Archives for the 'Asides' Category

Category:Pejorative_terms_for_people (via.) Funny, you never hear “Trixie” outside Chicago, although they are everywhere in the US.

I’m rooting for the purple heart Iraq war vet Tammy Duckworth (a “fiscal conservative and social moderate”) to take her pal President Obama’s IL senate seat. She’d be the first Asian-American woman senator. A long-shot according to Chicago rumors, but this brave and fiercely intelligent woman deserves it. Here’s her speech at the DNC. (Duckworth is also a strong contender for Secretary of Veterans Affairs.)

More on the subject from The Independent: “One of [the Felicity Bryan] agents, Catherine Clarke, is preparing for an international conference about the promotion of non-fiction… ‘I was going to talk about history books, but given the debate about ‘Big Ideas’ novels the subject is suddenly very active,’ she says. ‘Just looking at the evidence, subjects such as economics and military history, and books which show a grand sweep history, are very much dominated by men. Most are academics, and the fact that very few women are in senior positions in academia has to be related…Academia can be a very political, bureaucratic business. I think that a lot of women, in particular, are unwilling to sacrifice their lives and careers in that sort of combative arena.’” Karen Armstrong, author of A History of God and many other “big idea” books, says “There are probably all kinds of pressures on women [writers and academics] to get tenure and win respect from their male colleagues … I have the great advantage in not being an academic but a freelance. And I also see myself as making big ideas… accessible to the general reader.” (Previously.)

More local news: Boston is home to the World’s Ugliest City Hall. Thanks I. M. Pei! (I actually like it, as well as the much maligned Weisner Building at MIT, but I haven’t read Stewart Brand’s How Buildings Learn.)

I’ve got a review of the MFA Rachel Whiteread and ICA Tara Donovan shows on Bostonist today.

NYT on Central/Kendall Square: “’You walk down the street and hear people yapping about stuff that’s technical,’ said Eran Egozy, co-founder of Harmonix Music Systems, the video game developer behind Rock Band and Guitar Hero. Mr. Egozy and his business partner, Alex Rigopulos, who met as students at the M.I.T. Media Lab in the 90s, are happy to keep their company in Cambridge. ‘It feels like this place has a lot of smart people trying to solve the world’s problems,’ Mr. Egozy said.”

“I don’t know if I would’ve supported Obama as much as I did if I realized his favorite art work was a Pre-Raphaelite painting” - Hrag Vartanian

A Facebook short story (Previously.)

The Mattress Factory will be liveblogging its opening reception tonight for PREDRIVE: After Technology featuring Takeshi Murata, Brody Condon, Paper Rad, Gretchen Skogerson, and Antoine Catala.

Cristo’s Gates exhibit is said to have generated $254 million and 4 million visitors. Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfalls generated an estimated $69 million and about 1.4 million visitors. “Some experts question those numbers, saying they seem a little extreme. But the city says they involve a complex methodology.” (via.)