Shanan Delp

2013-05-14T06:58:00.001-07:00

Putting this Blog on Hold

2013-01-10T13:49:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about closing this blog, in favor of a new one over at Tumblr.

So, here is your notice. Head over here and bookmark this page.

Why? Cause blogger has become a neglected backwater. Because despite the pain of switching blogging platforms, sometimes it's worth it. Because I get to start from nearly scratch.

Because I would like to make a concerted effort to write again, and this experiment has probably run its course.

Apted and 56 Up

2013-01-05T09:52:00.001-08:00

I feel a deep loyalty to Michael Apted's wonderful documentary Series, now in it's 8th installment.

I still remark on how old, curated TV shows and newspapers fed inspiration to me about exciting things in the world. I'm almost certain that I happened across 42 Up years ago, while watching the influential Siskel and Ebert. This was not a highbrow film series, but mixed in with the popcorn reviews from Chicago were notable independent gems, like this series and Whit Stillman's Barcelona.

So I shared the review of 56 Up from yesterday's Times with whoever would listen. Go watch this movie, open in New York now and in SF soon.

David O. Russell on The Treatment

2013-01-03T09:26:00.000-08:00

Go over to KCRW and listen to Elvis Mitchell's interview with David O. Russell, who's on the award circuit for The Silver Linings Playbook. In truth, I've gotten out of the habit of listening to this podcast of intimate interviews with actors and filmmakers, but this episode touches on why this show is so great.

Mitchell is able to book some of the more powerful players in Hollywood because he knows their careers. With Russell, he notes that the director has been coming on his show for 11 years, each time he has a movie out. Then they talk about how Russell struggled as a director (after the charming, if odd I Heart Huckabees). And how he's been able to rediscover the craft in his last two movies, starting with the Fighter. The interview then talks about how Silver Linings Playbook came together, notably with lucky happenstance on the casting of Cooper, Lawrence, De Niro and Tucker.

Best SNL in Years

2012-12-16T09:43:00.001-08:00

From the Cold open to the closing Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime, a really strong episode, reminding us what a variety show looks like. Martin Short still has it.

Things to do on Thanksgiving, if you're not going anywhere

2012-11-17T17:26:00.001-08:00

1. See a movie. This one looks good

2. Go hiking, ideally in the Marin Headlands.

3. Cook some food.

10 Things / Milton Glaser

2012-11-12T09:25:00.003-08:00

Via Warren Dotz, reprinted here mostly because Milton Glaser has such a funky web site:

Ten Things I Have Learned
Part of an AIGA Talk in London

1
YOU CAN ONLY WORK FOR PEOPLE THAT YOU LIKE.
This is a curious rule and it took me a long time to learn because in fact at the beginning of my practice I felt the opposite. Professionalism required that you didn't particularly like the people that you worked for or at least maintained an arms length relationship to them, which meant that I never had lunch with a client or saw them socially. Then some years ago I realized that the opposite was true. I discovered that all the work I had done that was meaningful and significant came out of an affectionate relationship with a client. And I am not talking about professionalism; I am talking about affection. I am talking about a client and you sharing some common ground. That in fact your view of life is someway congruent with the client, otherwise it is a bitter and hopeless struggle.

2
IF YOU HAVE A CHOICE NEVER HAVE A JOB.
One night I was sitting in my car outside Columbia University where my wife Shirley was studying Anthropology. While I was waiting I was listening to the radio and heard an interviewer ask 'Now that you have reached 75 have you any advice for our audience about how to prepare for your old age?' An irritated voice said 'Why is everyone asking me about old age these days?' I recognized the voice as John Cage. I am sure that many of you know who he was – the composer and philosopher who influenced people like Jasper Johns and Merce Cunningham as well as the music world in general. I knew him slightly and admired his contribution to our times. 'You know, I do know how to prepare for old age' he said. 'Never have a job, because if you have a job someday someone will take it away from you and then you will be unprepared for your old age. For me, it has always been the same every since the age of 12. I wake up in the morning and I try to figure out how am I going to put bread on the table today? It is the same at 75, I wake up every morning and I think how am I going to put bread on the table today? I am exceedingly well prepared for my old age' he said.

