Vaughn Shirley

Via “Public University Snapshots”, NY...

Fri, 04 Dec 2009 20:30:00 -0800

Via “Public University Snapshots”, NY Times:

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES

LESS 165 courses and 428 staff positions cut, 162 hiring searches canceled, salaries reduced by $37 million.

MORE Almost 56,000 applicants for this fall, an increase of 9 percent — half with grade-point averages of 4.0 or above.

[Ed. Note: What’s the role of the public university? Is it not, to educate the local population, minus a gatekeeper system? Because as it stands, due to the financial crisis and the sky-rocketing amount of qualified applicants, most of the UC’s — but Berkeley and UCLA, in particular — haven’t been so public. (“Public” applies to not only funding, but also a university’s expressed mission to educate the community it resides in.) The increasingly higher number of applicants means that less kids from middle class and lower middle class backgrounds are accepted, no matter their qualification, because an increase in applicants also means that there are more students who are from the upper social tier, who are also over qualified, and can pay without financial assistance or are even able to pay more — if from out of state — making them more desirable to a university in this economic climate. Not to mention, the “rich kids” are generally better prepared. This leaves out the young and promising, who didn’t have the same access to preparatory curriculums, SAT courses, and such. This financial crisis may end up hurting more people than we can count.]

Via “Top Ten Covers of the ’00s”, The Book...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:22:13 -0800

Via “Top Ten Covers of the ’00s”, The Book Archive Blog:

Top Ten of Covers of the ’00s

To summarize a decade’s worth of brilliant design with 20 covers is little more than an exercise in futility. We can all agree, however, that the best part of passing into a new digit bracket is the lists that come with it. This collection is little more than a representation of my own tastes, but I tried to choose works which were representative of their respective years.

I beat myself up quite a bit when putting this together, but there are still a handful of notables worth mentioning:

- Any of gray318’s covers for Safran Foer.
- Any of Kidd or Gall’s covers for Murakami
- Anything from Henry Sene Yee
- Anything from Paul Buckley or Darren Haggar over at Penguin US.

Full List.

Less Than Zero (1987): White Lines...

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 22:10:00 -0800

Via ilovehotdogs:

Remember the end of high school? Everyone’s all “Sign my yearbook!”, stiff “ass out” hugs, Kodak moments and “Keep in touch!”. You and your besties go your separate ways hoping to reconnect, catch up over a few lines and reminisce about the good ole days. You go to college for a while and it’s alright: more girls and more drugs, but something’s missing. You decide to go home for a visit only to find out that a few things have changed. Your high school girlfriend is now boning your best friend who is now a “man sandal” wearing junkie. You’re bummed and confused, so what do you do next?

P-A-R-T-Y! And when I say party, I’m talking full-blown eighties party: walls of televisions, crazy lighting, fake ice, tons of coke and fake penguins?! Is there any other kind of party? Umm, NO. You go on with your days, stoned, a zombie dragging from one scene to the next…You wonder, what the hell happened? Is this my future? Suddenly, reality check! You realize that you are rich and nothing bad can ever happen to you. Ever.

I’ve seen Less Than Zero a million times and it never gets old. It’s like a long form music video where everyone has these awkward drug induced interactions and confrontations but it works. Clay (Andrew McCarthy) is perfectly pouty, his baby face is so adorable that it’s painful. Blair (Jami Gertz) is dim, beautiful and perfectly styled. Julian is Robert Downey Jr. playing a more strung out version of himself; And James Spader (Ace of Spades!) is all Dep® hair gel, sweaters, and slick talk. They make you want to be a part of their world, but you wake up and realize you could never afford to.

And Rick Rubin produced the soundtrack. Nuff said.

"Money Can't Buy America Love", Foreign Policy

Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:05:00 -0800

"Money Can't Buy America Love", Foreign Policy :

While the debate over a troop surge in Afghanistan rages on, there has been virtual silence on the effectiveness of another central component of the U.S.-led strategy in Afghanistan: the surge of money intended to win Afghan hearts and minds. The figures are astounding: Next year, Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP) funds, the monies available to the military to support projects intended to “win hearts and minds,” are projected to nearly double to $1.2 billion. This far exceeds the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) global education budget of approximately $800 million. Even more startling, our research finds that such aid might be hurting — or at best, not helping — U.S. counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan.

