One of the things I've managed to avoid in Austin until now is a poetry reading. I'm meeting a friend at a downtown coffeeshop. I can't say that I'm enjoying it, but it is a little interesting to watch. It seems a little like group therapy only performed in public. I don't think there's anyone in the audience that doesn't fashion themselves a poet, and the vibe is mutually supportive. These folks are sharing personal things with each other, and everyone claps. Fortunately, I can ignore it here in the back of the coffeeshop.
Via Atrios, here's a good application of blogs to track current events. The topical blog Reconstruction Watch posts on the federal government efforts to rebuild New Orleans. It's tone is critical of the Bush Adminstration. I've seen a few more topical blogs like these emerge in the past few weeks, and they seem like a great idea, ad hoc media for a well-defined topic, rather than writing on an Indymedia site or a more general-purpose blog. It would be interesting if, like some IMCs, they attempted to produce a print product for affected audiences.
This reminds me, however, that I should monitor the New Orleans IMC for oppositional reconstruction news. The Austin IMC recently had an interesting feature on Common Ground, a collective aiding evacuees return to the 9th Ward.
Talking Points Memo has posted a portion of yesterday's White House press briefing that almost seems like self-parody. I suppose the average citizen doesn't read the news in this detail, but this makes it easy to see why polls says more people approve of the media than the Bush administration.
A reporter has asked a question about Bush's suspension of the Davis-Bacon Act which requires government construction contractors to pay workers the prevailing wages in the region. By suspending the law, contractors can pay desperate, displaced people rock-bottom wages, which would, in turn, drive down wages in private construction.
If it's not already obvious, I think the Gulf Coast wage cut is pretty loathsome behavior by the administration. The news coverage of Hurricane Katrina exposed the vast poverty in New Orleans to much of the country, yet the president insists on driving wages down, pushing more people toward poverty. Regardless of the president's ideological agenda, this seems politically tone-deaf, like much of the administration response to Katrina.
Over at Slate.com, Ari Kelman has a short piece that provides historical background about New Orleans and its efforts to control the influx of water into the city. The main thing I take away from the story is the discrepancy between New Orleans' physical position that make it an ideal site for trade and the landscape that make it a difficult city to sustain. He says, "Geographers refer to this as the difference between a city's "situation"—the advantages its location offers relative to other cities—and its "site"—the actual real estate it occupies."
I took a class with Kelman when were both at OU. It was a summer American studies class emphasizing film, and the main thing I remember is his breathlessly positive comments on an essay I wrote about Buster Keaton's The General. It's still fun to see old prof's names pop up like this.
Nigel has a great post that contends "Some people are so forcefully not writing about what's going on in New Orleans that it hurts." bOINGbOING has been doing an admirable job of sharing information about the tragedy. At first, they did their usual pointers to techie widgets, but they've shifted to more serious blogging as the situation worsened.
bOINGbOING relays an email message about the situation on the ground in New Orleans. The text criticizes the handling of the evacuation by federal and local authorities:
I broke down in tears reading this in the coffeeshop - does anyone know if this can be verified? I'm so ashamed to live in a country where such a policy is even conceivable, and where much of the media represents those left behind as criminals looking for a quick score.
I should have mentioned this in my previous post, but Cindy Sheehan will be speaking in Austin tomorrow Wednesday, August 31. She'll be at the new city hall at 5:30. If you couldn't make it up to Camp Casey, but wanted to show your support, here's your chance.
Gold Star Families for Peace funded much of the Camp Casey goings-on, from the bus I took from Austin to the water provided on site to participants. I don't imagine that my readers have much extra cash, but donating to the group will help them on their bus tour to DC and continue their anti-war efforts.
I think I will take a charter bus to Crawford Saturday, to support Cindy Sheehan and participate in the anti-war rally near the Bush compound. The bus leaves from the LBJ library parking, which is a convenient walk from my place. I'd encourage any Austin readers to join me, and contact me so we can coordinate.
If you don't think you can go up to Crawford this weekend, I'll point out a few upcoming events in Austin. On Sunday, September 11, Austin Against War is sponsoring a peace march from Gillis Park at South First and Oltorf to the new City Hall. This seems like a great way to counter the message of that day's "Freedom Walk" in DC, which is organized by the Department of Defense. (BTW, check out this great post discussing the way Americans use "Freedom.") Additionally there will be rally October 1 to promote the demilitarization of schools and get military recruiters off campus.
