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New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Admire John McPhee, Bill Bryson, David Remnick, Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr and James Martin (and most open and curious minds)

31.3.15

Animated Discussion

Animated Discussion

Name Calling

Name Calling | Lapham’s Quarterly

What San Francisco looked like 100 years ago

What San Francisco looked like 100 years ago - SFGate Blog



People walkng about the Panama Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915.

Forget Manhattan: One Artist Pictures the “Real” New York

Forget Manhattan: One Artist Pictures the “Real” New York | Observer



5209074u Forget Manhattan: One Artist Pictures the Real New York

France

Eye on the News

THEODORE DALRYMPLE
In the Near Hereafter
Michel Houellebecq’s latest novel could foretell France’s future.
March 30, 2015
Does life imitate art? Michel Houellebecq’s novel Soumission(Submission) was published on the same day as the attack on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Set in the year 2022 (the election year after next),Soumission tells the story of France’s election of a Muslim president. The manner in which he comes to power is eerily reminiscent of what is happening in France now.
According to Houellebecq’s political scenario, the deeply unpopular and ineffectual François Hollande, thanks to an opposition enfeebled by accusations of corruption, has managed to win a second presidential term—but by the end of his tenure, economic decline and social unrest have made the right-wing National Front the nation’s most popular party. Meanwhile, a Muslim political party has gathered strength. Under French election law, the two parties with the highest number of votes have a runoff—and, in Houellebecq’s fictional 2022, those parties are the National Front and the Muslim Party. So hated is the National Front by the other main parties that they advise their voters to vote for the Muslim Party, which duly wins the presidency, though it garnered only 21 percent of the votes in the first round.
In real life, Hollande is deeply unpopular and ineffectual, the opposition isenfeebled by accusations of corruption, and the National Front (according to polls) is the most popular party and would gain the most votes if there were an election tomorrow. The only ingredient lacking from Houellebecq’s scenario is a Muslim political party.
That has now been supplied: the Union des Démocrates Musulmans Français (UDMF), which has only 900 members—200 joined after the attack on Charlie Hebdo and the publication of Soumission—but 8,000 “sympathizers.” The UDMF will run candidates for eight of the 2,000 available seats in the forthcoming local elections. The party says that it does not want to Islamize France or to impose sharia law but only to give Muslims a voice, which the current political parties do not offer. It seeks to combat the failures of integration and to reverse the banning of the headscarf in schools. Its modest proposals at the moment are to make the French economy healthier by incorporating Islamic finance into it, to reduce unemployment by extending halal businesses, to strengthen the teaching about the colonization of Algeria in schools, and to grant foreigners the right to vote.
Two earlier Muslim political parties existed in France, both of which disappeared almost as soon as they formed; and the UDMF remains tiny. But political parties, like companies, have to start somewhere. No doubt many disappear ignominiously and others survive only in a small way, but a few succeed. The National Front was once as small as the UDMF.
Houellebecq’s book was not a political prediction, any more than wasBrave New World or 1984. And his criticism was directed as much at the state of Western civilization in general, and at French civilization in particular, as at Islam. Still, he must be smiling.

Europe in 2100

Theoretical map of Europe in 2100, showing new political boundaries and the rise of the oceans.

We millennials lack a roadmap to adulthood

We millennials lack a roadmap to adulthood | Zach Stafford | Comment is free | The Guardian



millennial

Why I Teach Plato to Plumbers

Why I Teach Plato to Plumbers — The Atlantic



30.3.15

How Music Hijacks Our Perception of Time

How Music Hijacks Our Perception of Time - Issue 22: Slow - Nautilus

Wills

From poetry to insults: the most extraordinary wills of the last 50 years

One man left his daughter money if she left her husband and another repaid a debt for a packet of sausages