Signs of just how important a weapon aid money is for the military are cropping up left and right, most prominently in the last tenet of the counterinsurgency mantra — “shape, clear, hold, and build.” An April 2009 U.S. Army handbook, Commander’s Guide to Money as a Weapons System, provides operational guidance to military officers in war zones like Afghanistan to use money “to win the hearts and minds of the indigenous population to facilitate defeating the insurgents.” The idea is to undermine insurgent support by providing a better life for local populations than militants ever could.

National security interests have always had a major influence over development assistance priorities, most notably during the Cold War. But never has aid so explicitly been viewed as a weapons system — a fact that is having a major impact on the development assistance policies and priorities of the United States and indeed of many other Western donors. Most notable, perhaps, has been the dramatic increase in U.S. official development assistance since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. According to former Brookings Institution scholar Lael Brainard’s book, Security by Other Means, the post-9/11 period has seen U.S. foreign assistance funding increase at a faster rate “than at any point since the onset of the Cold War.” Marketing aid as a strategic “weapons system” is clearly a more effective way to convince Congress to appropriate funds than calling to alleviate human suffering and poverty in far-flung corners of the developing world.

Full Article.

[Ed. Note: Paying to rebuild Afghanistan is a great idea. It’s too bad that the level of current money flow (a level it always needed to be at following their American-assisted war with the Soviets), is a bit late by twenty years, and it is currently working in a half-assed manner with a geographic triage; not equally distributing funds to all strategic areas. Also, the problem is the widespread belief amongst Afghans that the government is corrupt, you know, since it is corrupt. And this makes for “good faith” and goodwill hard to come by. All the building won’t matter until the government “acts right.” It certainly doesn’t help that we’ve shacked up with Karzai and bet it all on this cat whose own brother runs the poppy game, and who may or may not be on the Agency’s payroll: More schools, better infrastructure, a more moderate population of young people — who are not easily turned into Kalashnikov toting jihadists — is still possible, except nothing changes in earnest until we figure out the Karzai problem. Right now, the money just helps the unsavory. International development studies’ hat off.]

(via youmightfindyourself)

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:56:29 -0800

(via youmightfindyourself)

(via Space Collective/Ronald Frederick)

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:29:00 -0800

(via Space Collective/Ronald Frederick)

Black Star, “Thieves in the Night”, Black Star

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:13:49 -0800

Black Star, “Thieves in the Night”, Black Star

Via “Obama’s War”, The Economist: AMERICA will...

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:15:00 -0800

Via “Obama’s War”, The Economist:

AMERICA will win in Afghanistan, said Barack Obama on December 1st. He told an audience at West Point, a military academy, “our cause is just, our resolve unwavering. We will go forward with the confidence that right makes might”. Yet he made it clear that his patience is limited. At a time when many Americans are out of work and struggling to pay the bills, he promised that “America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan.”

President Obama outlined a three-pronged strategy for “disrupting, dismantling, and defeating” al-Qaeda and the “ruthless, repressive and radical” Taliban. The first prong will be a military surge. He promised to send 30,000 more troops early next year, to join the 68,000 Americans and 39,000 other NATO forces already in Afghanistan. NATO allies will also send reinforcements. This is about 10,000 less than requested by his commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, but some of the difference will be made up by greater contributions from NATO allies. The new force will be large enough to seize back the initiative from the Taliban, he predicted, by killing insurgents and protecting population centres.

Mr Obama faced a tricky balancing act of signalling resolve to the Taliban and while telling Americans that Afghanistan is not an open ended commitment. To do this he said that as the country becomes safer, America will bolster the Afghan government, and train and equip the local army and police. “After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home,” he said (in time for his re-election campaign). But Mr Obama did not say how many would come home, or how quickly. That will depend on the circumstances on the ground—ie, whether the Afghan state is strong enough to defend itself.