3
SOME PEOPLE ARE TOXIC AVOID THEM.
This is a subtext of number one. There was in the sixties a man named Fritz Perls who was a gestalt therapist. Gestalt therapy derives from art history, it proposes you must understand the 'whole' before you can understand the details. What you have to look at is the entire culture, the entire family and community and so on. Perls proposed that in all relationships people could be either toxic or nourishing towards one another. It is not necessarily true that the same person will be toxic or nourishing in every relationship, but the combination of any two people in a relationship produces toxic or nourishing consequences. And the important thing that I can tell you is that there is a test to determine whether someone is toxic or nourishing in your relationship with them. Here is the test: You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball game. It doesn't matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energized or less energized. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life.

4
PROFESSIONALISM IS NOT ENOUGH or THE GOOD IS THE ENEMY OF THE GREAT.
Early in my career I wanted to be professional, that was my complete aspiration in my early life because professionals seemed to know everything - not to mention they got paid for it. Later I discovered after working for a while that professionalism itself was a limitation. After all, what professionalism means in most cases is diminishing risks. So if you want to get your car fixed you go to a mechanic who knows how to deal with transmission problems in the same way each time. I suppose if you needed brain surgery you wouldn't want the doctor to fool around and invent a new way of connecting your nerve endings. Please do it in the way that has worked in the past.Unfortunately in our field, in the so-called creative – I hate that word because it is misused so often. I also hate the fact that it is used as a noun. Can you imagine calling someone a creative? Anyhow, when you are doing something in a recurring way to diminish risk or doing it in the same way as you have done it before, it is clear why professionalism is not enough. After all, what is required in our field, more than anything else, is the continuous transgression. Professionalism does not allow for that because transgression has to encompass the possibility of failure and if you are professional your instinct is not to fail, it is to repeat success. So professionalism as a lifetime aspiration is a limited goal.

5
LESS IS NOT NECESSARILY MORE.
Being a child of modernism I have heard this mantra all my life. Less is more. One morning upon awakening I realized that it was total nonsense, it is an absurd proposition and also fairly meaningless. But it sounds great because it contains within it a paradox that is resistant to understanding. But it simply does not obtain when you think about the visual of the history of the world. If you look at a Persian rug, you cannot say that less is more because you realize that every part of that rug, every change of colour, every shift in form is absolutely essential for its aesthetic success. You cannot prove to me that a solid blue rug is in any way superior. That also goes for the work of Gaudi, Persian miniatures, art nouveau and everything else. However, I have an alternative to the proposition that I believe is more appropriate. 'Just enough is more.'

6
STYLE IS NOT TO BE TRUSTED.
I think this idea first occurred to me when I was looking at a marvelous etching of a bull by Picasso. It was an illustration for a story by Balzac called The Hidden Masterpiece. I am sure that you all know it. It is a bull that is expressed in 12 different styles going from very naturalistic version of a bull to an absolutely reductive single line abstraction and everything else along the way. What is clear just from looking at this single print is that style is irrelevant. In every one of these cases, from extreme abstraction to acute naturalism they are extraordinary regardless of the style. It's absurd to be loyal to a style. It does not deserve your loyalty. I must say that for old design professionals it is a problem because the field is driven by economic consideration more than anything else. Style change is usually linked to economic factors, as all of you know who have read Marx. Also fatigue occurs when people see too much of the same thing too often. So every ten years or so there is a stylistic shift and things are made to look different. Typefaces go in and out of style and the visual system shifts a little bit. If you are around for a long time as a designer, you have an essential problem of what to do. I mean, after all, you have developed a vocabulary, a form that is your own. It is one of the ways that you distinguish yourself from your peers, and establish your identity in the field. How you maintain your own belief system and preferences becomes a real balancing act. The question of whether you pursue change or whether you maintain your own distinct form becomes difficult. We have all seen the work of illustrious practitioners that suddenly look old-fashioned or, more precisely, belonging to another moment in time. And there are sad stories such as the one about Cassandre, arguably the greatest graphic designer of the twentieth century, who couldn't make a living at the end of his life and committed suicide.But the point is that anybody who is in this for the long haul has to decide how to respond to change in the zeitgeist. What is it that people now expect that they formerly didn't want? And how to respond to that desire in a way that doesn't change your sense of integrity and purpose.