Here's an interesting NYTimes report on a speech given by Supreme Court justice John Paul Stevens, where he laments some of the decisions he has made as a justice:
The right, particularly the Christian right, likes to whine about "judicial activists," who rule in favor of free-speech and against the public establishment of religion. Sometimes I wonder if rightists frankly lack the ability or inclination to understand nuance, but, often it seems like a disingenuous attempt at attacking the legitimacy of the constitution. Regardless, I think this was a brave effort by Stevens to explain that often the principles of the law push the justices into making unpopular decisions.
Here's an interesting IndyMedia story from a couple of weeks ago. Czech police used water cannons to break up a "freetekno" party called "Czechtekk 2005" in a rural part of the country. The article could use a couple of grafs giving a little background on the Czechtekk parties which have been held for the past twelve years. I'm guessing Czechtekk is an outdoor electronic music festival comparable to Burning Man in the states. I did originally assume that 'Czechtekk 2005" would be an activist Linux user convention, which only proves how completely unhip I am.
The party took place on rented land in a rural area. According to the article, police legitimated their actions by stating that the rental contract was invalid and began stopping cars headed to the party. The article suggests that the contract was valid, and the police wanted to break up the party from the start.
It's interesting how this story hinges on land rights. Land rights have come up in the Cindy Sheehan story in a similar way. Local residents have tried to ban parking along the highway to Bush's ranch, and I'm sure that their reasons have as much to do with Sheehan's beliefs as they do with the traffic she brings. Although the hearing has been scheduled after Sheehan and Bush plan to leave Crawford, Camp Casey is moving to a private patch of land. The owner, Fred Mattage supports Sheehan's project, but, interestingly, he's a distant cousin of the man who fired a gun near the protester, claiming he was getting ready for "dove season."
I'm sure Texas and the Czech Republic have different attitudes toward land rights. I would expect Texas property owners to have a stronger inclination to enforce property rights, so it's a little surprising the lengths to with the Czech police went to kick people off of property. The folks in Crawford are complaining about events on publicly-owned roadsides, but their claims are couched in a property-owner's entitlement.
Oklahoma recently passed a law blocking employers from banning guns on their premises. The state legislature thought workers should have the right to bring their weapons on private property. The law is being challenged in court by corporate interests who assert that their constitutional property rights allow them to decide their own gun policy. The NRA, which is defending the law, is framing the issue in terms of the second amendment.
I'm no fan of guns, and I'm frankly a little embarrassed that this is happening in my own state, but it raises some interesting issues. This post at "TPM Cafe House of Labor" points out that this assertion of property rights threatens "proposed local laws to require companies to allow the public and/or union organizers onto their property."
What I find more interesting is what this means for worker's rights generally. The WSJ article says, " in a surprise search, Weyerhaeuser Co. sent gun-sniffing dogs into the parking lot of its paper mill here. Mr. Bastible and 11 other workers were fired after guns were found in their vehicles." If Oklahoma passed a law specifically allowing guns in company parking lots, presumably that means employers are free to search you and your car at anytime? I'm guessing that if guns can be banned, employers could ban all kinds of media-making equipment like cameras or computers.* I don't expect anyone would try to take up this issue on First Amendment grounds, but random searches of employee vehicles seems like an unnecessary intrusion into workers affairs. It's too bad this issue has come up in the context of the Second Amendment.
*Look who hasn't taken a media law class.
I just saw the pictures today, but, boy howdy, those newborn pandas are phenomenally cute. I like how they're all pink and fuzzy with their eyes nearly invisible. Apparently, Pandas have a hard time breeding in captivity, so my congratulations go out to the zoo professionals (and the pandas) in China and Washington.
What do you call a professional that works in a zoological garden? "Zoologist" seems to refer to any biologist that specializes in animals, while "Zookeeper" sounds like a working-class job, and I assume that the people responsible for caring for these pandas have advanced degrees.
If I were more clever, I'd draw some comparison between the bomber in Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent and this proposal from the US to abolish leap-seconds, so I'll just say if we base our clocks on the rotation of the earth, the terrorists will have already won. Who needs the sun? We must protect our proud American traditions, like the 24-hour day.
Yikes, New York police will begin random searches of bags on subways, busses, and commuter trains. This seems like a substantial curtailing of civil liberites, since, once searches are in place, police won't simply be looking for explosives. Fortunately, the article notes "officials said they would take pains to avoid racial and ethnic profiling."
