Monthly Archives: February 2011

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The last of Harlem’s free-standing mansions 


 

The Harlem enclave known as Sugar Hill was named for the wealthy African-Americans who moved into the fine row houses there during the 1920s.

But the area began attracting big money makers decades earlier, in the 1880s. All that’s left of these Gilded Age pioneers are a handful of gorgeous, free-standing mansions.

via The last of Harlem’s free-standing mansions | Ephemeral New York

 

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Readability’s App Store Rejection Portends a Cloudy Future For Developers


The iOS app for Arc90’s recently re-launched Readability service was rejected on Friday for “utilizing a system other than the In App Purchase (IAP) API to purchase content, functionality, or services.” This is significant because unlike companies like Rhapsody (who are already on the record as being firmly against the new policies), Readability is not a a traditional content provider.

Continue reading →

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Disgraceful


Harlem Doesn’t Like Statue Of Slave-Operating Vagina Doc

Marion Sims Statue moved to Harlem

Via Wikipedia

Dr. J. Marion Sims is credited for finding a treatment for vesicovaginal fistulas and inventing the Sims’ speculum, revolutionizing modern vaginal surgery. But Harlem residents say a statue of the doctor, which was moved from Bryant Park to around 103rd Street and Fifth Avenue in Central Park in 1934, has no place in Harlem. Why? Because the doctor tested his treatments on three slave women with no anesthetics. City Councilwoman Melissa Mark-Viverito said the memorial needs to be re-evaluated. She told the Post, “As time goes on and history is re-evaluated, some of these individuals who have been memorialized will be rightly challenged.”

via Harlem Doesn’t Like Statue Of Slave-Operating Vagina Doc | Gothamist

 

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Final Word


I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Creative minds ‘mimic schizophrenia’


Creativity is akin to insanity, say scientists who have been studying how the mind works.

Brain scans reveal striking similarities in the thought pathways of highly creative people and those with schizophrenia.

Both groups lack important receptors used to filter and direct thought.

It could be this uninhibited processing that allows creative people to “think outside the box”, say experts from Sweden’s Karolinska Institute.

via Creative minds ‘mimic schizophrenia’ | BBC News

 

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Why We Can’t Rule Out an Egyptian Reign of Terror


Interesting analysis. My only qualm is to think in this day and age that anything would take 4 years to solidify…that is truly living in a 1688/1789 paradigm and not reflective of the swift nature of the beast these days.

There are, of course, many different ways of categorizing historical revolutions. But for the purposes of understanding what is happening in Egypt — and the…

via Why We Can’t Rule Out an Egyptian Reign of Terror | Foreign Policy

 

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Yesterday (live)


… this version of this song by a legend who was taken all too soon from us with the help of our continuing stigmatization of mental illness which persists even to this day…indeed this song is a great ironic allegory for just such a situation.

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ZORA: Too Busy


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I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes…. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world—I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife.

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—Zora Neale Hurston

How It Feels to Be Colored Me, 1928
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ALI: Get Used to Me.


I am America. I am the part you won’t recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me.

 

—Muhammad Ali

The Greatest (1975) 

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The arrière-garde is just as vital as the avant-garde


“How is the poet to proceed in the hyper-connected age of blogs and Twitter, a world in which Roland Barthes has already declared the Author dead & Frederick Jameson ridiculed the idea of the genius?” The National Post on Marjorie Perloff’s Unoriginal Genius, an “erudite & enthusiastic guide.” —Micheal Lista

via Michael Lista, On Poetry: The arrière-garde is just as vital as the avant-garde | National Post

 

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Thoughts on Starting Downton


…thinks all the bally-hoo about Downton Abbey has led me to start from the beginning and making me cry in the first 45 minutes was good, and then when the gay scheming subterfuge is revealed and the only characters turn out to be a rather hackneyed version of a play on old stereotypes?!?!? Seriously, I’d be more forgiving if this was written years ago—but to be recently penned – seems an affront!