7
HOW YOU LIVE CHANGES YOUR BRAIN.
The brain is the most responsive organ of the body. Actually it is the organ that is most susceptible to change and regeneration of all the organs in the body. I have a friend named Gerald Edelman who was a great scholar of brain studies and he says that the analogy of the brain to a computer is pathetic. The brain is actually more like an overgrown garden that is constantly growing and throwing off seeds, regenerating and so on. And he believes that the brain is susceptible, in a way that we are not fully conscious of, to almost every experience of our life and every encounter we have. I was fascinated by a story in a newspaper a few years ago about the search for perfect pitch. A group of scientists decided that they were going to find out why certain people have perfect pitch. You know certain people hear a note precisely and are able to replicate it at exactly the right pitch. Some people have relevant pitch; perfect pitch is rare even among musicians. The scientists discovered – I don't know how - that among people with perfect pitch the brain was different. Certain lobes of the brain had undergone some change or deformation that was always present with those who had perfect pitch. This was interesting enough in itself. But then they discovered something even more fascinating. If you took a bunch of kids and taught them to play the violin at the age of 4 or 5 after a couple of years some of them developed perfect pitch, and in all of those cases their brain structure had changed. Well what could that mean for the rest of us? We tend to believe that the mind affects the body and the body affects the mind, although we do not generally believe that everything we do affects the brain. I am convinced that if someone was to yell at me from across the street my brain could be affected and my life might changed. That is why your mother always said, 'Don't hang out with those bad kids.' Mama was right. Thought changes our life and our behavior. I also believe that drawing works in the same way. I am a great advocate of drawing, not in order to become an illustrator, but because I believe drawing changes the brain in the same way as the search to create the right note changes the brain of a violinist. Drawing also makes you attentive. It makes you pay attention to what you are looking at, which is not so easy.

8
DOUBT IS BETTER THAN CERTAINTY.
Everyone always talks about confidence in believing what you do. I remember once going to a class in yoga where the teacher said that, spirituality speaking, if you believed that you had achieved enlightenment you have merely arrived at your limitation. I think that is also true in a practical sense. Deeply held beliefs of any kind prevent you from being open to experience, which is why I find all firmly held ideological positions questionable. It makes me nervous when someone believes too deeply or too much. I think that being skeptical and questioning all deeply held beliefs is essential. Of course we must know the difference between skepticism and cynicism because cynicism is as much a restriction of one's openness to the world as passionate belief is. They are sort of twins. And then in a very real way, solving any problem is more important than being right. There is a significant sense of self-righteousness in both the art and design world. Perhaps it begins at school. Art school often begins with the Ayn Rand model of the single personality resisting the ideas of the surrounding culture. The theory of the avant garde is that as an individual you can transform the world, which is true up to a point. One of the signs of a damaged ego is absolute certainty.Schools encourage the idea of not compromising and defending your work at all costs. Well, the issue at work is usually all about the nature of compromise. You just have to know what to compromise. Blind pursuit of your own ends which excludes the possibility that others may be right does not allow for the fact that in design we are always dealing with a triad – the client, the audience and you. Ideally, making everyone win through acts of accommodation is desirable. But self-righteousness is often the enemy. Self-righteousness and narcissism generally come out of some sort of childhood trauma, which we do not have to go into. It is a consistently difficult thing in human affairs. Some years ago I read a most remarkable thing about love, that also applies to the nature of co-existing with others. It was a quotation from Iris Murdoch in her obituary. It read ' Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.' Isn't that fantastic! The best insight on the subject of love that one can imagine.

