By James Furbush | October 21st, 2009 | 10:19 am PDT
Look, I like America (the band) to a certain degree. I’ve even sat down and interviewed Gerry Beckley and found myself liking the band more than ever.
But I’m baffled by this America-Fleet Foxes comparison, my brain can’t process something like this. Yes, their music sounds similar, but America really only has one mega-hit-single to fall back on with a few other great songs and Fleet Foxes have only released one note-worthy album.
Comparisons between the two seem pointless.
“Will Fleet Foxes be as big as America? No. Not until they write radio-friendly hit singles. But then Fleet Foxes are more about the music-as-album experience, and less the big-hit-song experience,” writes Alan McGee in The Guardian. “What is your favourite America album? You’d be hard pressed to get an answer. But ask someone what their favourite America single is and you just know you’ve got an easy answer.”
Let’s give Fleet Foxes some time before we slag them for not having produced a “Horse With No Name,” “Sister Golden Hair” or “Ventura Highway.” M’kay?
By James Furbush | September 9th, 2009 | 5:33 am PDT
“Our camera takes 1 exposure every 10 seconds, as we drive from San Francisco to Washington D.C.” Pretty amazing. The landscapes are amazing, but the music is kind of annoying. [via]
Fascinating chart that looks at how Americans over the age of 15 spend every minute of every day. Basically it boils down to eat, sleep, work, watching television, cleaning the house. Yup, sounds pretty much like my day.
Just remember when you’re tea-bagging the world this weekend with hamburgers and Bud Lights, America once tea-bagged King George III because the founding fathers resented paying taxes on stamps and stuff and they were mad as hell and couldn’t take it anymore; take a moment to reflect that many a good person died in this country so that we could shoot Chinese fireworks from our butts after borrowing lots of money from their government because we are awesome America and we deserve to tea bag whatever it is that deserves to be tea-bagged.
Just sayin’ that despite a lot of bad things and misgivings we’ve had over the years, there isn’t much I would change about you America. You’re aging nicely at 233 years. Must be the butt rockets.
And if you’re the type of person that likes to get drunk and fire bottle rockets from your butt please be safe. Put a buffer zone around the junk or make sure your Bud Light is easily accessible to put out any flames.
Change we can believe in:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
And for those who forget what it is that makes this country great, there is a poem by Emma Lazarus, inscribed inside the pedestal of a certain Lady Liberty, standing at the Gateway to this country in New York, in which she implores:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Happy Birthday America — a land of open arms for those who seek refuge from their troubled homes, a country created not for a religion or race but for a set of ideals that some tend to take for granted or outright ignore, and a place where adolescent men can shoot fireworks from their butts.
We’ll be back on Monday morning, if not sooner to check in. Enjoy the weekend everyone.
Two things strike me as curious about this ABC News report that 35-40% of young Americans (they don’t provide an age range but do note that the poll included members of gen x and y – whatever that means) now identify as having “no religion.” MORE »
Mike Winklemann’s gorgeous CGI short “Subprime” follows the development of simplified housing solutions in America over time. While it’s easy to be entranced by the music and animation, the content itself doesn’t really offer anything for than a progression of housing – it would have been nice to see the creators do something more than tack a “for sale” sign on to the final house as if trying to making a larger point about the housing crisis.
Still, at what point is too much? Most people live in houses that are more than enough, too much, for their needs.
The problem in America is not a lack of ideas. It is a tendency to equate any large-scale government construction project, no matter how thoughtful, with the most brutal urban renewal tactics of the 1950s. One result has been that pioneering projects that skillfully blend basic infrastructure with broader urban needs like housing and park space are usually killed in their infancy. Another is that we now have an archaic and grotesquely wasteful federal system in which upkeep for roads, subways, housing, public parkland and our water supply are all handled separately.
With money now available to invest again in such basic needs, I’d like to look at four cities representing a range of urban challenges and some of the plans available to address them. Though none of the plans are ideal as they stand today (and some of them represent only the germ of an idea), evaluated and addressed together as part of a coordinated effort, they could begin to form a blueprint for making our cities more efficient, sustainable and livable.
The author goes on to examine New Orleans, Buffalo,Los Angeles, and The Bronx providing loose blueprints to make a larger point about how America has ignored smart urban development – often found in Europe – and what the country can do to rectify the problem.
On one hand it acts as a great primer for someone who loves sandwichs – I now have many places to try in Portland (can you marry a sandwich?) – on the other hand, there are many dubious selections. MORE »
Some of these transformations occur faster and more violently than others. The period after the Great Depression saw the slow but inexorable rise of the suburbs. The economic malaise of the 1970s, on the other hand, found its embodiment in the vertiginous fall of older industrial cities of the Rust Belt, followed by an explosion of growth in the Sun Belt.
The historian Scott Reynolds Nelson has noted that in some respects, today’s crisis most closely resembles the “Long Depression,” which stretched, by one definition, from 1873 to 1896. It began as a banking crisis brought on by insolvent mortgages and complex financial instruments, and quickly spread to the real economy, leading to mass unemployment that reached 25 percent in New York.
During that crisis, rising industries like railroads, petroleum, and steel were consolidated, old ones failed, and the way was paved for a period of remarkable innovation and industrial growth. In 1870, New England mill towns like Lowell, Lawrence, Manchester, and Springfield were among the country’s most productive industrial cities, and America’s population overwhelmingly lived in the countryside. By 1900, the economic geography had been transformed from a patchwork of farm plots and small mercantile towns to a landscape increasingly dominated by giant factory cities like Chicago, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Buffalo.
How might various cities and regions fare as the crash of 2008 reverberates into 2009, 2010, and beyond? Which places will be spared the worst pain, and which left permanently scarred? Let’s consider how the crash and its aftermath might affect the economic landscape in the long run, from coast to coast—beginning with the epicenter of the crisis and the nation’s largest city, New York.
It is to be sure, a very fascinating look at how certain historical events shape the particulars of American life, the cities we live, migration patterns, etc. [via 3 Quarks Daily]
In the U.S., only 14 percent of adults thought that evolution was “definitely true,” while about a third firmly rejected the idea.
In European countries, including Denmark, Sweden, and France, more than 80 percent of adults surveyed said they accepted the concept of evolution.
The proportion of western European adults who believed the theory “absolutely false” ranged from 7 percent in Great Britain to 15 percent in the Netherlands.
The only country included in the study where adults were more likely than Americans to reject evolution was Turkey.
The investigation also showed that the percentage of U.S. adults who are uncertain about evolution has risen from 7 percent to 21 percent in the past 20 years.
Granted the article was published in late 2006, but it’s the trend lines that should alarm evolutionists, in that the wholesale rejection of evolution has been on the rise over the past two decades. I get that so long as the “missing link” between primates and humans remains unfound, then there will always be doubts over evolution in this country.
But even religious people should think that God created everything and then let science take over. I’m not sure I ever got the notion that the two were at odds with one another. [via]
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Look, I like America (the band) to a certain degree. I’ve even sat down and interviewed Gerry Beckley and found myself liking the band more than ever. 
