Le Blaireau

RIP Wade Belak. This is probably the highlight of a...

Thu, 01 Sep 2011 16:52:46 -0400

RIP Wade Belak. This is probably the highlight of a distinguished list of fights.

I still love this ending.

Wed, 17 Aug 2011 22:01:57 -0400

I still love this ending.

"[N]ext to the Communist Manifesto, the whole body of capitalist apologetics, from Adam Ferguson to..."

Sun, 14 Aug 2011 17:03:18 -0400

“[N]ext to the Communist Manifesto, the whole body of capitalist apologetics, from Adam Ferguson to Milton Friedman, is remarkably pale and empty of life. The celebrants of capitalism tell us surprisingly little of its infinite horizons, its revolutionary energy and audacity, its dynamic creativity, its adventurousness and romance, its capacity to make men not merely more comfortable but more alive.”

- Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts Into Air

"Foreign observers were amazed at what seemed to them the incredible size of the English national..."

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 01:23:36 -0400

“Foreign observers were amazed at what seemed to them the incredible size of the English national debt. They echoed British criticisms, poked fun at processes they did not understand or, more often, saw this as a signal weakness, an unthinking and facile policy which would take the country to disaster… . And yet all these rational observers were wrong. The national debt was the major reason for the British victory.”

- Fernand Braudel, on the English national debt.

Griffith Park: a pretty great place to ride.

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 02:50:48 -0400

Griffith Park: a pretty great place to ride.

The Mur de Hu(y). This is how I envision my ride home from work,...

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 01:54:09 -0400

The Mur de Hu(y). This is how I envision my ride home from work, thanks to the uphill finish. Unfortunately, in real life there are LA drivers instead of other cyclists—and worse, no Flemish commentary.

"What interested Chandler was the here and now of the daily experience of the now historical Los..."

Fri, 17 Jun 2011 22:24:29 -0400

“What interested Chandler was the here and now of the daily experience of the now historical Los Angeles: the stucco dwellings, cracked sidewalks, tarnished sunlight, and roadsters in which the curiously isolated yet typical specimens of an unimaginable Southern California social flora and fauna ride in the monadic half-light of their dashboards. Chandler’s problem was that his readers - ourselves - desperately needed not to see that reality…The excitement of the mystery-plot is, then, a blind, fixing our attention on the ostensible but in reality quite trivial puzzles and suspense in such a way that the intolerable space of Southern California can enter the eye laterally, with its intensity undiminished.”

- Fredric Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future

Productive Prison Time

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 02:47:43 -0400

When I finished the book, I sent it from prison to several publishers, but none of them took it on. It was thanks to Rafael Galvan, the former leader of the electricians’ union and a sympathizer of Trotsky’s, that it got published. Galvan, a Cardenista who later became a PRI senator, rang El Caballito publishers and urged them to do it. The book came out in 1971 and went through four editions in the space of a few months. I was released in 1972.

- From an interview with Adolfo Gilly, found in a New Left Review back issue. He wrote The Mexican Revolution while a political prisoner in Mexico.

Makes me think of Fernand Braudel writing The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II in a German POW camp—and somewhat less heroically, the fictional Mikael Blomqvist writing his expose during a self-scheduled prison term for libel.

It’s Kamehameha Day.

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 08:00:06 -0400

It’s Kamehameha Day.

Circulation, 1857: New York, Rochester, Buffalo, Whitehall.

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 00:20:54 -0400

Circulation, 1857: New York, Rochester, Buffalo, Whitehall.

Amazing music.

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 02:36:20 -0400

Amazing music.

Enclaves, exclaves. My reinterpretation of Cooch Behar.

Tue, 31 May 2011 15:58:42 -0400

Enclaves, exclaves. My reinterpretation of Cooch Behar.

Seen, by a friend, on a whiteboard at our Brown reunion.

Sun, 29 May 2011 20:22:26 -0400

Seen, by a friend, on a whiteboard at our Brown reunion.

A Run on the Bank, 1857

Fri, 27 May 2011 02:15:18 -0400

A Run on the Bank, 1857

Reading Reading Capital

Thu, 26 May 2011 02:27:24 -0400

Of course, we have all read, and all do read Capital. For almost a century, we have been able to read it every day, transparently, in the dramas and dreams of our history, in its disputes and conflicts, in the defeats and victories of the workers’ movement which is our only hope and our destiny.

- Louis Althusser