"The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting."
--The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera
9.30.2005
liquidation
"You begin to liquidate a people ... by taking away its memory. You destroy its books, its culture, its history. And then others write books for it. Then the people slowly begins to forget what it is and what it was. The world at large forgets it still faster."
--The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera
--The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera
9.25.2005
9.18.2005
adrift
"For Tamina is adrift on a raft and looking back, looking only back. Her entire being contains only what she sees there, far behind her. Just as her past contracts, disintegrates, dissolves, so Tamina is shrinking and losing her contours.
She wants to have her notebooks so that the flimsy framework of events, as she has constructed them in her school notebook, will be provided with walls and become a house she can live in. Because if the tottering structure of her memories collapses like a clumsily pitched tent, all that Tamina will be left with is the present, that invisible point, that nothingness moving slowly toward death."
--The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera
She wants to have her notebooks so that the flimsy framework of events, as she has constructed them in her school notebook, will be provided with walls and become a house she can live in. Because if the tottering structure of her memories collapses like a clumsily pitched tent, all that Tamina will be left with is the present, that invisible point, that nothingness moving slowly toward death."
--The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera
9.17.2005
forbidden
"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."
--Voltaire
--Voltaire
9.10.2005
what i'm reading now
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (#3), J. K. Rowling
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera
Executive Intelligence, Justin Menkes
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera
Executive Intelligence, Justin Menkes
9.07.2005
blame the victims?
"Disaster sociology according to Bill O'Reilly. Or, Two views on who didn't get out.
From today's Times: "Brian Wolshon, an engineering professor at Louisiana State University who served as a consultant on the state's evacuation plan, said little attention was paid to moving out New Orleans's 'low-mobility" population - the elderly, the infirm and the poor without cars or other means of fleeing the city, about 100,000 people.'"
O'Reilly, on his show last night: "A lot of the people -- a lot of the people who stayed wanted to do this destruction. They figured it out. And that's -- I'm not surprised."
-- Josh Marshall via
From today's Times: "Brian Wolshon, an engineering professor at Louisiana State University who served as a consultant on the state's evacuation plan, said little attention was paid to moving out New Orleans's 'low-mobility" population - the elderly, the infirm and the poor without cars or other means of fleeing the city, about 100,000 people.'"
O'Reilly, on his show last night: "A lot of the people -- a lot of the people who stayed wanted to do this destruction. They figured it out. And that's -- I'm not surprised."
-- Josh Marshall via
9.05.2005
hurricane housing
Check out this website and this website for connecting people dislocated by Hurricane Katrina with people able to open their homes.
9.04.2005
1000 questions
New Orleans Time-Picayune Blog: Open Letter to the President
Dear Mr. President:
We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we’re going to make it right."
Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.
Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It’s accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.
How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks?
Read More >>
Via
Dear Mr. President:
We heard you loud and clear Friday when you visited our devastated city and the Gulf Coast and said, "What is not working, we’re going to make it right."
Please forgive us if we wait to see proof of your promise before believing you. But we have good reason for our skepticism.
Bienville built New Orleans where he built it for one main reason: It’s accessible. The city between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain was easy to reach in 1718.
How much easier it is to access in 2005 now that there are interstates and bridges, airports and helipads, cruise ships, barges, buses and diesel-powered trucks?
Read More >>
Via
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