New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl

excerpts from a 2007 talk at Boston University*

* * *

Peter Schjeldahl [SHEL-dahl] started work as a reporter in 1962 at the Jersey Journal, in Jersey City:
Hudson County, New Jersey, was epically corrupt. Several Jersey City mayors have gone to jail. One day, in 1963, a reporter hung up the phone and announced, “Tony Pro is having another press conference.” Mysteriously, everybody laughed. “Let’s send the kid,” someone said.

At the Teamsters headquarters in Union City, Tony (Pro) Provenzano sat behind an immense desk, flanked by central-casting bodyguards. Other reporters lounged and smoked. Only I had a notebook ready. Tony Pro told a series of obscene jokes about Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who was crusading against the Mob. And that was that. Tony Pro stood at the door shaking hands with us. Crinkle. In my palm was the first fifty-dollar bill I had ever seen. I said thanks, but I really couldn’t. I set the bill down when he wouldn’t take it back.

Staring eyes greeted my return to the paper, and the editor-in-chief called me into his office and shut the door. He said, “I don’t know what you did or what you said, and I don’t want to know. Never do it or say it again.”

see source, archived*


2021-06-12T09:32−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: June 12, 2021

*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*
Posted

Gödel's incompleteness theorem explained

Roger Penrose explains Gödel's incompleteness theorem to Joe Rogan

as Nagarjuna explained in the second century:
what is thought to be
depends on
what is thought to be
or is assumed

it is relative truth

absolute truth is simply what is
and depends on nothing else*


2021-06-05T22:58−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: June 5, 2021

*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*
Posted

it’s a privilege …

it’s a privilege to educate yourself about racism instead of experiencing it

from the CUC Dismantling Racism study group’s final report:
you also can read the whole 44-page report in a PDF viewer like the one above*

from an article by Renée Chereez:*
Almost every day, I learn something new about the history I thought I knew. When I learn parts of history that were erased, I’m struck by how well the machine that is white supremacy works to keep marginalized people oppressed.

Because white supremacy is deeply woven into the fabric of society regardless of what part of the globe you live, due diligence must be taken.

Anti-racism work must be approached with eyes wide open, with deep commitment, and a knowing that this is life-long work.

There are no time-outs and days off.


2021-06-01T10:08−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: June 1, 2021

*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*

image credit: James Eades*

Posted

the happy couple: Carrie and Boris

Carrie Symonds and Boris Johnson, in the garden at Number 10 after their wedding on May 29*

Marina Wheeler (!w2) – Boris Johnson’s second wife, mother of four of his children – has written a book:




2021-05-31T16:20−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 31, 2021

*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*



Posted

red pill

image source: dictionary.com screenshot*

from a Caitlin Johnstone article:*
If you think it was a big red pill to realize that the media's narratives about the world are nothing like real life, wait til you realize that the same is true of your own narratives about your own life.

if it was worth it – even though it hurt – to realize the world is not as it is thought or said to be, keep going till you realize nor are you as you are thought or said to be

“things are not as they are seen, nor are they otherwise” / lankavatara sutra (!gb, !tw)


2021-05-28T10:40−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 28, 2021

*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*


Posted

William Shatner – interviewed by Hadley Freeman


Hadley Freeman:
Is this actually Shatner or a celebrity lookalike? You look amazing for 90, Bill, I say cautiously.



“Ha! Well, I don’t have any secret potions. It must be genetic. I ride a lot of horses and I’m into the bewilderment of the world, so I open my heart and head into the curiosity of how things work,” he says.

I’m not sure if “the bewilderment of the world” is an ingredient Olay can bottle, but it certainly works for Shatner. That, and horses.*
“the bewilderment of the world” sounds like an echo of Mary Oliver’s “be astonished”*


2021-05-26T15:00−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 26, 2021

*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*

Posted

book interview with controversial former bishop / August 2020

“A myth is not an event that happened. It’s something that happens all the time.” —Richard Holloway, at 22:09

interview begins at 2:57

!a Stories We Tell Ourselves by Richard Holloway (!w2)* / subtitle: Making Meaning in a Meaningless Universe


2021-05-25T09:30−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 25, 2021

*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*

MacDiarmid: Caledonian antisyzygy (!cd) [an-tee-SIZ-uh-jee] / the joining together of opposites

Scottish Episcopal Church (!w2) / Richard Holloway became a former bishop when he could no longer express beliefs he was expected to

Posted

pinned tweet by Michael Geist, professor and expert in internet and e-commerce law

see also: michaelgeist.ca


2021-05-22T10:20−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 22, 2021

*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*
Posted

lose 35 lbs in 3–5 months to cure type 2 diabetes (Roy Taylor)

see Roy Taylor, scientist (!w2) … and tweeted, linked article, archived*

from the article by Donna Ferguson:
Taylor’s “Newcastle” weight loss program is a clinically proven method of reversing early type 2 diabetes and his approach is currently being rolled out to people with the condition by the NHS. It involves cutting your calorie intake to 700-800 calories a day. In the book he explains how the people in his program who managed to do this – typically by consuming only slimming meal shakes and non-starchy vegetables, plus one cup of tea or coffee each day with skimmed milk – lost a life-changing amount of weight in just eight weeks. And how you can do the same, safely, at home.

In other words it is a book that has all the hallmarks of becoming a massive bestseller. But Taylor himself will not make a penny from it. He is donating 100% of his proceeds from the book to the charity Diabetes UK, which is “only logical,” he tells me, because they funded his original 2011 study. “That was so far sighted of them,” he says. “They supported research that I know the experts thought was outlandish.” He says just one person at the research committee meeting spoke up for his proposal and convinced the others by saying: “It might sound crazy, but if he’s right, it would be really important.”

Taylor decided to write the book because, even though most diabetes experts in the UK have now accepted that his rapid weight loss program works, many doctors in Europe and the USA remain unconvinced. “It’s not easy to get new ideas accepted in medicine. So it will be a while before this gets into the textbooks and generations of doctors are taught about it.”*


2021-05-16T10:00−07* / at the about* post – at bit.ly/dateposted – anyone can link to this post from its date: May 16, 2021

*a link – or not; see a note on notes and links and a disclaimer / … and maybe browse or search the archive*

Posted