9
ON AGING.
Last year someone gave me a charming book by Roger Rosenblatt called 'Ageing Gracefully' I got it on my birthday. I did not appreciate the title at the time but it contains a series of rules for ageing gracefully. The first rule is the best. Rule number one is that 'it doesn't matter.' 'It doesn't matter what you think. Follow this rule and it will add decades to your life. It does not matter if you are late or early, if you are here or there, if you said it or didn't say it, if you are clever or if you were stupid. If you were having a bad hair day or a no hair day or if your boss looks at you cockeyed or your boyfriend or girlfriend looks at you cockeyed, if you are cockeyed. If you don't get that promotion or prize or house or if you do – it doesn't matter.' Wisdom at last. Then I heard a marvelous joke that seemed related to rule number 10. A butcher was opening his market one morning and as he did a rabbit popped his head through the door. The butcher was surprised when the rabbit inquired 'Got any cabbage?' The butcher said 'This is a meat market – we sell meat, not vegetables.' The rabbit hopped off. The next day the butcher is opening the shop and sure enough the rabbit pops his head round and says 'You got any cabbage?' The butcher now irritated says 'Listen you little rodent I told you yesterday we sell meat, we do not sell vegetables and the next time you come here I am going to grab you by the throat and nail those floppy ears to the floor.' The rabbit disappeared hastily and nothing happened for a week. Then one morning the rabbit popped his head around the corner and said 'Got any nails?' The butcher said 'No.' The rabbit said 'Ok. Got any cabbage?'

10
TELL THE TRUTH.
The rabbit joke is relevant because it occurred to me that looking for a cabbage in a butcher's shop might be like looking for ethics in the design field. It may not be the most obvious place to find either. It's interesting to observe that in the new AIGA's code of ethics there is a significant amount of useful information about appropriate behavior towards clients and other designers, but not a word about a designer's relationship to the public. We expect a butcher to sell us eatable meat and that he doesn't misrepresent his wares. I remember reading that during the Stalin years in Russia that everything labelled veal was actually chicken. I can't imagine what everything labelled chicken was. We can accept certain kinds of misrepresentation, such as fudging about the amount of fat in his hamburger but once a butcher knowingly sells us spoiled meat we go elsewhere. As a designer, do we have less responsibility to our public than a butcher? Everyone interested in licensing our field might note that the reason licensing has been invented is to protect the public not designers or clients. 'Do no harm' is an admonition to doctors concerning their relationship to their patients, not to their fellow practitioners or the drug companies. If we were licensed, telling the truth might become more central to what we do.

High fives on market st

2012-11-09T13:38:00.001-08:00

High fives on market st, originally uploaded by docpop.

Stewart/ Rove

2012-11-08T13:21:00.002-08:00

In a night with races not nearly as close as most people expected, it was Karl Rove's temper tantrum on Fox News that will be most memorable. John Stewart cannot contain his glee...

Three Reviews in the Times today

2012-11-02T09:57:00.003-07:00

As my friends know, I pretty much view the film landscape through the prism of New York Times movie critics. I chuckle as cynically made Hollywood schlock is snarkily deconstructed by these critics.

But if I'm generally cynical about most Hollywood product, I keep my eye out for the winners, made for adults, that still come out from time to time.

Today there were reviews of three movies that sounded pretty good.

This Must Be The Place:
That bizarre trailer with Sean Penn playing a Robert Smith-like musician, directed by Paolo Sorrentino. If this were opening in SF tonight I'd probably see a late show. The ’80s Are Long Over, Yet the Makeup Remains

Flight:
Robert Zemeckis has made another movie with live humans in it! And it's apparently not that bad. Life Takes Nose Dive, and Settles Into an Abyss

The Details:
Suburban Angst, again with Tobey Maguire. Relentless Raccoons and Other Suburban Problems Money Can’t Always Fix

Bloomberg's Big Day

2012-11-01T15:30:00.003-07:00

Who says media titans are impotent?

First a cover that encapsulates the week better than anyone else....

Then a surprise endorsement for president.

One believes a woman’s right to choose should be protected for future generations; one does not. That difference, given the likelihood of Supreme Court vacancies, weighs heavily on my decision.
One recognizes marriage equality as consistent with America’s march of freedom; one does not. I want our president to be on the right side of history.
One sees climate change as an urgent problem that threatens our planet; one does not. I want our president to place scientific evidence and risk management above electoral politics.
Of course, neither candidate has specified what hard decisions he will make to get our economy back on track while also balancing the budget. But in the end, what matters most isn’t the shape of any particular proposal; it’s the work that must be done to bring members of Congress together to achieve bipartisan solutions.
Presidents Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan both found success while their parties were out of power in Congress -- and President Obama can, too. If he listens to people on both sides of the aisle, and builds the trust of moderates, he can fulfill the hope he inspired four years ago and lead our country toward a better future for my children and yours. And that’s why I will be voting for him.