The article notes that New York is the first city to be taking these steps. London, which has been the target of recent bomb attacks, does not systematically search bags, so these steps seem more as attempt to give law enforcement more power, rather than avert attacks in the city.
New York police commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said at the announcement, "It's a safety issue. People don't consider any measures that you take for safety to be an inconvenience. This is New York City." I suspect that Kelly maybe not be describing the attitudes of New Yorkers accurately, but it's interesting how he invokes civic pride to suggest that ideal New Yorkers acquiesce to random searches. It seems like a quasi-nationalism, asking people to be loyal to the city.
Street Tech points to the Wikipedia entry on today's transit bombings in London. It's already a very long entry by Wikipedia standards, and has seen thousands of edits. I'm guessing Wikipedia uses Greenwich Mean Time, and the first entry on the topic was posted at 9:18 this morning, so users would have been editing as the story first unfolded.
It's clear that a lot of data is being uploaded to be revised later, but it does give me an appreciation for the ways news organizations are able to collect and present data in a way that give readers an instant impression of what happened in a complex event. I understand why users would want to add to an entry, but isn't this a better case for WikiNews? Is it possible users are moving to fast, trying to create a definitive account before all the facts are in?
A post at Political Animal quotes my former boss Frank Wang. OK, he was the CEO of Saxon Publishers while I was a lowly part-time proofreader. Although the greatest responsibility I had was writing the answers in the back of the Algebra II textbook, I did come into contact with him from time to time.
Drum cites Mr. Wang to describe "the Math Wars," or a battle between educators who advocate a more heuristic approach to teaching math and conservative groups led by parents who advocate a "back-to-basics" approach that emphasizes drilling and rote memorization. (I've already blogged about Saxon here.) Philosophically, I tend to agree with the new math folks - I mean, how are kids ever going to understand Derrida if they don't learn set theory in grade school? - but my major objection to back-to-basics math education is more pragmatic. The Saxon method is boring, and more apt to turn students off to math than to give them mathematical competence.
The spirit has moved me, and I'm finally posting something on the ol' infobong. David Corn and Jeff Goldberg has a great story in The Nation that reveals that former g-man Mark Felt was put in charge of finding and stopping Deep Throat, while he was plying Woodward and Bernstein with information. As you might imagine, this assignment was instrumental in keeping his role a secret. I was born after Watergate, and what I know about it is largely the stuff of popular memory, but, considering the reputed paranoia of the Nixon administration, I find it surprising they didn't have people spying on the spies.
Barry Gewn has an interesting piece titled "Forget the Founding Fathers" in The New York Times that aims to provide an overview of approaches to American history. Despite its flaws, I found this piece kind of valuable; the only history class I took as an undergrad was "history of rock," so I've never really been exposed to the various discussions about histories of the US. However in some places, the essay seems to contradict itself. Gewen contends that multicultural approaches to American history lost favor when, "Battered by political correctness, basking in Reaganesque optimism and victory in the cold war, the country in the 1980's and 90's was ready for a reaffirmation of its fundamental values." However, he doesn't enumerate what US "fundamental values" are or point to any evidence that there are values shared by the population through the sweep of history. Presumably, the fundamental values he alludes to are the values of the white power elite, which only re-enforces the argument of the multiculturalists.
It shouldn't be surprising that a piece in the Times is sympathetic to a neoliberal point of view, however. Critiquing Richard Hofstadter, he writes, "Though the book appeared in the late 1940's, at the onset of one of the greatest economic booms in American history, Hofstadter was still complaining about ''bigness and corporate monopoly,' misguidedly declaring that ''competition and opportunity have gone into decline.'" I suppose one could make a convincing argument that the corporate capitalism of the 1950s and 1960s where more competitive and provided more social mobility than the oligopolies of today, but Gewen seems unwilling to acknowledge critiques of corporate power.
The article is ostensibly about the "Founding Fathers," and one area I hoped it would touch on was ignored. I hoped it would discuss how the framers of the US Constitution function in popular memory today. The Christian Right often deploy popular understandings of the framers in order to situate their political goals within imagined traditions. I frankly don't understand how the right can ingenuously claim that the framers intended to establish a "Christian nation" unconcerned with individual liberties, when the framers were largely deists and certainly classical liberals. The establishment clause of the First Amendment seems proof enough that the framers were suspicious of religious influence on the state.
