Ofterdingen and Kropotkin

Ein anderer Zeimesser ist die Filmgeschwindigkeit: Die Hälfte der Zeit ist es im Kino dunkel. Eine achtundvierzigstel Sekunde wird der Film belichtet, eine achtundvierzigstel Sekunde dauert die Transportphase, in der in der Kamera oder im Projektor Dunkelphase herrscht. D.h.: Im Kino sehen die Augen eine achtundvierzigstel Sekunde nach außen, eine achtundvierzigstel Sekunde sehen sie nach innen. Das ist etwas sehr Schönes.

Another measure of time is the speed of film: half of the time the cinema is dark. 1/48 of a second film is exposed to light, 1/48 of a second lasts the film transport phase during which there is darkness in camera or projector. That is, at the cinema the eyes look to the outside for 1/48 of a second, 1/48 of a second they look to the inside. This is something of great beauty.

Perhaps the future of Sloth will lie in sinning against what now seems increasingly to define us -- technology.

Pynchon on Sloth

via Scheinriese

HAD ENOUGH OF THE "HAVES"?

In the era Twain decried as the "great barbeque," the outrageous concentration of income and wealth eventually sparked a reaction and a vast reform movement. But it was not until the onset of the Great Depression, decades later, that massive labor/social unrest and economic collapse forced the country's political elite to check the growing concentration of income and wealth. Today, it does not appear that there are, as yet, any viable forces at work to put the brakes on the current runaway process of rising inequality. Nor does it appear that this era's power elite is ready to accept any new social compact. In a recent report on the "new king of Wall Street" (a co-founder of the hedge fund/private-equity buyout corporation Blackstone Group) that seemed to typify elite perspectives on today's inequality, the New York Times gushed that "a crashing wave of capital is minting new billionaires each year." Naturally, the Times was too discreet to mention is that those same "crashing waves" have flattened the middle class. And their backwash has turned the working class every-which-way while pulling it down, down, down.

But perhaps those who decry the trend can find at least symbolic hope in the new boom in yet another luxury good. Private mausoleums, in vogue during that earlier Gilded Age, are back. For $650,000, one was recently constructed at Daytona Memorial Park in Florida—with matching $4,000 Medjool date palms for shade. Another, complete with granite patio, meditation room, and doors of hand cast bronze, went up in the same cemetery. Business is booming, apparently, with 2,000 private mausoleums sold in 2005, up from a single-year peak of 65 in the 1980s. Some cost "well into the millions," according to one the nation's largest makers of cemetery monuments. Who knows: maybe the mausoleum boom portends the ultimate (dead) end for the neo-Gilded Age.

James M. Cypher, "Slicing Up at the Long Barbeque: Who Gorges, Who Serves, and Who Gets Roasted?", Dollars & Sense

via infinite thought

The man once regarded as the world's most powerful banker has bluntly declared that the Iraq war was 'largely' about oil. [...] a survey of Iraqis, which was released last week, claims that up to 1.2 million people may have died because of the conflict in Iraq - lending weight to a 2006 survey in the Lancet that reported similarly high levels.
More than one million deaths were already being suggested by anti-war campaigners, but such high counts have consistently been rejected by US and UK officials.

MELBOURNE'S busiest intersection will be closed for an entire weekend in February during filming of a $180 million television series being produced by Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks.
A week after ridiculing the plans of five young environmentalists who wanted to stage a car-free day in the city, the State Government has backed the plan to close the intersection of Swanston and Flinders streets and all major roads feeding into it. [...]
In May, Lord Mayor John So agreed privately to help the film producers close the intersection from midnight on Friday, February 1, until 5am on Monday, February 4.
Trams, buses and taxis will be diverted for the weekend, while train travellers will be diverted from Flinders Street. Police have promised to move on people who inconvenience the film shoot.

Büchners Erzählung [Lenz] beschreibt den umgekehrten Vorgang zu Kleists Michael Kohlhaas. Dessen Eigensinn geht ganz nach außen bis an den Galgen. Und er würde lieber (wie ein Terrorist) die Welt zerstören als aufzugeben. Die Energie von Lenz bei Büchner geht nach innen, bis der Mensch äußerlich still aussieht. Das ist die innenwendige Zerstörung, zugleich die stärkste Ballung von Subjektivität.

Büchners narrative [Lenz] describes the inverted process of Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas. The latter's obstinacy is directed outward and leads him to the gallows. And he'd rather (like a terrorist) destroy the world than capitulate. Lenz' energy in Büchner is directed inward until the human outwardly seems still. This is the inner destruction, at the same time the strongest concentration of subjectivity.

The 225 richest people on the planet now earn the same as the poorest 2.7bn,
equivalent to 40% of humankind, the report finds.

in The Guardian