2012-10-15T10:20:00.001-07:00

Tasty Snacks for Every Craving, originally uploaded by sf eyes.

San Francisco population by age

2012-10-08T11:34:00.001-07:00

San Francisco population by age, originally uploaded by Eric Fischer.

3.0 CSI

2012-09-21T13:18:00.001-07:00

3.0 CSI, originally uploaded by shanan.

747 Shuttle Carrier: Bragging Rights

2012-09-20T21:14:00.001-07:00

747 Shuttle Carrier: Bragging Rights, originally uploaded by Telstar Logistics.

2012-08-20T17:18:00.001-07:00

*Hey Adam, it's Felicia*
*Hey Mike, it's Felicia*
*Hey Adam, it's Felicia*

"It's 8:58 a.m., and I'm not having the smoothest of mornings."

2012-08-15T08:39:00.001-07:00

The musings of a cub reporter-- my friend Rory Brown-- on Public Transportation's inconveniences.

The Emporium, Downtown San Francisco, Early 70s

2012-07-26T22:17:00.001-07:00

The Emporium, Downtown San Francisco, Early 70s, originally uploaded by Mindcage.

505 North

2012-07-19T08:19:00.001-07:00

505 North, originally uploaded by sf eyes.

A Treaty for the Hipsters

2012-07-17T11:07:00.002-07:00

The "hipster" is the dominant cultural force for people of a certain age in American cities, but for the first time that I can remember it's a label that no one wants to own.

Does anyone self-identify as a hipster?
I don't think so. It's a pejorative in just about every usage. It can be delivered in a teasing tone, from a friend that is joshing you, or it can be delivered as an epithet against the fools who stand in line for an hour to get into Smuggler's Cove for some claustrophobic tiki drinks.

Let's go to twitter, source of self-identity origin stories, and see that everyone is using the term with irony.

The problem, then, is that we're all being jerks when we call people "hipsters". No one likes this label being applied to them.

We all need to be much more specific when we want to ridicule the people who make us uncomfortable. If you need to and it is deserved, call someone a fucking foodie instead of a fucking hipster, for example.

Origin of Hipster-dom through time.
Let's start the hipster universe in 2005, for purposes of this treaty. And let's acknowledge that in certain cities and in certain populations, being "a hipster" is the dominant culture of people in their 20's and 30's. Williamsburg, I'm looking at you. Valencia Street, that's you. Russell Westbrook, please take it mainstream.

My friend Bennett (who denies being a hipster) points me to a clever Paste Magazine piece titled The Evolution of the Hipster, which is funny. But it doesn't track the late-20th century proto-hipsters. I think it probably goes something like this:

Hipsters 1.0 ===>> Hippies ===>> Preppies ===>> Grunge ===>>Hip Hop ===>> Hipsters ===>> ??

I want to say that all of the previous movements had large groups of people who wanted to be identified as practitioners of a movement, but Hipster-dom is the first one where no one wants to own it.

These movements have been driven by some yearning to change the world, reject a dominant force (war, rebellion or a salary job), so what are we yearning for in 2012?

We're All Yearning For Something Authentic.
Hence the dive bars, the tiki bars, the fetishization of food, the fixed gears, the new apps.

How do we break out of this cycle? Do we need to abandon irony? Technology?

The Eric Andre Show

2012-07-13T07:15:00.001-07:00

Is the best thing on TV right now.

On Learning to Read

2012-07-08T20:43:00.003-07:00

This post is a working document for a project I'm doing for my mom. She's leading me and a few other people though a writing exercise inspired by Sherman Alexie, who wrote The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me. Go ahead, click over and read that first.

I cannot believe that I am doing a writing exercise for my mom. Many years ago, the though of this would have driven me to a stubborn rage.