A New York Times story says that jokes are dead. The article contends that they've vanished both from professional comedy and from daily life. I'm probably too young to remember when jokes were shared in the workplace, but, reading the article, I thought, "I told a joke on Friday."
I was drinking beers with some folks from the J-School, listening to a staff member reminisce about her youth in Austin. I said, "Hey Lou, have you heard that joke 'How many Austinites does it take to screw in a light bulb?'"
Lou said, "No. How many does it take?"
"Three, one to screw in the light bulb, and two to talk about how the old one was so much better."
Perhaps that wasn't canonical joke-telling, but I was well-received. The article also mentions "Bob Newhart's imaginary telephone monologues," which I thought of not too long ago. One day when I was teaching my "Intro to Digital Media" class, I began an impromptu telephone monologue to explain the latency and overall poor experience of using Voice-over-IP services circa 2001. As the class rolled with laughter, I wondered, "Have these kids ever heard Bob Newhart's old skits?"
I only know of Newhart's old skits from other kid's dad's comedy records and Dr. Demento. By the early 90s, when I was in high school, comedy records were a dead, if not dying, media genre. The story mentions the Internet, but I suspect other changes in media may have led to the death of jokes. In the eighties, it seemed like many cable channels used stand-up comedians to fill up their day, which may have diminished the impact of retelling jokes
I probably should have stopped watching this when I saw the stars-n-bars in the third shot, but Killfloor points to a video segment of a "wiener dog" race in Buda, TX, which is just south of Austin. Although the woman who says "You can kiss the wench for a dollar or you can kiss the wiener dog for a dollar," is pretty frightening, but not nearly as frightening as the fact that they parade the confederate battle flag in parades down in Buda. Also, is the name "Dachshund" not in the vocabulary of Budans?
Of course, I attend graduate school at a university where statues of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis still stand on the main mall. Yay Texas!
Although Urban Outfitters began as a funky surplus store near the University of Pennsylvania in the sixties, it's now known as an early co-opter of youth trends. I suppose young college kids with an independent spirit might see it as a one-stop-shop for hip clothes and decor, but I doubt anyone in my circles would regard it as alternative. Regardless, the store engages in some pretty icky business practices like the "Voting is for Old People" T-shirt that appeared in 2004 and now a series of relocation deals.
According to Philadelphia City Paper, Urban Outfitters is moving their call center from downtown Philly to a rural area of South Carolina, in order to take advantage of cheaper labor and a 15-year tax abatement granted by the state. The story notes that the company already had plans to move it's headquarters from the Rittenhouse Square area - which is probably the most expensive area of the city - to the old Navy Yard, a deal which certainly came with enticements from the city. Although the company is keeping it's headquarters in Philly, it seems like a stab in the back to take many of its entry-level jobs out of the city.
It's already on BoingBoing, but this little bit of technical "wizardry" bears repeating. When the Department of Defense finally released photographs of flag-draped coffins after an FOIA request, they famously redacted names and blacked-out faces purportedly for privacy reasons. However, a user with a modicum of technical knowledge discovered that you can recover the redacted personnel names simply by opening the military-issue pdf files in Acrobat and pasting the text into Word.
Juan Cole has a post describing a political tactic called a "GoogleSmear," where right-wing commentators use the Google search engine as a means of authenticating data. It strikes me as a little funny to think that the reliance on Google and the Internet more generally is one of the issues librarians and teachers frequently complain about when working with students new to research, yet political types with vast social capital can promote this fallacy.
In one form, the GoogleSmear makes the argument that if information is not indexed by Google, it is a lie. Cole describes the experience of UC-Irvine history professor Mark Levine, where " a radio talk show host called him a liar because he referred to an incident that the host could not find on Google." Cole himself is frequently the target of right-wing attacks, where his credibility is attacked on the basis of his job; the reasoning seems to go, "Professors, who spend much of their lives collecting and analyzing information about a topic, have no credibility on that topic because they're professors."
Cole also describes a second instantiation of the GoogleSmear, where right-wing commentators:
Considering the way that Google is increasingly used as an arbiter of political debates or as an infallible source of information, it would be nice to develop some kind of campaign to educate the public on how Google works and what are appropriate and inappropriate uses of the tool. I suspect some librarian has a page somewhere describing what we know about Google, but, given Google's lack of transparency and alleged bias, it seems like we need a more broad-based effort to debunk myths about the search engine.
