that was perfectly possible and why that wasn't
paradoxical... and what diversity or plurality of standards
might be. However, it didn't mean abolishing hierarchy, it
didn't mean equating everything. In some sense I was as much a
partisan or supporter of traditional cultural hierarchy as any
cultural conservative, but I didn't draw the hierarchy in the
same way.... Take an example: just because I loved Dostoevsky
didn't mean that I couldn't love Bruce Springsteen. Now, if
somebody says you have to choose between Russian literature or
rock 'n roll, of course I'd choose Russian literature. But I
don't have to choose. That being said, I would never argue that
they're equally valuable. But I was very struck by how rich and
diverse one's experiences are. Consequently, it seems to me a
lot of cultural commentators were lying about the diversity of
their experiences. On the other hand, there are a lot of things
in mass culture that didn't appeal to me, notably what's on
television. It seems very non-nourishing, conventional, bland,
trivial. So it wasn't a question of bridging the gap. It's
simply that I saw a lot of simultaneity in my experiences of
pleasure, and felt that most discourse about culture was either
philistine or shallowly snobbish. So it wasn't this is "here,"
and that's "there," and I can make a bridge. It was that I
understood myself to have many kinds of experiences and
pleasures, and I was trying to understand why that was possible,
and how you could still maintain a hierarchical sense of values.
This is not the sensibility that's called the postmodern--by the
way, that's not the word I use or find useful to use. I
associate postmodernism with leveling and with recycling. The
word modernism arose in architecture. It has a very specific
meaning. It meant the Bauhaus School, Corbusier, the box
skyscraper, the rejection of ornament. Form is function. There
are all sorts of modernist dogmas in architecture, which came to
prevail not only because of their aesthetic values. There was a
material support for these ideas: it's cheaper to build
buildings this way. Anyway, when the term postmodernism began to
be used across the field for all the arts it became inflated.
Indeed, many writers who used to be called modern or modernist
are now called postmodern because they recycle, use
quotations--I'm thinking of Donald Barthelme, for instance--or
practice what's called intertextuality.
Q: Yes, the way writers are being relabelled as postmodern is at
times baffling. For example, I was startled when Fredric
Jameson, whose work I greatly admire, cited Beckett--who for me
is a terminal product of high modernism--as a postmodern author.
SS: Jameson is the leading scholar who has tried to make more
sense of the category of postmodernism. One of the reasons I
remain unconvinced by his use of the term is that I don't think
he's interested in the arts. Not really. Not even in literature.
He's interested in ideas. If he cared about literature he
wouldn't have quoted--at great length--Norman Mailer. While you
illustrate your ideas with quotations from novels, you're also
implicitly suggesting to people that they read these books. I
think that either Jameson doesn't know that Mailer isn't a very
good writer, or that he doesn't care. Another example is when
Van Gogh and Warhol are treated as equivalent by Jameson for the
sake of theory-building, for fitting examples into his theory.
That's when I get off the bus. In my view, what's called
postmodernism--that is, the making everything equivalent--is the
perfect ideology for consumerist capitalism. It is an idea of
accumulation, of preparing people for their shopping
expeditions. These are not critical ideas....
Susan Sontag
via hyeprion fb
telex, teletype and early examples of computer art
(mad / haha, wont cut and paste easily)
A group of scientists says that as much as 79 percent of the BP oil that spilled into the Gulf of Mexico is still present. The scientists released a report this week to counter a rosier picture presented by the federal government that says three-quarters of the oil was recovered, dissolved, burned, skimmed or dispersed. Whichever report is right, so much oil spilled, that millions of barrels of oil still threaten the Gulf ecosystem. And most of the remaining oil cannot be cleaned up.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
A 22-mile-long invisible mist of oil is meandering far below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, where it will probably loiter for months or more, scientists reported Thursday in the first conclusive evidence of an underwater plume from the BP spill.
The most worrisome part is the slow pace at which the oil is breaking down in the cold, 40-degree water, making it a long-lasting but unseen threat to vulnerable marine life, experts said.
nice collection of coal chute holes with carved water diversion grooves images. but please can all the mumbo-jumbo design speak. only the slightest mention of their real purpose. signs are of a secondary nature and coal chute grooves were purpose built to keep the basements a little dryer. all coal chutes used to have iron lids (manhole covers). the ones with cement patches had their lids stolen for scrap value first and later by hipsters for cool looking table tops. coal used to be delivered at the street and was stored in a bin below street level near the furnace. this is all relatively recent history, less that 100 years. please, just the facts mam!
via bldblog who seamed to ignore the bs
'71 IH scout 800b
la singularidad de lo obvio - paper mill museum
sweet stairs! (more from jb's links)
Despite an ever-expanding estimate of the volume of the spill, relatively little oil washes ashore at first, and only a small portion ever will. Instead, trapped in the deep, the oil fouls the ocean's twilight and dark zones: the mesopelagic and the bathypelagic (bathos: deep). After April 20, the dumbwaiter rising through the waters of the Gulf of Mexico will be ascending an ocean fouled with a toxic broth of oil, methane, chemical dispersants, and drilling mud. The relatively small amounts of oil washing ashore, and the relief felt when the surface oil began to dissipate, hardly account for the devastation being wrought in the dark world beyond our sight.via hyperion fb
W.A. Mozart - Adagio for Glass Armonica in C-Major, KV 617a
1400 Easton Rd, Kintnersville, PA – $375,000
July 21, 2010 by Joe Leone · Leave a Comment
5100 Sf Mixed Use Commercial Property in Durham Twp on busy Route 611. Three commercial storefronts on first floor. Storefront #1 consists of 1885 sf with Roll Up side door and formally used as antique store. Storefront #2 Consists of 600 sf currently vacant, Storefront #3 consists of 560 sf and is vacant. Second Floor consists of 1800 sf 3 BR apartment. Zoned PC-1. AS of Right Uses include Restaurant, Retail, Service Business, Financial Establishment, Veterinary Clinic, Auto Repair, Car Wash, Offices, Medical Offices, Motel / Hotel, Community Center, Commercial School, Manufacturing, Wholesale Business, Truck Terminal, Auto Sales & Nursery. Conditional Uses include Kennel, Mini Market, Amusement Hall, and Professional Studios. Special Exception Uses include Tavern & Adult Commercial Use. Located on Route 611 (Easton Rd) Property is adjacent to Delaware River Canal. Triangular shaped Site. Parcel is in 100 Year Flood Plain. Close to Routes 212, 412, I-78
1st look at 9/11 museum
Impruneta terracotta
The Boomerang or Skylark Formica pattern by Brooks Stevens in 1950 and updated by Raymond Loewy in 1954
Recycled Island