*sucks in cheeks*
This interview is like a short story.
*sucks in cheeks*
This interview is like a short story.
(h/t Mike Powell.)
When I was a kid, I assumed, without even realizing I was assuming it, that I’d get to see contact; I looked forward to it like a driver’s license. (I remember having no interest in Contact when it came out: I figured I could wait.) It’s only recently that I’ve bothered to revise this and it’s making me kinda glum.
This is a Serious Scientific Paper and as such dense, but everyone can enjoy the abstract, which contains the breathtaking phrase “indigenous to these meteors”.
First, let me explain what’s at the heart of this conflict: I know for a fact that there’s no single type of establishment (or type of bar/club patron for that matter) that Park Slopers would inherently view as “undesirable.” I don’t think anyone would deny that Park Slopers are about the least “racist” people on the planet.
What IS causing strife in this situation is that over the last ten years, Park Slope has become a family-oriented and family-centric community. This can be annoying at times - believe me, as someone who has chosen not to have children, I’m more than aware of the self-entitled attitude that often pervades parts of our community.
Nevertheless, it’s just a fact that in this neighborhood, family comes first.
Prime 6 has to realize this - but at the same time - Park Slope families need to realize that this is a free country, and that Prime 6 has a right to exist. Furthermore, no one can legally stop the owners from doing what it is they’re going to do.
…
Not only will Akiva Ofshtein make more money by creating a sustainable business that uses social media to bring crowd-drawing acts to Prime 6, he’ll also find that by working alongside the community he’s joining, he’ll build loyal allies in the neighbors around him - INSTEAD of the hostility we saw at the CB6 meeting and on the internet on Tuesday.
Delete your Tumblrs, everybody. Please.
There are reasons to not want Prime 6 right there, and not a single one of those reasons involves the phrases or concepts ”social media,” “indie artists,” or, God help us all, “Yo MTV Raps ‘bling-bling’ vip club[s].”
Not to mention “processed commercial noise”.
Some self-advertisement: here’s the written version of the talk I gave last weekend at EMP, filed away on my basically-defunct-but-who-knows Russian history blog Nicky’s What.
— Christopher Hitchens in Slate, succinctly refuting the handwringing right who think Egyptians can’t be trusted with democracy. I did fix his prose a little.
(via squishie)
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