In light of the number of folks I've shown the latest version of "Get Your War On," which deals with the Terry Schiavo case, I should probably post it here. I think my favorite quote is "Glassy-eyed, no cognitive ability, persistent vegitative state, poor Terry Schiavo - the unwitting personification of the Christian right. Except she's not a disgusting hypocrite."
I don't follow right-wing political blogs too closely, but I happened on a post by Michelle Malkin which uses an image of blonde woman police officer escorting a black suspect to raise questions about the role of women in law enforcement. One of her readers writes, "I wonder when or if anyone will have the guts to point out that it's not in the public's best interest to have a woman, escorting a penitentiary trained man-criminal, even with help!" Granted, the suspect is Brian Nichols, who is being charged with going on a killing spree in an Atlanta courtroom, but the readers seem to be more concerned about the big, black man overpowering the pretty blonde lady.
I suppose there's a segment of the right which lacks an appreciation for subtlety or an awareness of just how racist and sexist their discourse really is. But this is clearly a shot staged for media, a "perp walk," where there's little chance for the unexpected. I wonder why these commentators on the right would even bother to comment on the photo, since it makes them look so foolish.
Via TalkLeft, here's a NYTimes story that relates how the U.S. House has approved a resolution critical of the Third Circuit Court's decision allowing divisions within universities to bar millitary recruiting without the threat of losing funding in other departments. The right has an increasingly antagonistic attitude toward the judicial branch of our government - using loaded language like "activist judges" - but it seems like legislative projects like this and anti-marriage proposals which attempt to circumvent the court seem to be a more radical attitude toward our legal system. The Third Circuit's decision, mind you, was based on a Supreme Court decision allowing the Boy Scouts to ban gays, so its clear that the supporters of this resolution have little regard for our courts or internal consistency.
This is perhaps ubiquitous computing at its best. An art installation allows users to text a phone number and play video games on the windows of the French national library. I can't imagine something like this happening in the states.
One of the classes I'm taking this semester is RTF 386C "Media/History/Collective Memory" which deals, in part, with the ways that historical events are memorialized through media texts. For the term paper, I'm planning to write about the Oklahoma City National Memorial as a mediated and discursive practice. Apart from the fact I was a freshman at OU when the bombing occurred, I find it interesting how it uses a bombing by ultra-nationalist right-wingers as a launchpad for ultra-nationalist right-wing propaganda. Come on people, didn't they teach you the concept of irony in high school? You're just making Oklahomans look ignorant.
Anyway, The Guardian has a story about Joseph Beuys that deals largely with how he used his art to memorialize the past. The author says, "Beuys showed Germany and Europe a way to live without forgetting, and to remember without false piety." We're not reading about his work in class, but it would certainly relate to the issues we're discussing.
UCLA studio art professors Chris Burden and Nancy Rubins have quit in protest over the university's inaction over a grad student performance that employed a gun, reports the LA Times. I'm sure there's more to the story, since their action seems a little drastic, particularly when you consider an action that brought Burden fame in the 1970s.
Burden says that the element of surprise is what distinguishes his work from the piece that frightened audiences. I've worked with a professor that encourages surprise performances intended to shock and frighten audiences, so this makes me wonder about the implications of work like this.
Allright, I'm awaking from my blog-slumber (blogernation?) for a relatively content-free post. I love Neal Pollack's response to all the attention given to celebrity responses to the tsunami. He writes, "You know, I’d like to see someone throw a telethon to benefit the women and children we haven’t killed yet in Iraq."
I also agree with his criticism of "not one damn dime day" protesting the younger Bush's re-inaugaration. I don't think a general boycott will accomplish much, but I do think marches do succeed in making dissent visible and re-enforcing community ties. In Austin, there will be an anti-Bush march forming at 4pm Thursday at the state capitol building. I'll be there.
A friend sent me a link to this AP story describing a recently-published linguistics paper which analyzes the use of the word, "dude." According to the story, Scott Kiesling at Pitt is "contending it is much more than a catchall for lazy, inarticulate surfers, skaters, slackers and teenagers," but instead is situated in heteronormative male social bonds. Dudes use "dude" to express intimacy with other dudes. Whatever, I think I use "dude," much as I use "like" or the participle of another four-letter word: as a placeholder when I'm gathering my thoughts. I haven't read it, but you can download the paper as a .pdf here.
