The Bush administration kills tracking of mass layoffs, because it makes them look bad.

Meanwhile, our President stands to make a lot of money from worldwide war the old-fashioned way, by inheriting it.

One more: our tax dollars have started going to religious groups to promote marriage. I love my gay dollars going to help spread the word that I’m evil.

Good essay on why cutting taxes on dividends is a bad idea.

Phil Gyford has turned the diaries of Samuel Pepys into a daily weblog.

An article by him about the project is on the BBC web site.

Tyranny is the absence of complexity.
— André Gide

Yay! Charles Goldman — we’re almost done with his web site, then I’ll tell you about it — has pointed me to a cool weblog by an artist, Tom Moody. He also has a second blog about electronic music here.

I like his post about the lethargy of the art world and Chelsea as an artist-free Brasilia for collectors.

I need to organize my links area. It’s time to separate political vs. general vs. cultural ones somehow.

Via Eric Alterman, an excellent paper from the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs on why Saddam can be contained without going to war.

The NY Times Magazine has some wonderful essays this week, about people who died in 2002:

• Tony Kushner on Geraldine of Albania & Lucia Pamela
  
• A letter from Jimi Hendrix to his father — before he was famous
  
• David Rakoff on Edith Bouvier Beale — of Grey Gardens fame
  
• Armistead Maupin on Harry Hay
  
• Ann Patchett on Eileen Farrell — an opera diva who lived with her NYPD husband on Staten Island
  
• Anthony Giardina on Stephen Ambrose — notable for taking the historian to task for glorifying war, and thus making new ones more likely
  
• Plus, a beautiful “What They Were Thinking” with Arthur Miller with a photo taken by his late wife, Inge Morath</p> </ul>

1% of Americans are worth at least $1 million. What percentage of incoming members of Congress are millionaires? 43%.

Spotted, standing in line at the West 18th Street Post Office: Wallace Shawn

Heard, while shopping for used CDs at Academy: “She had the prettiest mudflaps I ever saw” — a line from a country music song

I haven’t really found other blogs, other than Andy’s Chest, that talk about art, theatre, and other cultural goings-on in NYC with any regularity. Some of the art people I know have blogs, but don’t like to mix their blogging with their “areas of business”.

Send me some suggestions! I’m looking for others to give me recommendations on art galleries, books, theatre, music, etc. I can’t do it all myself.

Non-NYC ones are OK too.

This is one of the best things I’ve ever read about gym culture, from The Economist’s year-end issue.