As we approached Philadelphia, I had to put down the notebook in which I’d been jotting down observations. A child of the suburbs, I had never seen anything like the ghetto of north Philadelphia before. I struggled to think of a framework to make sense of what I was seeing, but all I could think of was war. The windows were blown out of old factories, jagged glass teeth in gaping mouths. Thorny vines clawed up their sides. On some buildings, graffiti covered almost every square inch. The holes in their sagging roofs revealed rusty manufacturing equipment and mounds of trash.

The skeletal remains of neighborhoods sat side-by-side with these industrial graveyards. Houses with missing or boarded-up windows outnumbered those that were occupied. Some looked burned. One out of every five showed some sign of habitation — a drawn curtain or a protruding air conditioner. I didn’t see any cars on the streets.

I found the abandonment appalling and fascinating. There were so many mysteries along the tracks. Who scrawled the angry, bubble gum graffiti on that crumbling wall? What did that old factory produce, and why did it close? Who lives in this ground zero of a neighborhood? I switched quickly between staring out the window and scribbling everything down in my notebook.

We neared the center of Philadelphia and exited the ghetto. But it would emerge again a couple of hours later in Baltimore. This time I was more prepared for it, and I started to notice things other than the buildings. Like the fact that I could count on one hand the amount of people I saw on the streets. It felt like there had been a massive evacuation, followed by an aerial bombing, and no one had returned. Far from the interstate, the ghetto received little through-traffic. I wondered if being out of sight of the highway kept these areas looking the way they did. Far more people travel by car than by train. If more people saw these neglected places, would they stay the way they are? (from http://bygonebureau.com/2010/04/23/northeast-corridor)

As a complement, from David Lynch: ”…when I was there it was a very sick, twisted, violent, fear-ridden, decadent, decaying place.”

All true, but it is a city of great beauty and culture, as well as home to some of the best food in the country. It is a city of contradictions.

Many architects and designers, when talked down from the theoretical towers of “sculptural forms” and “floating volumes” and made to speak of their craft in humbler terms, are apt to use a phrase as naive as it is loaded: “good design.” It suggests such an apparent universality that any of us should be able to spot it. But implicit in “good design” is a system of values, aesthetics, and objects that demonstrate that the seemingly innocuous little term is anything but. Nowhere is the idiom as alive and well is in the realm of modern design, which wants to suggest–formally, stylistically, and most importantly, commercially–that the two might just be synonymous.

from the opening paragraph to a wonderful essay by Aaron Britt in the current issue of Dwell

I present for your enjoyment a brief vignette of high school English class, in dramatic form:

SCENE: A classroom. Students are reading a great piece of literature.

BILLY: Hey, this story we’re reading kinda has parallels to the story of David and Goliath. Is that intentional?
CRAPO: Um, I doubt it.
BILLY: Well, [Lists a bunch of specific reasons].
CRAPO: Well, lemme call Muchiniski.
MUCHINISKI [over the phone]: Um, I’m teaching now, talk later. [Hangs up]
CRAPO: Huh. Billy, you and um… Beth, go over there and ask him.

SCENE: Another classroom.

MUCHINISKI [to BILLY and BETH]: Tell her that if she’s going to be an english teacher, she should read one of history’s most important books, the bible. Tell her that.
BILLY and JANE: Um…
MUCHINISKI: Just tell her to call me.

SCENE: First classroom.

CRAPO [on the phone] Oh. huh. um… ok.
CRAPO [to class]: He said I should, um, read the Bible. HAHA, isn’t that cute?
JAMES [who's apparently a vocal atheist, whom CRAPO really respects, her golden boy for the year]: Uh, yeah, even i’ve read the bible.
CRAPO: [Flushes]
JAMES: Mrs. Crapo, you can borrow mine.

UPDATE: The names were changed to be more interesting, but still protect the guilty.

To quote Kevin Barnes: “But no matter how hard you try / you’ll never be as weird as Uncle Alice.”

“…we get just nine cents of value for every dollar spent trying to stop terrorists.” Contrast with: “Correcting these mirconutrient deficits would cost $286 million per year.” The U.S. could have fixed this many times over considering that the Iraq war costs about $100,000 per minute. Just about 2 days…

A bit late on this one, but I can tell you what I think: History is not their strong suit. Fox News, I thought you were evil ideologues, but maybe you are just incompetent. Hanlon’s Razor at work, I suppose. I’m picturing an unfortunate undergraduate intern asked to Google Image search for a picture of “Douglas.” Frederick Douglas picture looked to be at about the right time. Nevertheless, this is heartening…
Fox News Lincoln-Douglas Graphic Shows Frederick Douglass

By the way, if you do a Google Image search for “Douglas” you get this. It asks you if you if you meant “Stephen Douglas” and the second picture is Stephen Douglas.

This is an interesting impression of how Chinese learn English. I know that some Americans, say in business, are beginning to learn Chinese, but it does not seem as widespread as this. Is widespread such a good thing if “Do you want to go to a movie?” = “I’d eventually like to have sex with you” and “I’m bored” = “Do you want to have sex?”?

Though, I don’t know Chinese, if I learn I hope my training is predicated on such gross cultural stereotypes.

The Mexico ’68 Poster is particularly striking.