Three figures are illuminated in an empty Los Angeles retail store, in Doug Aitken's installation Don’t Forget to Breathe.

Good for kids, also anybody, considering the coming recession: did you know that "book women" delivered library books by horse during the Depression?

4dThe fiction of Batuman’s fiction is that novels are dangerous because people like Selin read them as a guide to the future. But as Batuman (and her novel) know full well, fictions offer a way for both writers and readers to understand their pasts, not their futures.
↩︎ The London Review of Books


6dLiberal internationalists believe that the United States can manage and predict foreign affairs. Restrainers do not. For those of us in the latter camp, the withering away of the American Century cannot be reversed; it can only be accommodated.
↩︎ Harper's
6dAn acre of old chaparral is the fuel equivalent of 75 barrels of crude oil. A great Malibu firestorm, therefore, may generate the heat of three million barrels of burning oil at a temperature of 2,000 degrees.
↩︎ L.A. Weekly, via Indymedia
