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via nytimes:
Theodore Roosevelt on the 2008 Presidential Campaign
Q. Should we condone the huge severance packages paid to executives of rescued corporations?
A. There is need in business, as in most other forms of human activity, of the great guiding intelligences. Their places cannot be supplied by any number of lesser intelligences. It is a good thing that they should have ample recognition, ample reward. But we must not transfer our admiration to the reward instead of to the deed rewarded; and if what should be the reward exists without the service having been rendered, then admiration will come only from those who are mean of soul.
Author Michael Pollan, whose best-selling books have prompted readers to think differently about food, is now asking the next president to rethink the nation’s food policies.
Which brings me to the deeper reason you will need not simply to address food prices but to make the reform of the entire food system one of the highest priorities of your administration: unless you do, you will not be able to make significant progress on the health care crisis, energy independence or climate change. Unlike food, these are issues you did campaign on — but as you try to address them you will quickly discover that the way we currently grow, process and eat food in America goes to the heart of all three problems and will have to change if we hope to solve them.
related:
WNYC - The Leonard Lopate Show: Michael Pollan on the Future of American Food Policy (October 22, 2008)
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A French Family Dynasty Reinvents the Oyster
Unlike many other companies, Gillardeau buys seedling oysters that are one to two years old. That way it avoided most of the impact of the widespread death of younger French seedling oysters this year, believed to have been caused by a warm winter, heavy spring rains and possibly excess runoff of fertilizer and pesticides from local vegetable farms...Before a batch is packed, one Gillardeau or another makes sure to taste a few oysters. Theirs are less briny than many others’ — nuttier, fleshier and almost sweet.
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from my way news:
Apple Inc. comes out against gay marriage ban
The Cupertino-based computer and iPod maker posted a notice on its Web site Friday pledging $100,000 to defeat Proposition 8. The statement says Apple views Prop. 8 as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue...An Apple spokesman declined to elaborate on the company's position.
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ted talks:
Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central tenet of western societies: freedom of choice. In Schwartz's estimation, choice has made us not freer but more paralyzed, not happier but more dissatisfied. [via]
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt studies the five moral values that form the basis of our political choices, whether we're left, right or center. In this eye-opening talk, he pinpoints the moral values that liberals and conservatives tend to honor most. [via]
Dean Ornish talks about simple, low-tech and low-cost ways to take advantage of the body's natural desire to heal itself. [via]
MOMA design curator Paola Antonelli previews the groundbreaking show "Design and the Elastic Mind" -- full of products and designs that reflect the way we think now. [via]
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin talks about what we can learn from American presidents, including Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson. Then she shares a moving memory of her own father, and of their shared love of baseball. [via]
EXTRA SUPER SPECIAL: the following is in the top five ted videos i've watched.
Larry Lessig gets TEDsters to their feet, whooping and whistling, following this elegant presentation of "three stories and an argument." The Net's most adored lawyer brings together John Philip Sousa, celestial copyrights, and the "ASCAP cartel" to build a case for creative freedom. He pins down the key shortcomings of our dusty, pre-digital intellectual property laws, and reveals how bad laws beget bad code.
(related:
The Pirate’s Dilemma tells the story of how youth culture drives innovation and is changing the way the world works. It offers understanding and insight for a time when piracy is just another business model, the remix is our most powerful marketing tool and anyone with a computer is capable of reaching more people than a multi-national corporation. (the book is $[in rainbows])
also somewhat related:
Larry Lessig comments on Barack Obama, and why he believes he will be a great president, and describes the importance of the architecture of participation as a necessary premise to make people part of the political action.
)
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The composer Antonio Vivaldi was master violin tutor at the Ospedale della Pieta from 1704, and chief composer from 1713 until he left Venice in 1740. Much of Vivaldi's music was written expressly for the women of the Ospedale. Some of the babies had been abandoned because of their physical deformities, and Vivaldi had instruments specially adapted for these women. The female orchestra and choir gave concerts to aristocratic audiences while hidden behind a metal grille. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one such listener, and describes the performance in his Confessions (1770):
"I have not an idea of anything so voluptuous and affecting as this music; the richness of the art, the exquisite taste of the vocal part, the excellence of the voices, the justness of the execution, everything in these delightful concerts concurs to produce an impression which certainly is not the mode, but from which I am of opinion no heart is secure."
He goes on to describe meeting the musicians.
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so said jean-jacques rousseau:
As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State "What does it matter to me?" the State may be given up for lost.
In reality, the difference is, that the savage lives within himself while social man lives outside himself and can only live in the opinion of others, so that he seems to receive the feeling of his own existence only from the judgement of others concerning him. It is not to my present purpose to insist on the indifference to good and evil which arises from this disposition, in spite of our many fine works on morality, or to show how, everything being reduced to appearances, there is but art and mummery in even honour, friendship, virtue, and often vice itself, of which we at length learn the secret of boasting; to show, in short, how abject we are, and never daring to ask ourselves in the midst of so much philosophy, benevolence, politeness, and of such sublime codes of morality, we have nothing to show for ourselves but a frivolous and deceitful appearance, honour without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness. /Second Treatise on Inequality
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deerhunter - microcastle/weird era continued (2008), the former is one of my favorites of the year thus far, the latter was just leaked
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horsefeathers - house with no name
Similar artists: Devendra Banhart, Loch Lomond, Band of Horses /radiobutt
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tobacco - fucked up friends (2008)
The subtle difference between Tobacco's day gig, Black Moth Super Rainbow, and this disc is the synthetic dusty beat, neck-snapping rhythms and vocals courtesy of Aesop Rock on "Dirt" (a heavenly union, I might add), pandering to hip-hoppers more than Flaming Lips fans - but, again, the discord is marginal. Otherwise, Tobacco drenches the tracks in his signature vocoded vocals/vintage analog synths/trash-pit drum machinery sound, a stylized niche resembling something between the cracks of Boards of Canada's Music Has a Right to and Geogaddi." /a guy on amazon
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the hood internet vs. tobacco vs. aesop rock (2008)
Tobacco (of Black Moth Super Rainbow) has a new album called Fucked Up Friends dropping on Anticon in two weeks. Aesop Rock is on the track “Dirt,” so not only does he appear on the Hood remix of said track, we’ve also made this whole mini-mixtape (technically a compilation since the songs don’t mix into each other) of Tobacco and Aesop with some other special guest appearances.
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