February 2012
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gordonwithers:
Second Jawbreaker cello...
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“Perhaps the Europeans will vote correctly this time around”
– Irish Times - Letters - Jedward on the double
Excellent one-liner to coincide with the announcement that Ireland will be having a referendum on the EU fiscal compact treaty… and probably another one if we vote ‘no’, because we can’t really hold up a major intergovernmental...
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Let's Talk About Mental Health
A couple of very interesting discussions appeared on my Tumblr dashboard recently, both involving issues of mental health and feminism, and both representing complex and not easily-resolved debates. In fact, it’s the latter quality I want to draw attention to as much as anything, and although I do have opinions to add I’m not in the categories directly affected by either topic, so...
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Why the show born with Michael Flatley's puffy... →
Fintan O’Toole can write cultural criticism about anything, even Riverdance. (If you don’t know what Riverdance is, then I’m slightly amazed, but Wikipedia summarises it as follows: “a theatrical show consisting of traditional Irish stepdancing, notable for its rapid leg movements while body and arms are kept largely stationary. It originated as an interval performance...
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Lex Dexter Anthology, 2012
boatzone3:
Those of you who know me lately know that I’m both laboring and lying dormant under adverse conditions, enough so that even a cheeky blog post or two can turn tough days into half-victories. Because I love the people who read this blog, because I need them and I want their attention, I’ve compiled this “anthology” of the best of a blogging bender I’ve tossed off like apple seeds...
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'Intellectual crisis' [still] concerns Higgins →
Got a touch of déjà vu seeing this headline on the Irish Times website, even though I knew Michael D. was visiting London (his first international trip as head of state) and that he was making an address at the London School of Economics entitled “Of Public Intellectuals, Universities, and a Democratic Crisis”. So it was obviously going to be pretty much the same as his university...
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“We Have Chosen To Be Gay” →
(h/t the New Inquiry)
“Those who “choose to be gay” offer the disturbing possibility that attachments and affiliations can be chosen outside of state-sanctioned norms. That there are ways of living not envisioned in school textbooks. That how we choose to live matters just as much, if not more, than how we are supposed to live.
To choose what one “likes” over one’s “duty.”
So much...
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boatzone3:
[…]
No, I’d much rather see a struggle for a new secularism in the United States. Rather than countering identity politics with identity politics, a new secularism might constitute a space/between identities: a non-discursive knowledge/power that generates something other than the current age’s proliferation of subjectivities. Science, skepticism, solidarity and...
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“- An examination of what structures and policies could be developed to make...”
– Government plan aims for 100,000 new jobs by 2016
Is this really a good idea? Ireland (or more specifically, Dublin) was made a world centre for financial services, i.e. the managing and trading of another kind of non-physical property, and while I’m not sure the IFSC can actually be blamed...
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economics thought experiment
q. if corporate drink sponsorship is needed to support sports, etc. doesn’t it imply that it creates sales worth at least as much as the value of the sponsorship itself, meaning therefore if it were banned people would buy less alcohol (otherwise, why are drinks companies doing it, and why are anti-drinking campaigners calling for it to be banned?) and have more money to spend directly on...
“The definition of disease and of the insane, and the classification of the...”
– Michel Foucault (via orioleorgans)
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“You think such a thing doesn’t matter so much, but watch the opening titles for...”
– The opening titles are over; let’s leave the cinema - Shane Hegarty - The Irish Times
I really like the jazz (kinda fusion-y, Miles-y, reminds me of Christian Scott and his contemporary American anxiety albums), and the fact that the snatches of dialogue are from the first episode(s?) gives...
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“People are asking him where they can get black jeans as skinny as his. But...”
– And So I Watch You From Afar tour diary/report from Una Mulally in the Irish Times
Surely there’s an equivalent, though?
My Journey w/ the Contraception Debate
boatzone3:
Part 1. Left Out When the debate over full insurance rights for employees of religious institutions began to bubble up to the surface of media waters, my immediate and impassioned reaction was quickly checked by the realization that said reaction was too far Left to matter to the debate. At Organizing Grievances we’ve been fond of locating ourselves on “the socialist wing of...
“Online you have the luxury of ignoring whatever doesn’t suit your needs—be it...”
– back left litz: Spam and Evil and Other Things
You also have the luxury of being able to pretty effortlessly extract and highlight from other people’s work and ‘post’ it to your own personal space by way of recommending that other people who choose to accept you into a certain...
