Week's links

The big news this week was the largest tax hike in decades was passed by Congress, effective for 2013. Here are two articles that put the deal in perspective from wonkblog and zero hedge.

The Washington Post's wonkblog is going up on the blogroll. It's a highly numerate group blog from a liberal perspective. Numeracy is one of my favorite things - it's our best defense against ideology.

Reddit hit 37 billion page views in 2012. In the war between to find the optimum data discovery service between the social web and algorithmic search, people forget about community - that dark horse Usenet throwback.

My friend Zach writes "Why I don't have a Facebook Account". I don't care much about my privacy since I desire a large public profile. But others will find food for their paranoia.

I started reading the work of the American poet Robinson Jeffers at the recommendation of a friend. He is best known for nature poetry containing daring lines like

I'd sooner, except the penalties, kill a man than a hawk; 

from Hurt Hawks. He famously led a secluded life on the California coast near the modern Big Sur state park with his wife in a house he built from beach stones. During his lifetime, he lost his literary reputation because of his dissident politics, especially his opposition to US involvement in World War II. His rejection of modernity is captured with a haunting metaphor in The Purse-Seine. But he does not reject the entire American experiment. His affection for America's founding ideals are displayed in poems like Shine, Republic.

Jeffers' poetry is being revived today by both the reactionary right and the environmentalist left. Extreme left and right often meet each other when they overflow the limits of the political spectrum.

The website on which I was browsing Jeffers' works recommended this poem from  Cynthia Huntington (WARNING: sexually explicit) with a skeptical view of the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 70s. I feel the need to understand the 1960s and 70s better to understand the modern world.

I'm working on an anti-democratic poem about Pericles. I have had two lines tormenting my mind for the last few months. I need a young radical to mouth them. I don't know enough about the revolutions of the modern world, so who better than the great populist demagogue, Pericles?

Even the gods were mortal once
And all doctrine is born in blasphemy

I'm spending the day reading Wikipedia, Homer, and Thucydides to immerse myself in the proper historical background.