Here are a couple of slightly strange links, but worthwhile.
I don't know much about this artist, but it's some nice surrealist fare. (There's more on the site where this came from).
And here's a slightly terrifying investigation of some Beijing street food. Serious diversity! Serious gross-out. I've had my share of street food meats in East Africa. They were all a constituent part of some readily identifiable farm animal though, albeit maybe a non-traditional part for an American white boy. Is the place where you eat seahorse and starfish on a stick a place where the white man's dream will die?
The big thing I have to show for my first year of graduate school here at Notre Dame is this 30 page research paper. It's based off of archival research I did in Philadelphia over a few weeks last October and this Christmas break. I'm pretty happy with it's progress so far. The next step will be to revise it so that hopefully it get's published in a journal. But after the jump are the first few paragraphs, let me know if you want to read the whole thing.
During the heat of a summer afternoon in Philadelphia, 1748, John Smith, a young member of the prosperous Quaker commercial class sat at the threshold of his door. He looked across the street and watched a bricklayer hit his slave. Fed-up, and desperate to preserve his dignity, the slave, whose name we do not know, ran down to the wharf. Once there, the slave declared that if his master struck him again, he would throw himself in the Delaware River and do his best to drown. The master struck the slave. The slave jumped in the Delaware, and drowned. Smith commented that the “affair affected me very much.”
Smith did not reflect on the experience beyond these few words. But the event illuminates starkly the world in which Smith lived. A slave salvaged his dignity in the only way he believed he could, by taking his own life in response to the ceaseless abuse of his master. The water that met him, and the wooden wharf he left behind carried great meaning to Smith as well. John Smith was a merchant. As such, Smith’s livelihood came from the same water. the same wharf, and from the same slave system that led this anonymous man to his death.
As a member of the Quaker elite, Smith built his considerable wealth out of a system of trade centered on the Atlantic Ocean. Smith sold colonial flour and wood to his factor in London, David Barclay and Sons. Smith, with an empty ship and hopefully a positive credit, would have his ship loaded with goods to sell either in Philadelphia or the Caribbean. Sometimes instead of going through London, Smith would go directly to the Caribbean with Philadelphia goods. From the Caribbean Smith would return to Philadelphia with sugar, rum, and molasses, three of the most valuable, and easily saleable goods in the Philadelphia market. These commodities were completely, and wholly dependent on slave labor for their production.
In this light, Smith was not a passive onlooker to the tragedy of this nameless man’s death. He was directly engaged in profiting from the same system of bondage that he saw at its most ugly; however, Smith did not see things in this way. To the extent that Smith was “affected very much” he did not move towards an antislavery position. Instead during his life he would come to own at least one slave, and would profit from slavery in other ways beyond trafficking in the produce of the slave system.
But eventually, Smith, like many other Quakers of his generation, would decide that slavery was incompatible with the tenets of his faith. This paper will argue that Smith’s development of an antislavery position cannot be understood just through Smith’s individual experience. His class interest, his moral development, and his economic values were not enough either. Instead, Smith’s move to antislavery must be understood within the context of Quaker reform in the middle half of the eighteenth century. Antislavery was one component of this reform movement.
May 15th is Bike to Work Day nationwide. I've heard that this year Americans are on track to use 300 million fewer gallons of gas. A good way to use even less is to bike yourself to work as well. Try it tomorrow!
For the first time in a long time, Indiana matters for to a Democratic presidential candidate. Two candidates actually. I voted this morning, for Obama. On my way out, a middle-aged volunteer congratulated me for voting. Maybe it was because I look young with short hair, and my cut-off jeans suggest some high degree of irresponsibility. It felt good though. In 2000 I was a couple months shy of 18, and in 04 I was in Africa, too remote and overwhelmed to get my absentee act together.
My friend and colleague Eric Peterson has a nice little post up about the day in South Bend. He hits on a critical issue for me: how many Mccain supporters are going out and voting for Clinton to divide the Democrats further, and extend this season further. In Indiana there's nothing to stop folks from doing it, and it appears to be happening.
Here is an interesting op-ed from David Brooks. Brooks cites several statistics that are totally news to me. Mostly, that China has lost many more manufacturing jobs since the 80s than America, even when you consider population. And also, that the value of American manufacturing has actually gone up since the 80s. Brooks' analysis: that manufacturing is being changed more by technology in the Information Age than global outsourcing. Companies can make more with fewer, more skilled people. This can't change. Politicians who wave their hands and speak about trade agreements are just pandering and grandstanding, trying to tell a story that casts them as the solution to a problem that does not really exist.
In an ongoing series, Andrew Womack is doing top ten album lists for every year. I'm sure how far back he started, but right now's 1988. His list is impeccable, and it strikes me that top tens must improve a lot with age.
Red Beard is up there with my favorite world cinema of all time, and is definitely my most treasured Kurasawa. It has the moral weight of Dostoevsky,with the intrepid Toshiro Mifune kicked butt and lending sage advice. I highly recommend it...if you have three hours. It's long like Russian literature too (this may be because it's based on a Dost short story).
But anyway, the plot is based out of a urban clinic and the work of two doctors amidst the poverty and suffering. They would have been working off of texts illustrated by the likes of these. Fascinating!