RASHOMONIC.com

Friday, August 29, 2003

sprawling

Maggie Fox reports:

"We found that U.S. adults living in sprawling counties weigh more, are more likely to be obese and are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure than are their counterparts in compact counties," Reid Ewing of the National Center for Smart Growth ... told reporters.

Unlike people in old-fashioned urban centers who can walk to work, shops, and public transport, those in the spread-out communities cannot walk even if they wanted to because sidewalks and crossings are lacking and homes, schools and workplaces are far apart.

"For some people it is a 'duh' kind of issue, but it doesn't seem to be for a lot of people in important positions," Ewing said.

:: 10:52 AM [+] ::

synthetic

My friend Matt told me about Wired's "The New Diamond Age":

Carter Clarke, 75, has been retired from the Army for nearly 30 years, but he never lost the air of command. When he walks into Gemesis - the company he founded in 1996 to make diamonds - the staff stands at attention to greet him...

'If you give a woman a choice between a 2-carat stone and a 1-carat stone and everything else is the same, including the price, what's she gonna choose?' he demands. 'Does she care if it's synthetic or not? Is anybody at a party going to walk up to her and ask, 'Is that synthetic?'

:: 2:01 PM [+] ::

vehicle

AHH reports:

Outkast, Biz Markie and a host of NBA stars are set to join New York Knicks' Shandon Anderson ... to help launch his philanthropic endeavor, The Shandon Anderson Foundation ... aimed at developing youth between the ages of 10-14 years of age ...

"I was raised helping others, so it was just natural for me to create a vehicle to give back," Anderson said.

:: 9:23 AM [+] ::

flowers

Davey D links to "Chuck D vs. John McWhorter":

MCWHORTER: It’s going to stay exactly the way it is, and that’s why I don’t speak out against hip-hop more often... We have got at least another 25 years of this exact same kind of music.

CHUCK D: Listen, I’m a song writer. I could write about flowers. Whether you cover it on your news station, that’s debatable. You probably won’t cover anything that’s positive because it’s not sexy enough for you to sell.

:: 9:12 AM [+] ::

cooking

The Globe reports:

One of two lawyers in her cooking class, Terranova is among a steadily rising number of attorneys questioning whether to stay in a field that no longer offers what they once considered key draws: a chance to help clients and the ability to choose interesting cases over lucrative ones...

While most attorneys are not abandoning briefs for brioche, virtually everyone from bar association presidents to law school deans agrees that these are times of deep dissatisfaction and angst in the legal industry.

:: 12:38 PM [+] ::

line

Fellow blogger Silver Rights draws a line:

I buy next to no rap because of the misogyny and violence ... Miles Davis is in that category. Despite his prodigious talent, he was one hell of a woman hater.

I have no magical formula to offer in regard to this issue. Indeed, the answer may be that one learns to tolerate a degree of imperfection in artists one admires and each individual decides where to draw the line.

:: 8:48 PM [+] ::

good bad

David Byrne of the Talking Heads writes in Ode:

We realise that a crooked line has more soul than a perfectly straight one ... a recording that has just the right amount of distortion, and colour added by ancient equipment is often preferable to a perfect copy ...

Perfection, one must conclude, is not actually perfect at all. In fact, it is almost the complete opposite. Perfection is bad. But bad is good. But bad perfection is not good, only good bad is good. It's all very simple.

:: 5:25 PM [+] ::

monsters

Started reading The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Didn't know this:

In 1620 Bacon had called for the rigorous study of monsters, "of every thing ... which is new, rare, and unusual in nature."

... "multitudes" that deserved destruction: West Indians; Canaanites; pirates; land rovers; assassins; Amazons; and Anabaptists.

:: 10:37 PM [+] ::

accounts

Laurie Goodstein writes about Mel Gibson's The Passion:

Mr. Gibson has said his movie will be true to the Gospel account of the last hours of Jesus' life. But Matthew, Mark, Luke and John differ greatly, presenting Rashomon-like accounts of the roles of the Romans and Jews in the Crucifixion.

:: 12:27 AM [+] ::