I just ran across something on see art make art that really makes me wish I live in New York (or even Philly, for that matter). Scratch Code is an exhibition of computational art from the 1950s through the 1970s by conceptual artists, filmmakers, and people who had access to a plotter. Its even at a gallery devoted to computer art. I worked with AMODA for about a year, but their emphasis is largely on putting on revenue-generating parties with critically acclaimed electronic music acts, rather than exposing local computer artists.
On the other hand, galleries are often not the best place for computer art. I went to The Whitney's Bitstreams show a few back and felt a little unsatisfying. Futzing around with computers in the rarified environment of a museum with other patrons waiting was not the best way to appreciate the works. Their Artport might be a better project, allowing patrons to check out digital works on their own machines. Ideally, users would be able to look at computer art in an environment that allows them to linger on a project for as long as it took them to appreciate the work, yet pulls them out of their normal surroundings.
A survey of 500 art critics recently named Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain" the most influential work of twentieth-century art. The work, which I've had the pleasure of viewing at the Philadelphia Museum's Duchamp collection, consists of a urinal turned on its side and signed "R. Mutt." Even more exciting is #6 on the countdown, my hero Joseph Beuys' "I like America and America Likes Me," which Prentiss and Adina derided at the last Austin Blogger meetup. Come on, how can you go wrong with a felt blanket and a coyote?
Jenny blogged me to it, but I also applaud the Third Circuit's decision to allow law schools to block military recruiting on campus. Its odd that I read this story last night and today I received two recruiting messages from the Army. First, I got an email from a Sergeant Charles R. Hood inviting me to join the Green Berets, where I'd get to enjoy fun activities like "SCUBA diving, Parachuting, and Foreign Languages," all under intense enemy fire, I'm sure. Sergeant Chuck even said "this opportunity is normally reserved for soldiers who have served for a period of 2 to 3 years, but at this time, it is available you with out any special prerequisites." Gosh, if they only threw in deconstruction and reception studies, I'd sign up right away. Chuck was nice enough to give me his phone number, (877) 524-0211, and when I get a chance tomorrow, I'll give him a ring and ask him to quit spamming me. I thought soldiers were of good moral character, so why are they spamming?
Then when I got home from school, I had a message on my machine, inviting me to be an army of one. They even had a little background music as the canned announcer extolled the virtues of dying in Iraq for a war no one believes in. Why don't the get rid of "don't ask; don't tell" before they whining about being unable to recruit enough troops?
UpdateI guess I should read bOINGbOING more frequently, cause they're already on the story. UT students have also been receiving phone spam, and apparently when one student called a recruiter to complain, the serviceman threatened the student with violence. Go Army!
Good gravy, is Ashlee Simson's snafu on Saturday night a national scandal? I had presumed that all the pop tarts lip-synched. Maybe this year's hot Halloween costume will be Ashlee Simpson, hoarse and adorned with a pull cord in the back.
I brought up this quote in Historiography class today, so I reckon I should post it on the blog.
I guess the comments on this blog suggest that the remark is taken out of context, but, boy howdy, is that a creepy thing to say.
The New York Times has another story today about Philadelphia's plans to light the City of Brotherly Love with free Wi-Fi goodness. As a former Philly resident, this plan strikes me as incredibly goofy; most of the people in Philly are so poor, even a crappy $600 notebook is beyond their means. Unless John Street is going to be handing out laptops at The Gallery, the only people using this service will be tourists and Penn students. That sounds callous, I know. There are indeed structural issues in Philadelphia that reinforce the digital divide. West Philly, where I lived lagged the suburbs by two years getting DSL service from Verizon, and cable modem was unavailable until the local minority-owned cable operator was acquired by AOL-Time Warner. In 2001, Baltimore Avenue, which ran by my house was completely torn up to replace the trolley tracks. At the time, I quipped that the city should install fiber-optic trunks in the street while it was dug out, but, alas, that did not happen.
The Times is usually pretty fastidious about getting names right, but the article refers to "Love Park," which is what locals call the public space Northwest of City Hall, but the proper name of the joint is "JFK Plaza." Which leads me to the Infobong.com Trivia Question of the Day! What was President Kennedy's blood type? Click "yeah... and it don't stop" for the answer. President Kennedy's blood type was B-Negative. We watched the CBS and NBC breaking news coverage of his assassination at my screening today.
Good gravy, I feel like I'm newsblogging up a storm tonight, but Salon.com has a crazy story on Tom Coburn, the Republican candidate for the Oklahoma Senate seat, the same guy who supports capital punishment for doctors who perform abortions.
