In the May 2014 issue of Poetry, there are two poems that provide opposite examples of how to enjamb: one that elicits surprise and intrigue, the other, groans. The first is Tom Sleigh’s slant-rhyme sonnet “Another Day of Life,” from the After Vallejo series; the second is Jacob Saenz’s “Forged.”
Categories: Notes.
One of my coworkers forwarded me Blake Gopnik’s Times article about Kara Walker’s sculpture “A Subtlety.” It looks an impressive work, and I’m eager to see it when it opens for public viewing: massive blocks of sugar carved to resemble sphynx who is wearing a bandana or handkerchief reminiscent of Aunt Jemima. Its subtitle, “The Marvelous Sugar Baby, an Homage to the unpaid and overworked Artisans who have refined our Sweet tastes from the cane fields to the Kitchens of the New World,” adds a layer of of historical context over the stereotypical depiction, indicating recognition of the monstrous conditions that went into the production of sugar and sweets during slavery — and before such production was industrialized. People who did this work, from the cane fields and boiling vats to the noxiously smokey kitchens, did it in horrid conditions, and calling attention to slavery’s central role in the sugar industry is welcome.
I also enjoy the material tension of the work: it’s only because sugar production has been fully industrialized that it is feasible to use it to fashion a sculpture on this scale; the removal of labor from the production process allows current sugar to stand in as a monument to the labor that produced past sugar; only through a cheapening of the raw material are we able to stand awestruck at the scope of this thing.
There is probably something to be said, as well, about the bleaching process used to make refined sugar white, but I’ll leave that for cleverer people.
(Rachel Laudan has written and talked a lot about how much toil goes into producing sugar and salt using pre-industrial methods, and if you are unfamiliar you should check her out; it may make you think twice about adding a dash of artisan sea salt and hand-produced demerara.)
Categories: Notes.
Occasionally, I act like I can understand more about quantum physics than I do, and I read recaps in Nature like this one. They sometimes contain wonderful explanatory clauses. Like this:
Quantum networks encode information in quantum bits, or qubits, which can occupy multiple states simultaneously as if they were living separate histories in parallel universes at the same time.
That’s a big “as if.” Does it really help anyone actually understand any of the complexities of what goes on at the quantum level? No, likely, not at all. But it does tap into a certain scifi fancifulness about the makeup of reality, and enables readers to lay down a veneer of understanding on top of an opaque process, and walk about as if they had two legs to stand on.
Categories: Asides.
I’ve always had a problem with pleaded. When I read it, it makes me cringe; instead, I wish the writer had just written pled, which, to my ear, sounds natural, and may or may not have been the way that my family and peers would have spoken when I was growing up—these things are hard to recall, and my recollections are probably more down-home than what I actually lived. Anyway, pleaded.
Categories: Notes.
The associations are screaming, not only because the industry is sinking deeper into a quagmire, but because the Value Added Tax for restaurants is going up again. In 2001, it was 19.6%, same as for most sectors. Then President Chirac, while running for reelection, promised to lower it. A promise that shattered on the floor of reality. He’d been blocked by the European Council’s fight against cross-border “tax dumping.” But President Sarkozy managed to arm-twist the Council into agreeing. And on July 1, 2009, the VAT was cut to 5.5%.
Enormous hoopla. It impacted the entire hospitality sector – hotels, restaurants, and cafés – the fourth largest sector in France with at the time 185,000 businesses. It was a grand bargain: restaurant owners committed to passing on the rate cut by lowering prices. That would stimulate consumption, which would create 20,000 jobs per year, for two years. Hallelujah.
Alas, since 2000, the sector had already been creating on average 15,000 jobs per year, with the exception of 2008-2009. So the ballyhooed 40,000 jobs over a two-year period would be a net gain of 10,000 jobs. The commitment to lower prices by 11.8% on average concerned only 12 products, such as coffee, bottled water, the daily special, etc., and each restaurant could lower prices on only seven of them. At best, it might have worked out to an overall cut in prices of 3% – not exactly a magnet to draw additional customers to the table.
But few restaurants lowered any prices. They swallowed with gusto the additional margin as profit. The hoped-for traffic didn’t materialize. Nor did the jobs. Wages didn’t go up either, as hoped. About a fifth of the employees in the sector were considered “working poor,” the highest of any sector. That failure of a tax cut to achieve anything at all turned into a toxic stew of mockery, scandal, and higher budget deficits.
As the Eurozone debt crisis spread its tentacles from the periphery to the core, and as France was sliding deeper into its budget quandary, raising the VAT in the restaurant sector suddenly became a solution. Hence, effective January 1, 2012, under a painfully grinning President Sarkozy who’d lose his job five months later, the VAT was jacked up from 5.5% to 7%. Since then, the tentacles have grabbed France, and its budget debacle has gotten worse. So President Hollande and his government found another solution: raise the restaurant VAT to 10%, effective January 1, 2014.
Via Testosterone Pit.
Categories: Notes.
Like many of my yuppie peers, I like to cook, and I marry this enjoyment with a historical curiosity: is the way I flip omelets, in my great grandma’s old and heavy skillet, the way that it’s always been done? What is the etymology of julienne, and how has the technique it names evolved? How long have the wealthy in Europe used forks, and when did their use become more generalized? These and other things, I wonder, besides the most efficient way to mince garlic and reduce an onion to minuscule particles.
Categories: Notes.
Because I would like to see the world less ravaged, I’m pleased by the study, recently written up in Nature, that investigated the sort of protections that natural habitats like oyster reefs, marshlands, and dunes lend coastal areas. The authors quantified risks for different scenarios of sea level rise for the United States, and then measured, by generalizing the protection each gives, what is gained by preserving existing habitats—and, perhaps, restoring them for the sake of enriching resilience.
But that’s wishful thinking. Because, while the study measured impacts in terms of population and property values, the arbiter of what to do will be, as it usually is, the dollar. This is apparent even in the underlying methodological aspirations of the study’s authors. One states, “It really is going to get to the point where we’ll be able to put dollar values on what we gain from restoring natural habitats.”
Which makes cents of things, in its cold way. And so may actually spur authorities and the elite to action in “high-value” places where loads of money will be washed out to sea (and scores of people displaced), but the places that do not count for much in dollar terms—the Delta, for instance, or basically anywhere outside of the rich inlets of California, New York, and Florida—will be left to the rising tides.
Those not worth much will have to hope for cheap ways of saving themselves.
Categories: Notes.
Some of the “radical” responses to this most recent shooting grate our more human sensibilities. “Guns” are touted as having become a “fetish object”; there are calls that we need to promote “justice,” not the control of guns—specific, state-delineated efforts to define and control the “gun problem” are said to be “liberal.” We don’t need to decrease the supply of guns, we need to deal with the demand for them!
Categories: Notes.
“We’ve never gone into surveillance for sake of surveillance unless there is criminal activity afoot,” McDaniel told The Daily. “Just to see what you’re doing in your backyard pool - we don’t care.”
From an article on the increasing use of drones in the US, which paid special attention to the problem of putting weapons on them. They’d not be using guns (at first), but they’d be fitted out with tear gas and rubber bullets, for use above the border.
Categories: Notes.
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