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boatzone3 asked: Do you ever actually listen to any "classic" hardcore albums of the late 70s-early 80s? How many of those bands stand up for you, musically speaking?
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Watchlikeapairofbottlerockets:
EMA - Take One Two
“This one’s for all the weirdos out there: cherish your friends, fuck the haters and let your freak flag fly.”
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brianmlatimer asked: Given the amount of writing you've done on Hot Water Music, I was curious to see if you'd had anything to say about The Draft's 'In A Million Pieces' ? Looking through the archive I couldn't find anything, and while a line of comparison between it and HWM's 'Caution' could be drawn pretty easily, I (for one) am interested in hearing any thoughts you may...
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“Oh, I think we need some — instead of talking to economists like me, we...”
– Bruce Bartlett, “the supply-side champion who wrote the manifesto for the Reagan Revolution” (h/t Moneyfire)
This makes about the most sense of anything I’ve read about politics in the past few days. Though, even taking the ascribed historical context at face value, I’m...
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“The “Ireland’s Squeezed Middle” series carried in The Irish Times over the last...”
– Colm McCarthy ”lectures in economics at University College Dublin. He chaired the government-appointed group which prepared the “An Bord Snip Nua” cost-cutting report.”
It’s not just Mitt Romney who doesn’t care about the poor - it’s economists too!
I just don’t...
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“By contrast, Graeber argues that purely monetary debts – such as the $14k I owe...”
– The New Inquiry - David Graeber’s Debt: My First 5,000 Words
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nevermind the sex pistols, it's f**ked up
that I liked the opening two seconds of the new Earth track(s) way more than an attempt to listen to at least 15 seconds of the new Fucked Up (even skipping past the tortuously slow opening). just saying (that Fucked Up are such a bland, formulaic - like a clock that chimes punk riffs - rehash of melodic hardcore that I think it’s insane that they’re so popular, even if Andrew’s...
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raptoravatar:
Does realizing that I’d probably never complain about civil liberties, illegal drone strikes etc. again as long as Obama just puts out a picture of him being a nerd every 2-8 weeks for the rest of his time in office make me a prisoner of The Spectacle?
The Spectacles, you mean?
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“The outrage is tiresome and deeply hypocritical, in all the tiresome ways you’ve...”
– “M.I.A. Shouldn’t Have Apologized.” (via marathonpacks)
the medium is the message
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Charlie Brooker: When the Daily Mail calls... →
“There was a minor kerfuffle a few weeks ago when the Daily Mail website overtook the New York Times to become the most popular news site in the world. Liberals can whine all they like, but that’s a formidable achievement, especially considering it’s not really a conventional news site at all, more a big online bin full of pictures of reality stars, with the occasional Stephen...
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Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week →
This is just too good (also last week, via the CLR):
“Funny also how Eamon Gilmore solemnly told us that we need to “honour agreements” with public sector unions. Just after tearing up agreements made with voters about the promissory notes/third-level fees/children’s allowance (I could go on). But then where Catholic morality calls for treating all citizens the same, Labour’s ethic seems...
Music Reviews a la Boatzone3: Bestuv 2011,... →
boatzone3:
Every year I spend too much time writing foul-mouthed blurbs about last year’s records, and 2011 was the biggest job yet. If you could spare a minute or sixty for a look-see, well golly it would mean much to me.
Just hop one click over to my wordpress joint, maybe leave a comment, and then this whole thing’ll finally be behind us.
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boatzone3 replied to your quote: It’s an issue that often surfaces in interviews…
US ideology worsened under neoliberalism: the elevation of an ill-defined middle class, in a bizarre twist on Marx, to “universal class” status. Romney’s recent fuckup -“I’m not worried about the poor”- implies that “real Americans”=middle class.
Sure, I read about that in the Guardian (and it’s...
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“It’s an issue that often surfaces in interviews such as this. People with decent...”
– What now for the hopes and plans of Ireland’s middle-earners - The Irish Times - Sat, Feb 04, 2012
No, they’re indicators of material privilege. And people with lower incomes also have ‘decent aspirations’ and ambitions, they’re just less likely to be realised.
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Notes On The Front: Working Our Way into the... →
Michael Taft -
“Let’s bottom-line this: if anyone thinks that driving more people into deprivation – whether in work or on social protection – will further economic recovery and fiscal stability, they should lie down in a dark window-less basement until that thought passes. Rising deprivation puts strains on social services, in-work productivity, and the Exchequer (the Government loses...