---

I'm a reader. A proud reader of printed books, which line my bookshelves with pride in 2012, even while the mechanisms of self-expression and identity have seemingly moved on to more electronic forms for the vast majority of people. I cling to the printed word.

I don’t remember the formative moment that I came to read books. I was probably a young kid in Berkeley, taught by my mom or by Willie Mae Ellington, who took care of me and my brother Brandon when my mom was working. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t Dad.

I must remember other books from this period, but the only one that stands out is Danny, Champion of the World. I distinctly remember my mom reading this book to us, especially poignant because our single mom was reading to us about a boy and his dad alone in the world, tweaking authority. I still love that book.

Reading at school was another matter. Over all the years of school that I went through, it would be difficult to say I was a good student. I had promise, intelligence, creativity perhaps, but I was not a good student. Instead I was: unfocused, undisciplined and confrontational. Confronting a teacher or a text that was hard for me to understand caused me to protest or at least reject the underlying value of the book. Teachers aligned themselves against me by assigning hard to read books, and good students who embraced these books were idiots. Everyone was against me, and so were my report cards.

Books I remember from school: April Morning, Romeo and Juliet, Of Mice and Men, Great Expectations, Lord of the Flies (I actually liked this one), and something by Louise Erdrich. Few of these books connected with me. I fought with these teachers, struggled to understand these texts, struggled even more to write critical papers and turn them in. The teachers won, I got C's and sometimes D's. My english-teacher Mom tried to help but couldn't.

And yet my family read everything. Sitting around the kitchen table my Mom, Brandon and I would read the San Francisco Chronicle, the Berkeley Voice, pamphlets, mail and boxes of cereal. It gave us something to do when we didn't want to talk. I remember going on winter vacation to Yosemite and spending the hours after our dinner at the convenience store reading end of year wrap-ups in Rolling Stone and other magazines. Why did we spend so much time with the printed word?

And then finally I found a novel that spoke to me.

I read The Catcher in the Rye a little later than many of my peers. It wasn't assigned to me in Junior High or High School. Instead it came to me around my 18th year via Becky Gross (coincidentally a Junior High English teacher, but at the time my dreamy former summer camp counselor). She must have wanted me to read something good, or seen a little of the anti-establishment anger coming out of me. I imagine she thought I would relate to the main character.

I read Catcher first when I was away at the first year of University, up in lonely and wet Eugene, Oregon. It captured my rebellious state of mind perfectly. It added the word phony to my vocabulary.

The Catcher in the Rye also planted the first seeds of romantic New York City in my mind, which had previously only been exposed to the cynical decaying New York of Taxi Driver and the old Late Night with David Letterman. Holden Caulfield took me to an older New York: the lake in Central Park, the Museum of Natural History and the glamorous, lonely Upper East Side. I was to later chase these images when I lived in New York City, and spent a fair bit of time strolling up and down Manhattan on my way to and from work.

I was not the first angry person to relate to Holden Caulfield, but like many of them I recognized through him the power of a fictional character to put words and ideas to the feelings that I didn't know how to. Isn't that what the best novels do for readers?

And so from there I found that I could learn more about myself and the world by reading books that I wanted to read. Throughout college I sought out courses that had novels I was interested in, and I read books on the side for myself. After college I found that reading took on even more importance to me as a way to sort through the challenges of life. Books that I am reading now: a book about Zen, and Kafka By the Shore by Haruki Murakami.

Independence day

2012-07-01T15:23:00.001-07:00

In Congress, July 4, 1776

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

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 to 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 shown 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. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands.

He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers.

He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature.

He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states:

For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing taxes on us without our consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury:

For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses:

For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies:

For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments:

For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends.

We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Things I miss from My Last Job

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Napkinball HD, originally uploaded by shanan.

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“It’s not so much that the court has, in one stroke, affirmed his legislative legacy,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a Harvard constitutional law professor who taught both Mr. Obama and Chief Justice John Roberts. “That will depend on what happens down the road. But there is an interdependence here: the court’s decision to say, ‘this is not an un-American act’ is critical.”

Decision Preserves Obama’s Play for a Historic Presidency