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Jesus Christ the Redeemer
A man left £26,000 to Jesus Christ, but only if Jesus proved his identity Photo: Rex
One man left his widow just one farthing after she insulted him when he broke wind and another left his entire estate to his daughter on the condition that she left her “immoral” husband.
The strange requests are among some of the most bizarre found by experts who have spent more than half a century studying wills.
The team at London-based genealogy firm Fraser and Fraser dug up scores of “hilarious” passages written on the legal declarations but have whittled their results down to a top ten, revealed for the first on Monday.
Among them is one man who left £26,000 to Jesus Christ, but only if Jesus proved his identity.
Another, Annie Langabeer, 59, left her brother-in-law two shillings and six pence so he could “buy a rope” because she wanted him to hang himself.
It was accompanied with the message “though dead our spirits live”.
And one, written by Stephen Cuthbert from Wiltshire in 2002, included strict instructions that his estate paid for the “p--- up” after his funeral.
Experts have sifted through 200,000 wills since the late 1960s in a bid to trace people's family trees.
Neil Fraser, 39, a partner at the firm, said: "Most of them are fairly old. Usually when we find the hilarious passages, we are all just researching people's next of kin and we suddenly stumble across something unusual.
“It's quite hard to spot the unusual lines because they are typically just one paragraph in a five page document.
"But every now and again you will stumble across a funny line, paragraph or strange request which makes us laugh in the office."
Frank Smith, from Romsey, Hants, knew exactly what he wanted to do with his £2,989 estate in December 1937.
He left all of his remaining possessions to his daughter as long as she did not continue living with her “immoral husband”.
Mr Smith, who died in November 1942, said the money should go to the Exchequer if she disobeyed his request.

Pork sausages (Alamy)
In February 1999, Kenneth Gibson, from Lincolnshire, insisted that his daughter be given the “price of half a pound of pork sausages” after her late mother, Ann Cox, did not pay her for them.
He died two months later in April, aged 75.
Isaac Cooke from Surrey, wrote his will in 1935 and died the following year.
He left everything to his wife, Alice, and wrote his entire will in a “beautiful” seven-verse rhyming poem.
One section reads: "To Alice Cooke my loving wife, for her to keep or use. Without reserve throughout her life, however she may choose."
Rather less poetically, Albert Orton, 70, from Coventry, who died aged 70 in 1888, left one farthing to his wife because he was disgusted at the treatment he received from her.
The boot and shoe manufacturer said she called him a “rotten old pig” because he broke wind.
Richard Walker, who wrote his will in 1981 left £10,000 to the “love of his life”', Miss Miss Gay Varasporn Suwanahong whom he met in a bar in Thailand.
She could only receive the sum when she turned 21. Mr Walker, from Wolverhampton, died in Bangkok in 1982, aged 41. He wrote in his will: "Tell her I love her more than anyone I have ever met."
Sir Charles Stewart Henry Vane Tempest Stewart, the 7th Marquess of Londonderry, wrote his 55-page will in 1945. He was one of the richest men in the country at the time and had everything covered. He not only wanted his wife to have all of his animals, but also “the natural increase of animals” too.
The top ten most bizarre wills:
1. Annie Langabeer, from Sutton, Surrey, died in Epsom, aged 59 in 1932. She wrote in her will her brother in law, Daniel Jones, should be paid 2 shillings and six pence to enable him to purchase a rope with the message 'though dead our spirits live'.
2. Isaac Cooke from Surrey, wrote his will in 1935 and died in 1936. He left everything to his wife, Alice, and wrote his entire will in a seven-verse rhyming poem. One section reads: "To Alice Cooke my loving wife, for her to keep or use. Without reserve throughout her life, however she may choose."
3. Frank Smith, from Romsey, Hants, had £2989 and wrote his will in December 1937. He died in November 1942. He wrote in his will to leave all remaining possessions to his daughter as long as she doesn't continue living with her 'immoral husband' or permit her husband to benefit from the inheritance. And if the daughter does not do this, everything will go to the Exchequer for the purposes of the state.
4. Albert Orton, 70, from Coventry, was born in 1818. He only left one farthing to his wife because he was disgusted at the treatment he received from her. The boot and shoe manufacturer said she called him a 'rotten old pig' because he broke wind. He died in 1888, aged 70.
5. A man left £26,000 to Jesus Christ, provided that his identity could be established.
6. Kenneth Gibson, born in 1923 in Lincolnshire, requested in 1999 his step daughter should get the 'price of half a pound of pork sausages that she claimed in my presence that her late mother Ann Cox had not paid her for'. He died in April 1999.
7. Martin Turner, wrote his will in January 1916. He was in the British Army and had the original surname of Tuchmann which was stated in all records. But he requested everyone should call him, his heir heirs and children by the surname Turner only.
8. Richard Walker, wrote his will in 1981 and decided to leave the majority of his state, £10,000, to the 'love of his life', Miss Miss Gay Varasporn Suwanahong - who he met in a bar in Thailand. She could only receive the sum when she turned 21. Mr Walker, from Wolverhampton, died in Bangkok in 1982, aged 41. He wrote in his will: "Tell her I love her more than anyone I have ever met."
9. Sir Charles Stewart Henry Vane Tempest Stewart, the 7th Marquess of Londonderry, wrote his 55-page will in 1945. He was one of the richest men in the country at the time and had everything covered. He not only wanted his wife to have all of his animals, but also 'the natural increase of animals' too.
10. Stephen Cuthbert, from Wiltshire, wrote his will in 2002 with strict instructions that his estate paid for the 'piss up' after his funeral.

