Musics:Brian Bonz & The Dot Hongs
Kevin Devine & The Goddamn Band
Jennifer O'ConnorFilms:Paxen FilmsWhat elses?
THE GENTRIFICATION TAX
by Jesse Jarnow
A reasonable proposal to re-balance the cultural ecosystem.
If it can be proved that:
1.) In a neighborhood...
a.) ...there has been a recent boom in high-value residential real estate...
b.) ...the average rent for a commercial property has increased.
2.) An institution in that neighborhood...
a.) ...is of cultural value...
b.) ...has been open for five years or longer...
c.) ...was able to operate at the original rent...
d.) ...cannot viably function under the new rent.
Then:
The neighborhood's new residents should be made to pay a
Gentrification Tax to cover the difference between the
institution's
original rent and the current market value of the property, as well as
any attendant costs for the legal enforcement of the law.
--
The Onion: Is there a God?
Conan O'Brien: Yes. Wait, hold on. No.
--
"When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth."
Billy - age 4
--
"When you have a system by which no one is held accountable and the mantra that comes out of an investigation is there was a lack of imagination, everyone's at fault so no one's at fault, and you don't have accountability for decisions that were made that were either right or wrong, and naming names... what you have is a perpetuation of failed leadership, failed responses, and thousands more walking in the same shoes as the 9-11 victims, which we tried so very hard to change."
Monica Gabrielle of the Skyscraper Safety Campaign, on the 9/11 Commission.
--
"The vows of abstinence break far more easily than latex condoms."
Joycelyn Elders, former U.S. surgeon general
--
"There Goes The Neighborhood"
In addition to huge development projects looming over Brooklyn's Atlantic Yards and Williamsburg, add downtown Brooklyn's reconfiguration. Plans are brewing for a public plaza and underground parking garage for a Sheraton hotel, now being constructed, and much more. Evictions are in effect, or threatened. Longtime residents' buildings are being razed for condos, office buildings and upscale shops. The poor will be out. The rich will be in. Middle-income Brooklynites will have to relocate. Where?
Aramica, Ed. 102 - June 1-13, 2007
--
In design, the tag is simple: A medical-grade glass capsule holds a silicon computer chip, a copper antenna and a "capacitor" that transmits data stored on the chip when prompted by an electromagnetic reader.
Implantations are quick, relatively simple procedures. After a local anesthetic is administered, a large-gauge hypodermic needle injects the chip under the skin on the back of the arm, midway between the elbow and the shoulder.
"It feels just like getting a vaccine — a bit of pressure, no specific pain," says John Halamka, an emergency physician at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.
--
[on the subject of digital photography]
"We're not friends, just acquaintances... there's no romance."
James May Liu
--
"Whatever charge of tastelessness or trademark
violation may be attached to the artistic
appropriation of the media environment in which we
swim, the alternative — to flinch, or tiptoe away into
some ivory tower of irrelevance — is far worse. We're
surrounded by signs; our imperative is to ignore none
of them."
"... few of us question the contemporary construction
of copyright. It is taken as a law, both in the sense
of a universally recognizable moral absolute, like the
law against murder, and as naturally inherent in our
world, like the law of gravity. In fact, it is
neither. Rather, copyright is an ongoing social
negotiation, tenuously forged, endlessly revised, and
imperfect in its every incarnation."
"... second comers might do a much better job than the
originator with the original idea."
- Jonathan Lethem
--
"I love showing my films to students because they could make them. In Iran [where Bahrani’s family comes from], we have censorship. You can’t talk about certain things. Here, we also have censorship: Too many young filmmakers censor their imaginations due to what they think will sell. This is a self-imposed economic censorship."
- Ramin Bahrani, director of CHOP SHOP
--
"Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International... cited... calculations from last fall that showed that the money spent on the war each day is enough to enroll an additional 58,000 children in Head Start for a year, or make a year of college affordable for 160,000 low-income students through Pell Grants, or pay the annual salaries of nearly 11,000 additional border patrol agents or 14,000 more police officers."
- Bob Herbert, NY Times Op Ed, 3.4.08,
