(I'm feeling that I'm part of a very small minority who think this way and are daily more appalled at what the unheeding herd is thundering toward)

Emperor's Glorious Raiment. soon to be acronymized to EGR as in EGRegious. And I see no signs of hope, none, from any quarter of the political rainbow. Faugh.

…all over again…

Bruce Sterling keeps finding 'em. This one truly boggles whatever is [still] bogglable

from WFMU's Beware of the Blog, always fascinating and in this case positively essential cultural background and commentary

from Mark Rubin's Chasing the Fat Man, this one is a fascinating rumination and ethnographic reportage by one of my favorite musicians and commentators. A lot to think about in this one.

(Boston Review) I'm reading this in the light of the just-arrived The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (James C. Scott), which encourages heretical thoughts that question received wisdom about civilization, progress, development, etc.'Technology' can be seen as the means and the inducement to subordination of previously [relatively] free people.

I'm really not sure what I think about this, but it's worth watching if only to know a little more about what's just over the horizon

Yup, to just about every word. Grim times. Envoi: “Whether the country I once wanted to represent was ever there in the form I imagined is a question I’ll leave to the historians. What I can say is that it’s sure not there now. What remains, angry or depressed, has made for a toxic brew as well as the most dispiriting election of my life…”

don't miss this one! The Cacophonous Quarter: erhu, tin whistle pests, even a Welsh harpist

from NYRB, and truly excellent coverage of material I consider essential

inspired wordplay

from Language Log, some terms that OUGHT to have wider currency (I mean… if Schadenfreude, why not mamihlapinatapei?)

Bryan gives us something to chew upon, watch for, and wonder at

One despairs: "…They both feel cut out, distrust their leaders, want things to change, and don’t want anything to change. Above all they want to speak, and what comes to their lips is drawn straight from the national Id. Don’t tread on me! and On va gagner! turn out to mean exactly the same thing: we will be heard. Whether they have anything to say is another matter." (by Mark Lilla, at New York Review of Books Blog)

"…will make a greater number and variety of useful resources, both published and unpublished, available for the field of folklore studies and the communities with which folklore scholars partner…" from American Folklore Society and the Indiana University Bloomington Libraries