Masons

 What Hath God Wrought by Daniel Walker Howe. Many of our founding fathers were Freemasons, including George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. But an incident in 1826 brought about the demise of the movement. In 1826, a man named William Morgan attempted to publish a book about the secret rituals of Freemasonry, much to the horror and strong objections of the masonic community. After his home was ransacked for the manuscript, Morgan disappeared. His kidnappers, including the Sheriff of Niagra County, were Freemasons who were never fully prosecuted, due to the protection and collusion of other Masons. Thus began the rise of Antimasonry as the first "third party" in American politics.

"Freemasonry, introduced into America from Britain in colonial times, had been an important force in the young republic. Its members had constituted a kind of republican elite, with Benjamin Franklin and George Washington prominent among them. The international Masonic brotherhood satisfied longings for status, trust, and metropolitan sophistication in an amorphous new society; its hierarchies and secret rituals offered a dimension lacking in the stark simplicity of much of American Protestantism. Freemasonry promoted the values of the Enlightenment and new standards of politeness. Its symbols of the pyramid and the eye had been incorporated into the Great Seal of the United States. Its ceremonies graced many public occasions, including the dedication of the United States Capitol and the construction of the Erie Canal. But in the Morgan episode, Masonic commitments of secrecy and mutual assistance led to disastrous consequences. To be sure, the Masonic brotherhood succeeded in the short run, protecting members from legal punishment and preventing Morgan from publishing all but the first three degree rituals, which appeared in print a month after his disappearance. But, as American Masonry's most recent historian has shown, 'it lost the larger battle in the court of public opinion.' During the decade after the Morgan affair, thousands of brothers quit the order and hundreds of lodges closed. Although Freemasonry recovered its numbers after the Civil War, it never recovered the influence it had wielded in the first fifty years of independence.
 
Detail from The New England Anti-Masonic Almanac for the Year of Our Lord 1835. Depicting Morgan's murder by Freemasons.
"Reaction against the Morgan crime and (even more) its cover-up led to the formation of an Antimasonic movement. Concerned citizens pressed for judicial investigations of Morgan's disappearance and more information about Freemasonry. But Antimasonic speakers were harassed and their publishing outlets persecuted by local authorities who belonged to the order. Masons and Antimasons disrupted each other's meetings and vandalized each other's property. The conflict soon acquired a political dimension. Since the Morgan episode had occurred in western New York state, the Antimasonic movement arose in an area of strong support for DeWitt Clinton, the People's Party, and John Quincy Adams. President Adams and his New York campaign manager, Thurlow Weed, showed clear sympathy with the Antimasons; Martin Van Buren and his Albany Regency, on the other hand, treated the movement as a threat. Governor Clinton, a prominent active Mason, could not afford to alienate the Antimasons and trod a fine line, mostly leaving the problem to local authorities. Andrew Jackson was a Mason, but so were a few of the Adams Republican leaders, including Henry Clay. Eventually, the Antimasonic movement organized as a third party but supported Adams in the presidential race of 1828. The party elected members to the New York legislature and spread to neighboring states, notably Pennsylvania, Ohio, Vermont, and Massachusetts.

"The Antimasons became the first third party in American history. Once organized as a political party, Antimasonry developed a political image and stands on other issues. The participants saw themselves as restoring moral order and transparent democracy, defending the little people against a secret cabal with ties to machine politics. Antimasonry appealed to the same attitudes that had been fostering increased democratization of American politics, such as the elimination of property requirements for voting and the popular election of presidential electors. The Antimasons took advantage of the opportunities for influencing public opinion provided by the growth of the printed media. Strongest in rural areas and small towns, their movement nurtured a provincial suspicion of metropolitan and upper-class values (Masonry was strongest in the cities). In their own time and since, the Antimasons have been accused of fanaticism, demagogy, and 'paranoid delusions.' It seems more accurate to see them as responding to real provocation and reviving a tradition of popular political participation going back to the American Revolution and the English 'commonwealth men.' The Antimasons often supported tenant farmers against landlords. They welcomed the participation of women in their movement, contrasting it with Masonry, which was then all male. (When the Masons created their own women's branch, the Order of the Eastern Star, in 1852, it helped defuse such criticism.) Many Antimasons eventually moved into antislavery. Antimasonry would remain an identifiable force in American politics for years to come. ...

