yesterday's bad art theory is today's great gift shop
Day: April 6, 2017
half the world is cracking up in laughter
Noam Chomsky on kremlingate (via Michael Krieger):
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Noam Chomsky, I’d like to ask you about something that’s been in the news a lot lately. Obviously, all the cable channels, that’s all they talk about these days, is the whole situation of Russia’s supposed intervention in American elections. For a country that’s intervened in so many governments and so many elections around the world, that’s kind of a strange topic. But I know you’ve referred to this as a joke. Could you give us your view on what’s happening and why there’s so much emphasis on this particular issue?
NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s a pretty remarkable fact that—first of all, it is a joke. Half the world is cracking up in laughter. The United States doesn’t just interfere in elections. It overthrows governments it doesn’t like, institutes military dictatorships. Simply in the case of Russia alone—it’s the least of it—the U.S. government, under Clinton, intervened quite blatantly and openly, then tried to conceal it, to get their man Yeltsin in, in all sorts of ways. So, this, as I say, it’s considered—it’s turning the United States, again, into a laughingstock in the world.
So why are the Democrats focusing on this? In fact, why are they focusing so much attention on the one element of Trump’s programs which is fairly reasonable, the one ray of light in this gloom: trying to reduce tensions with Russia? That’s—the tensions on the Russian border are extremely serious. They could escalate to a major terminal war. Efforts to try to reduce them should be welcomed... (emphasis added)
more greed architecture
The small cylindrical building in the lower left was a PATH train entrance that stood alone in a vacant lot for years. Then, the awkward parabuilding on the right was added, using the cylinder as a support for a multi-story hotel (Marriott Residence Inn). "Parabuilding" was New York Times architecture critic's Herbert Muschamp's euphemism for what could also be called "the architecture of greed," where squeezing every last nickel of rent takes precedence over style. Note how the sleek futuristic columns attempt to distract from the silliness of the design.
The hotel exploits monetizable floor area on the opposite side, too -- its wraparound floors nudge into the space of the adjacent building, a la the infamous shot of George Bush trying to squeeze past Bill Clinton in a public doorway:
Here's an image that a tourist bureau might like, where everything appears neat and symmetrical. Photos can lie.
