Posts Tagged ‘society’

Spirit Level

Monday, April 26th, 2010

2 many fried twinkies

I finished my essay, went home, took a two hour nap, and got up for work.

HAPPY MONDAY

It’s actually not that bad, sometimes I have this crazy thing where I’m more awake the less I sleep.

So I’m reading this book: Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett: for Professor Bennett’s COM/POLI SCI 411 class. It’s about social and economic inequality, and it has a pretty good hook: evidence-based politics. Yeah. Sounds sexy, doesn’t it?

After the constant spins of climate change, reliable explanations are welcome. In fact, most of the time I’m asking questions without answers (WHY do narwhals have horns?), so when I do get a great answer to anything (i.e. the Great Recession, why CEO’s make 45 times the amount of its average worker) it’s pretty exciting. And I’m only on page five.

“…For the vast majority of people in affluent countries the difficulties of life are no longer about filling out stomachs, having clean water and keeping warm. Most of us now wish we could eat less rather than more. And, for the first time in history, the poor are– on average– fatter than the rich.” (5)

Ah, the times we live in. Goodness.

Graceee

PS: What is with weird dreams plaguing me with sensitive impossibilities???

O CAPTAIN!

Tuesday, September 29th, 2009

 

Poems and dreams slink into womens dresses unseen as boys imagine and swoon kissing lips by the light of the moon
O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;  
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;  
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,  
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:  
    But O heart! heart! heart!          5
      O the bleeding drops of red,  
        Where on the deck my Captain lies,  
          Fallen cold and dead.  
  
2
O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
 
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;   10
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;  
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;  
    Here Captain! dear father!  
      This arm beneath your head;  
        It is some dream that on the deck,   15
          You’ve fallen cold and dead.  
  
3
My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
 
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;  
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;  
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;   20
    Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!  
      But I, with mournful tread,  
        Walk the deck my Captain lies,  
          Fallen cold and dead.