Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/author/eleanor-arnason/page/11/)
Eleanor Arnason, 7/18/08 • I encountered a remark yesterday on an economics blog that I read — not faithfully, but often. It’s a kind of remark that I’ve seen fairly often: the person who says, “The invasion of Iraq was wrong. But attacking Afghanistan — that miserable, primitive, backward country that does bad things to women — was a good idea.”
Eleanor Arnason writes about science fiction, science, politics, economics, art and bird watching in her blog.
by Eleanor Arnason, 5/29/08 • I think most of the problem [in talking about “the working class”] is the huge inability of Americans to think about class. Working people are not always factory workers. They are not always poorly educated. One of the big lies that we are told now is that people do badly because they are don’t have enough education. Tell that to an adjunct professor with a PhD, who is holding three different jobs with no benefits and no security.
Eleanor Arnason, 4/2/08 • My assumption, thinking about science fiction novels, is that the world is going to be a lot different 200 years in the future. But then I started thinking.
If we went back to 1800, to the early U.S., how hard would it be to understand people and their lives? And if we brought a bright American here from 1800, how hard would it be for him or her to understand us?
Since the last time I posted about the weather, winter has come to Minnesota. There have been two snowfalls, and the temperature has been in the zero to mid twenties range. This is cold enough so the snow doesn’t melt. On the colder days, the warm air and fine particulate matter that comes out of chimneys turns to white steam or smoke. It’s wisps coming from the chimneys of houses and great billowing clouds coming from the smokestacks of the downtown power and heating plants. The tall buildings of both downtowns are wreathed in long, drifting trails of whiteness.
The Museum of Russian Art is a small museum in a residential neighborhood in south Minneapolis, which is devoted to 20th century Russian Art, specifically socialist realism. The current show is work by Geli Korzhev, a prominent Russian painter, born in the 1920s and still alive.
If I understood the labels correctly, his work is social realism, rather than socialist realism. I don’t understand the difference. The work is certainly realistic. According to Korzhev, art has to be realistic, if it is going to reach ordinary people.
The Museum of Russian Art is a small museum in a residential neighborhood in south Minneapolis, which is devoted to 20th century Russian Art, specifically socialist realism. The current show is work by Geli Korzhev, a prominent Russian painter, born in the 1920s and still alive.
If I understood the labels correctly, his work is social realism, rather than socialist realism. I don’t understand the difference. The work is certainly realistic. According to Korzhev, art has to be realistic, if it is going to reach ordinary people.
I just read the most current issues of the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America) Forum and Bulletin. There were some issues raised that I think are worth thinking about.
One is what to do about changes in technology and the resulting new kinds of publishing, especially desktop publishing and e-publishing.
What is required to create a sustainable planet?
1. Eliminating the private car. Relying on bicycles, trolleys, trains and boats for moving people. A slower world.
2. Eliminating urban sprawl, whether it be suburbs or barrios. People are going to have to live more densely, in multistory buildings, though probably not too high. Modern skyscrapers are expensive to heat and cool. People will have to move out of urban areas and back on the land, since sustainable agriculture is labor intensive. Instead of huge industrial farms, we will be looking at many, many small farms.
The Star Tribune, our increasingly unuseful local newspaper, is doing a series on fertility medicine. The first article used the word miracle.
Ex utero fertilization is not a miracle. The loaves and fishes is a miracle. This is medical technology, and if you call it a miracle, then safe modern abortions are also miracles.
Patrick was checking the MSN Encarta encyclopedia for homelessness and ended on the causes of the Great Depression. He said it sounded a lot like the current situation: an increasing distribution of the nation’s wealth up the upper classes, which happened partly because profits were rising and wages were not, and partly because there were tax cuts for the rich; rising consumer debt, as credit expanded and the mass of Americans were encouraged to buy goods they could not afford; and finally a huge financial bubble.
We have had all of this is the past 20 or so years.