I hope Oklahomans can distinguish between the evil of liberalism and the evil of sterilizing a poor young woman without her consent. The Sooner State elected a Democrat Brad Henry for governor over former Seattle Seahawk and Republican Steve Largent in 2002, so maybe they exercise some caution when they pick their ultra-right politicians.
Lordy. The mental health industry exists to help people. But I don't have a lot of faith in it when I read stuff like this, or consider the current emphasis of medication over talk therapy - they seem more interested in just drugging people rather than help them solve their problems. The article doesn't mention this, so I may be mistaken, but my understanding is that the FDA doesn't require clinical trials of antidepresants for teenagers before allowing doctors to prescribe them to minors - drug companies only need to demonstrate that Prozac, et al, are regarded as safe for adults in the general population, so, inductively, the drugs are safe for teens.
I noticed this morning that The Media Foundation is taking orders for its antibrand "Black Spot Sneaker." I'm really tempted to grab a pair in order to give myself a much-needed dose of cultural cachet. I tend to disagree with Prentiss' assertion that $60 is a lot to spend on sneakers. Unless you're biomechanically perfect, running shoes start around $90, and I'll bet that the all-hemp Adidas I wore in college cost about $50-60, so a well-made pair of hemp sneakers is going to cost some money, whether or not they're made in unionized factory in Portugal or not.
But what does keep me from ordering a pair Black Spots is the fact that I don't really need another pair of sneakers. I bought a pair of Puma Californias - the greatest sneaker ever made - back in March, and it'll be years before I need to buy new shoes. It doesn't make sense to consume simply to contest the social role of consumption.
Hate creator Peter Bagge asks "who needs in Modern Art Museums?" on the libertarian site Reason Online. Of course, my politics are far from libertarian, and I happen to enjoy a lot of contemporary art, so its difficult for me to formulate a satisfying answer. I do think nurturing the arts keeps our culture healthy - the NEA protests in the nineties really opened my eyes to how nasty the Religious right is - didn't Serrano perform a public good by forcing those bigots out into the open? And we fund research scientists and humanities scholars in universities because we think they expand our understanding of the world around us; don't shock artists also help us understand the topics and concepts that small but powerful minoriites want to exclude from public debate?
BTW, I don't know if this gets NEA funding, but I like it.
If there were cargo cults among the Pennsylvania Dutch, they would produce artifacts like these.
The New York Times has a story about what it terms "street art," the illicit application of wheatpaste posters and painted murals in public spaces. The story mention " a curatorial Web site for street art around the world," The Wooster Collective. I tracked it down after reading the story, and I'm like, "Oh Yeah!" All my synapses are firing at once looking at the images of physical urban space used in meaning-making. And they even have an RSS feed!
BTW, I really dig this picture, which I ran across a few weeks back when I was working at a 3D animation camp. I had it up on screen of a computer near the door. A young student walked in, and shouted, "Ew!" like it scared him or something. I went back and looked at the pictures on the Wooster Collective, and I think part of the reasons the images seem so arresting is that many of the shots are pretty contrasty and don't have a lot of depth-of-field (well, they're taking pictures of walls, duh). Combined with the two layers of the image, the street art and its context, the viewer has a lot of information to process in order to make sense of it.
Always providing timely advice for the ruling class, Forbes is running a feature that many exec can surely use, "The Best Place to Go to Prison." If I wasn't so opposed to the use of prison labor in the private sector, I'd suggest Lay and his pals stock Wal-Marts on the graveyard shift or perhaps man a register at a West Philly Burger King.
I've been meaning to blog about PunkVoter.com for some time, but I wasn't sure what to say about it. So just read this rad story in The Nation about the Web site.
I guess I do have a few remarks about PunkVoter.com. I'm sure Jourgensen, et al, are targeting an audience less Web-literate than I, but two design decisions keep me from visiting the site more often. The site lacks an RSS or Atom feed, so I can't check it in my newsreader, and, for some reason, I can't scroll the site using my "PgUp" and "PgDn" buttons. Bummer, dude.
These smug, judgemental suburbanites make me sick. Britton Stein says of liberals and leftists, "They don't give Bush the respect he deserves. Not only because he's president, but because he's a helluva good man." Um, Bush is such a good man that he attacks Kerry's war record, but dodges releasing his own military records? He's such a good man he misrepresents data in order to go war? Such a good man he wants to cut overtime protections for low-wage workers like firefighters and nurses?