"In 1831, the Antimasons would be the first political party to hold a national convention, a practice that evangelical reform movements had pioneered. The convention seemed a more democratic means of selecting a nominee than the congressional caucus, and the other political parties quickly adopted it. While Martin Van Buren has often been credited with creating the modern American political party, in fact his rivals the Antimasons made an important contribution too. Van Buren's concept of party was primarily concerned with organization and patronage. The lasting contribution of the Antimasonic movement to America was a concept of party politics that combined popular participation with moral passion. Antimasonry proved to be a precursor of the Republican Party of the 1850s, devoted to halting the spread of slavery. It can also be likened to the Progressive movement at the beginning of the twentieth century, which would favor popular participation against corruption and secrecy in government and would share something of the same Protestant moral tone."  

 
What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848 (Oxford History of the United States)
Author: Daniel Walker Howe
Publisher: Oxford University Press

29.3.15

21 things that only make sense to New Yorkers

21 things that only make sense to New Yorkers





1

Ordering diner takeout at 3:30am. Because sometimes you want a turkey club sandwich, but not under fluorescent lighting, while drunk.

2

Walk signs and crosswalks are pretty light-up boxes that might be public art, but we aren’t sure.
3

That Zen-like pause in a conversation when the express train is passing, after which you resume your sentence as though nothing had happened.

4

Ordering pastrami on rye bread with spicy mustard (and don’t even think about white, or DARE utter the word mayonnaise).
5

Instead of feeling disgusted or scared upon finding a huge, dead roach in your bathroom, you’re just glad this one's actually dead. (Or is it faking it again?)

6

Hearing “It’s showtime!” on the subway and immediately knowing it means you might get accidentally kicked in the face by a teenager.
7

Going out on the weekend is for tourists and suckers. We do our partying on weeknights!

8

We wait “on line” instead of “in line.” We know: It doesn’t really make sense. Where is this fictitious line that we speak of? You know what? We don’t need no steenkin’ line. We are the only people on the planet who say “on line,” making it the perfect way to suss out a true New Yorker from the Canal Street knockoff variety.
9

A “coffee regular” has three grams of sugar and a small reservoir of whole milk in it.

10

You can see someone in a Chanel suit, Jimmy Choos and a perfect coif walking next to someone in mom jeans, a baggy sweater and Chucks, with razor-straight bangs framing huge plastic glasses, and know that both are the height of fashion in their respective neighborhoods.
11

Folding our pizza slices before biting into them. Once you get in the habit, any other way just seems like madness.

12

It’s totally acceptable to go into a nice restaurant and order by saying, “Hey, lemme get…”
13

The New Yorker force field: an impenetrable wall of “fuck you, I have my own shit to deal with” that allows us to ignore literally every horrible thing we see in the city every day.

14

Hating the people who stand by or against the door on the subway, while fully understanding their desire to have a nice backrest. Note: It is perfectly acceptable, at least once a month, to yell at nobody in particular, “Hey! Move to the center of the car and make room for the rest of us!”
15

Switching directly from Spanglish to Yiddish mid-sentence: "That pendejo has a lot of chutzpah showing his tochis in this bodega!"

16

Brunch is like some kind of second career choice that you’re literally paying for.
17

Walking. Nobody complains about walking here, that’s how you get around. And we are goddamn expertsat it.

18

It is socially acceptable to ask someone you have just met what his or her rent is (just so long as you wait a few minutes, for politeness).
19

Our need to wear a seatbelt in the car magically vanishes when that car is a cab, despite the fact the person driving it is (a) a complete stranger, (b) probably horribly sleep-deprived and (c) almost certain to break at least 18 traffic laws during your six-minute ride.

20

The fact that Houston is pronounced the way that it is, and not as it is in Texas.
21

Egg creams: milk, soda water, syrup. No egg, no cream. Egg cream.