diane arbus article

i thought we could try a discussion on the recent diane arbus review (march 21 issue) and for those of us that will see her exhibit in portland, it would be fun after the discussion here to see and discuss in person...

here are a couple of starting points -

Sontag quote - "There is a large difference between the activity of a photographer, which is always willed, and the activity of a writer, which may not be."

Schjeldahl - "Photography is the art of anticipation, not working with memories but showing their formation."

- "Arbus is important not for what she was but for her regular feat of vanishing, as a personality, when her camera clicked."

Markets are heartless

badvibes
Originally uploaded by magnusdigity.

So says the first line of this article from the Financial pages, 06 Jan 05. The article discusses the financial situation resulting from the tsunami disaster in the Indian Ocean. The author seems to be lamenting the fact that although the tsunami's impact on humanity is unfathomable, its impact on the financial world is not as great. Lament is not quite the right word. He seems to be trying to write through the idea that he is perplexed by the fact that despite the enormity of the situation, the financial repercussions will be on a smaller scale. This makes sense when he describes the way insurance works - risk distribution and behavior prediction in a collective.

He states that there was little insurance business in the area, so little payout when there is a catastophe such as this. He claims that catastrophe cannot be predicted. Insurers don't want to make wide-open bets, as they would have to when considering some of the long-term prediction involved with weather systems and geological events. And this is when he brings up the whole "Act of God" situation. The "heartless" factor comes in when he mentions that those insurers who will deal in catastrophe coverage and the like get their few customers to pay higher rates; I assume this is out of fear inspired pitch. They would have to get higher rates, because the small number of people who want catastrophe insurance is so small. If the rates weren't high, it wouldn't be worth the trouble (in terms of returns, not humanity). The author writes,

"Where insurers see trouble, the insured often choose to see blue skies. Oddly,
customers (that is, most of us) tend to underestimate the potential harm from
catastrophes, largely because we don't think clearly about 'extreme events' -
events that are improbable but costly. If an event is very unlikely, people
treat it as if it were impossible, especially when the time horizon is long.
Give people complicated options involving serious consequences, and they often
prefer not to make any decision at all: fatalism by default."

And heres where he fails his readers. This is a fantastic analysis of the situation, but he passes over it with two short ending paragraphs about local situations, input of financial markets, and disaster as a product.

He comments on Richard Posner's book _Catastrophe: Risk and Response_. I've read some of Posner's work before, and its a valuable addition to risk analysis literature. His prescription (more effort to preparing for catastrophe), as the author of the article puts it is "reasonable", but then completely discounts it with his "poetic stylings".

"...while it may be expensive to prepare for rare events with dire consequences
- a tsunami, an earth-bound asteroid - it is the reasonable thing to do. But
catastrophes wouldn't be catastrophes if there was anything reasonable about
them."

All he has done with this statement, and quite successfully, is turn a curious and maybe even motivated reader into a skeptic completely vulnerable to the acts of god that we cannot control or predict. This defeats what I saw as the entire purpose of the article - to show that there is some financial and logical value to predicting and protecting against catastrophe. Its not as unpredictable as we may believe. The author even says himself, "If an event is very unlikely, people treat it as if it were impossible..." Yes, they treat it as if it were impossible, but this begs the question, is it really impossible? I'll be some seismologists, geologists and meterologists would argue that it isn't.

This is a problem of patience and respect for/understanding of history. We have reduced all of our intake to bite size pieces to such a large extent that we can't think realistically beyond our 4-year administration, or 5-year career trajectory, and more often we can barely make it through the epic 3 hour movie that has become such a popular format for directors, or the 30 minute sitcom that thankfully has a commercial break after the first 5 minutes. I'm sure it would boggle minds to be told that SCOTUS judges are appointed for life. Until we start listening to the people who try to warn us - the people with the labs and their eye on data - we won't ever be financially or structurally prepared for catastrophe. Forget a global warning system, public signs, evacuation routes and local education workshops might have been helpful.

And theres also a typo about three quarters of the way through. The illustration is the work of Seymour Chwast.

something that got to me

Did anyone read the article in the November 22nd issue about J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan? It's an okay article, but I was very moved by a a passage from his autobiography about his mother's grief when his young brother David was killed when he fell and cracked his skull ice-skating. I can't get through this passage without choking up, no matter how many times I read it, and it's been on my mind a lot because of all the tragedy connected with children from the tsunami (which will just keep coming because children are more susceptible to the continuing troubles, ugh.)

Anyway, here's the quote-

The room was dark, and when I heard the door shut and no sound come from the bed I was afraid, and I stood still. I suppose I was breathing hard, or perhaps I was crying, for after a time I heard a listless voice that had never been listless before say, “Is that you?” I think the tone hurt me, for I made no answer, and then the voice said more anxiously “Is that you?” again. I thought it was the dead boy she was speaking to, and I said in a little lonely voice, “No, it’s no’ him, it’s just me.” Then I heard a cry, and my mother turned in bed, and though it was dark I knew that she was holding out her arms.

-sniff.

and what a town it is

One of the reasons I love The New Yorker is because it documents, proudly and unforgivingly, all things New York. It's almost as if they think that "Goings On" exist in no other town. And why Would you talk about some other town? I've been subscribing to the New Yorker for over three years, but it wasn't until I moved to the West Coast that I started clinging to these particularly local (and completely irrelevant except for the pleasure of reading them) details. This week's Talk of The Town seemed even more local than usual to me, and so perfectly evocative of the city's peculiarities, like a famous Fifth Avenue hawk nest and status-symbol vestibules, and I wonder if this section inspired the creation of the blog. Is it just a coincidence that the piece called "Shoe Leather", commemorating Caleb Smith's completion of a block-by-block walk of Manhattan, mentions someone's photo blog called Satan's Laundromat?

Satan's Laundromat, it seems similar in spirit to another blog that often includes photos of things "spotted" in Seattle...

Michael Wesely

Perusing the Art listings in the 01/03/05 issue, I found a photographer whose work sounded amazing - if not impossible. Michael Wesely is a German photographer who makes long exposures (long meaning up to three years) of many different types of scenes, most of which undergo significant changes during the duration of the exposure. His latest work was created during the construction of the new MoMA in Manhattan and is now on exhibit through mid-2005.

Disappointed that there were no images to accompany the listing, a new use for this blog occurred to me - link to more information on items only briefly mentioned in The New Yorker!

• MoMA.org | About MoMA | Michael Wesely: Open Shutter
• www.wesely.org [A little difficult to navigate, but worth it.]

Reasons to read

I need motivation to read after school. With all the reading I do in the school parts of my life, I tend to read really bad magazines and Harry Potter in my spare time. But lkb and beth have influenced me to read more enriching publications. I've subscribed to the New Yorker, but so far have not made it through more than one complete issue. I am inspired to follow in lkb's footsteps and sit down every sunday with a nice cup of coffee and read that week's New Yorker from cover to cover.

But, like I said, I need motivation. Luke and I decided that a good way to motivate was to talk with other people about what they are reading in the New Yorker. Sometimes you just need to get outside of your own head and hear someone else's ideas to be motivated to understand your own.

Welcome to The Talk of the Town

Greetings and salutations. This is the site to visit for discussion on articles found in this (or any) week's New Yorker magazine. Fire away - we're sure the discussion will range from the erudite to the irreverent and everywhere in between.