Goodness gracious, its a skateboarding dog! Just don't take him to Love Park, whatever you do.
Despite the rumors about Rick Perry and the sinister machinations of Tom Delay, it appears Texas doesn't have a monopoly on creepy-wacky politics.
Noting how the face of Marxist martyr Che Guevara has popped on all kinds of consumables, The Christian Science Monitor asks, "How did an avowed Marxist become, literally, the poster boy for conspicuous capitalist consumption?" It makes for an interesting news story, I suppose, but it seems like a given in "Cultural Studies" that capitalism has a knack for co-opting subversive ideas and commodifying them. (witness major-label wankstas Rage Against the Machine) Maybe reporter Elizabeth Armstrong slept in on that day in college. Of course, when we live in an era when Urban Outfitters can pass off shirts like these as "hep," Che's face on a Vuitton handbag is all the more striking.
I reckon that its worth mentioning that the editorial board of The Baylor Lariat the student newspaper at the world's largest Baptist school, has come out in favor of gay marriage by a 5-2 vote. How is it that Baylor students are more liberal than the Democratic presidential condenders on this issue? I wonder how they feel about shellfish - do they know God hates shrimp?
Observers on the left have criticized the Bush administration for labeling people who oppose its policies, such as anti-war protestors and environmental activists, as "terrorists." But the Bushites discursive peculiarity took a surreal turn today when Education Secretary Rod Paige called teachers' union the National Education Association a "terrorist organization." Damn, its bad enough that terrorists can be your next-door neighbor or electrical engineers, but now those wild-and-crazy schoolteachers are tantamount to Osama Bin Laden.
This Guardian story has been blogged in plenty of other places, but its worth posting here, just to make damn sure everybody sees it. Bush is not only ignoring the scientific community and the Environmental Protection Agency in his denial of global warming, but it appears the "wartime president" is ignoring the Pentagon as well. A leaked Pentagon report contends global warming is real and presents a greater threat to global stability than Bush' beloved terrorists. Between this dissing of the Pentagon and Bush' attempt to cut combat pay to soldiers in Iraq, it seems inconceivable that any military person would support this former National Guardsman, but apparently there are servicepeople out there that still do.
First there was Streetmattress.com, and now there's this site filled with photos of abandoned bikes in New York City. I'm particularly intrigued by the Swiss Miss. I'll admit to sort of abandoning a bike. After I bought a rad aluminum mountain bike, I left a junky hybrid locked up in front of OU's Bizzell Library for many months. I eventually recovered the bike and sold it to a friend of mine. I don't think I would get away with that at UT since I see warning notices attached to bikes. The UTPD tells owners that the bike has been locked in the same place for too long and informs the rider the bike will be impounded after a certain amount of time.
UT and the College Licensing Company are pursuing dealers of those loverly crimson-and-cream hats with inverted Longhorns logos for trademark infringement, reports The Oklahoma Daily. This isn't terribly surprising considering, the Athletic Department went after UT student groups who used the steer motif in club materials. (According to Athletics, its a symbol for the sports teams, while the interlocking UT is the general university symbol.) But what is surprising is UT authorizes two logos, the upside-down "horns" hand signal and the word "Texas" printed upside down. OU gets the proceeds from licensing these symbols. One question remains, however. If "The University" considers the "horns-down" signal a legitimate use of its iconography, why was there such a furor over Arkansas Coach Houston Nutt's use of "horns-down" after the Cotton Bowl? Maybe its because Longhorn fans are ignorant?
This may be old news to readers, but I just ran across Adbusters' Black Spot Sneaker project, which attempts to mass produce sneakers in a unionized factory in South Korea. The project simultaneously supports social justice and attacks the image-laden marketing campaigns of Nike and other shoe vendors.
The catch is Adbusters needs 5,000 people to pre-order a pair at $60 before they can place an order. Right now they have 1,074 pre-orders, so its your job, dear reader, to place an order and recruit 3,925 of your closest friends to place an order too. I'm going to place one soon, so you're already down to 3,924.
The Museum of Modern Art is working to redesign its "MoMA" logo to make it easier to print with desktop publishing application, The New York Times reports. The redesign has not been welcomed by all; typography geeks have declared the new logo - which uses the exact same font - as "soulless" and downright "hideous."