The second prong of Mr Obama’s strategy is to make the civilian parts of the Afghan state less dysfunctional. American aid will support ministries, governors and local leaders who fight corruption and “deliver for the people”, he pledged. It will seek to boost agriculture, which affects ordinary Afghans directly. Mr Obama said he expected incompetent and crooked officials to be held to account. He offered only faint praise for the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, saying that his inauguration speech (after a crooked election) “sent the right message about moving in a new direction”. He reminded Afghans that America has “no interest in occupying your country,” which is something of an understatement.

Full Article.

[Ed. Note: I love the trite “Obama’s War.” Also, most allusions to Vietnam.]

Jason Koxvold.

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:55:00 -0800

Jason Koxvold.

(via Make)

Wed, 02 Dec 2009 05:30:00 -0800

(via Make)

(via thegrandarchives)

Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:57:51 -0800

(via thegrandarchives)

Drake, “Come Winter”, Room for Improvement

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 20:05:42 -0800

Drake, “Come Winter”, Room for Improvement

"How to Save Journalism", The Nation

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:47:11 -0800

"How to Save Journalism", The Nation:

We will give you the good news first: the politicians and regulators who have it in their power to do something about the decline of American journalism are finally paying attention.

Already this year, House and Senate hearings have investigated the crisis. And even as Congress focuses this fall on healthcare reform and rising unemployment, all signs suggest that media matters will be back on the front burner in 2010, one hopes with less focus on what’s gone awry and more on proposals to set things right. Encouragingly, federal agencies are taking tentative steps that could produce those proposals.

In early December the Federal Trade Commission will hold an unprecedented hearing to assess the radical downsizing and outright elimination of newspaper newsrooms and to consider public-policy measures that might arrest a precipitous collapse in reporting and editing of the news. The FTC staffers who have organized this hearing give the distinct impression of being seriously concerned about the crisis and seriously interested in responding to it. The Federal Communications Commission is also launching an extraordinary review of the state of journalism. The work was spearheaded initially by FCC commissioner Michael Copps, who has as firm a grasp of the problem as any player in Washington. The FCC review likely will emphasize the disintegration of local journalism. Its findings could also lead to sweeping changes in fundamental regulations.

Now for the bad news: the way the challenges facing journalism are being discussed, indeed the way the crisis itself is being framed, will make it tough for even the most sincere policy-makers to offer a viable answer to it.

The FTC’s conference is titled “How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?” FCC chair Julius Genachowski explains the crisis as the result of “game-changing new technologies as well as the economic downturn.” The assumption is clear: it’s the Internet that’s the problem. But just as MTV’s debut pronouncement that “Video Killed the Radio Star” proved to be dramatically overstated, so is the notion that journalism’s disintegration can be attributed to a brand-new digital revolution or even an old-fashioned economic meltdown.

Full Article.

David Potes.

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:40:35 -0800

David Potes.

(via LA Times) [Ed. Note: The “Marlboro Marine.”]

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:14:00 -0800

(via LA Times)

[Ed. Note: The “Marlboro Marine.”]

(via huhwhatandwhere) [Ed. Note: Pip’s Uptempos...

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 15:02:00 -0800

(via huhwhatandwhere)

[Ed. Note: Pip’s Uptempos weren’t as impressive as his red Flight Maestros.]

(via Skiffy)

Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:52:44 -0800

(via Skiffy)

(via dethjunkie)

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:53:30 -0800

(via dethjunkie)

Via perpetua: Tracy Morgan rails against the American foreign...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:15:00 -0800

Via perpetua:

Tracy Morgan rails against the American foreign policy of the ’60s in his new audio book. It starts off a little dry and stilted, but then he gets more passionate and funny. I really enjoy the East Coast/West Coast rap war analogy.

[Ed. Note: This is JUST LIKE AP history. JUST LIKE.]

Steven McCurry.

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:12:00 -0800

Steven McCurry.