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Although the tagline is anonymous, today's architectureweek.com front page article screams out as the style of one Brian Libby, who is also known to write exceptional movie reviews and capsule summaries for the otherwise ordinary and occasionally offensive
Willamette Week (which has a nice web page).
Good Works is a national directory of social change organizations and is the first directory to present alternatives to traditional corporate employment. This directory, now in its fifth edition, lists the aims and projects of over 1000 organizations and provides background information on contacts, starting salaries and benefits, types of staff openings, available internships, annual budget and funding sources, and the application process.
The pseudoephedrine contained in many "non-drowsy" drugs like these is really an amphetamine in disguise, differing from methamphetamine by only one oxygen atom, a proton and a symmetry operation. These differences are sufficient, however, for the stimulant effects to be hindered by the passage of pseudoephedrine molecules across the blood-brain membrane, plus orders of magnitude difference in its activity where it counts - the dopamine neurons.So that's where the "pseudo" comes from.
OK, I just finished Yamanaka, but don't have time to write very much -- later today or tomorrow I'll throw out some stuff. But I found an article that raises some good questions: This Hawaii Is Not for Tourists, from the Atlantic Monthly. I haven't finished it yet, but like it so far. Skim down past the intro and it gets into the flap about the Filipino stereotypes. Apparently one of Yamanaka's harshest critics didn't actually read her book -- he just flipped through and picked out the offending passages. Way to go, teacher! That's showing a careful concern for the text.
"The White Man's Burden" and Its Critics is a collection of resources edited by Jim Zwick.
The nominations for the National Book Critics Circle Award are out. Zadie Smith bagged one. So did Michael Chabon, Yusef Komunyakaa and Jacques Barzun. Has anyone read the recent books by Barzun and Chabon? Both are intriguing.
Update: Virginia Senator Leslie L. Byrne withdrew the controversial bill that would have forced state residents to sleep only in their bedrooms (see below). She complained that the bill was "misrepresented" in the Post and elsewhere. But it was probably very well represented -- it was immediately clear that this bill would have been selectively enforced to target immigrants. So R.I.P., thankfully.
Slavery slipped into an unholy marriage with state's rights doctrine in American memory, and despite decades of persuasive scholarship, the divorce has never been completed.In which David Blight reveals the origin of the myth of the moral Confederacy.
We get this one all the time. Our workshop uses simple white turkey feathers that are then dyed yellow.Big Bird!
"All in all, it would be flattering to be associated with Ned Flanders, based on what I know about the person and how he lives out his faith," Dan says. "There's an element of unconditional love in his life that accurately portrays Christianity." Some Christians might be put off by some of the idiosyncrasies associated with the character, like "nerdy behavior," he added.Christianity Today profiles The Simpsons' Ned Flanders, who emerges as a consistent character despite the show's famed (and sometimes self-mocking) inconsistency.
I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots.Papa Bush in 1987. I wonder if Dopey Bush feels the same way. Bonus link: list of all known smurfs.
Robot Wisdom trifecta:
The Virginia Senate voted yesterday to let Fairfax County prohibit its residents from sleeping anywhere but their bedrooms, a measure that some activists and local officials say unfairly targets the living arrangements of the county's burgeoning immigrant communities.BlogVoices should be back soon, thanks to chrish and pyra, but this looks like a job for MetaFilter.
I understand the interest. I grew up in a small town in Kentucky where they shot a series called Centennial, and I followed Raymond Burr around everywhere he went.George Clooney was apparently generous with fans while shooting O Brother, Where Art Thou?
Who needs analysts, degrees or intelligence when professional sports can predict the future?
Consider the Redskins Indicator, which holds that the Washington, D.C. football team's last home game before the U.S. presidential election is pivotal. A Redskins win means a victory for the incumbent party; a loss lands the challenger the White House.
According to ABC Sports, the indicator had a 15-0 success rate going into this election. Make that 16-0. The Redskins lost to the Tennessee Titans in the crucial home game before the election.
originally posted by zagg
I don't think that what I'm doing is necessarily left versus right. What I'm addressing is top versus bottom. If I'm not spending a lot of time making fun of the more extreme elements of the Green Party, it's because what I do is to critique power.Dan Perkins, better known as Tom Tomorrow, talks to Mother Jones.
"One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
I love a site that uses background images with abandon. How come you rarely see that anymore?
When you have some time, read through Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov -- but be warned that it will take something apart deep inside of you and leave you with no idea how to reassemble the pieces.
... Bush officials moving into their offices found that the "W" key had been popped off of many computer keyboards
originally posted by dm8k
Is it me, or is subterranean notes: art on the web back in action?
I always thought it was really interesting that the most powerful earthquakes in the lower 48 states occurred in Missouri, not California. Here's one account of that.
originally posted by zagg
Adventures in Capitalism: You may not know what IT is, but you can already buy IT.
originally posted by zagg
Today I woke up to this and "soul, is your bed shaking?"
Not only do an untold number of US organizations doctor photographs to include African Americans, but in most of those cases, the black person in the photo is the exact same guy.c/o The MoJo Wire
originally posted by hcog
I'm very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very very excited to see that World New York is back, and equally sad to see arblog go.
Recipes, crafts, and other activities inspired by Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little House.
The Online Journalism Review reviews the IHT website.
What if reality TV were based on, well, reality?
It's things like this that make me embarrassed to live in Virginia. Even North Carolina's lawmakers didn't try to pull crap like this when I lived there. I'm just about six miles from the banks of the Potomac ... I could beat the high-stakes housing market in D.C. if I just set up a campsite on the other side of the Memorial Bridge ... right?
I'm about halfway through Blu's Hanging and I probably won't say much about it until I'm done. But I will add that I'm also having a little trouble now and then with the vocabulary. The problem with Kualono's Mamaka Kaiao dictionary is that it covers just the Hawaiian language. The characters in Blu's Hanging, on the other hand, are speaking the Hawaiian Pidgin English, which I guess borrows syntax and vocabulary from some of the other languages spoken on the islands over time. I went to Yahoo! and ran a search on "Hawaiian pidgin," and it brought up about half a dozen pages, some of which have limited glossaries of pidgin words. Check it out and see what you can find if you need help.
A laser projector will beam your message (up to 160 characters) onto the mountain side overlooking Davos, where it can be seen by the hundreds of journalists and thousands of politicians and business leaders attending the World Economic Forum's annual conference.
At one point during the day, the set acquires a weird postmodern vibe. Garofalo and Bernhard are sprawled on the pavement near a van after a shootout, their clothes soaked with gaudy red stage blood, while Favreau "directs" their movie. Allen Coulter, director of this episode of "The Sopranos," films them filming. On the perimeter of the set, video crews and newspaper photographers take their own pictures of the scene.I wish I had a picture of that. New Jersey Online also has some decent coverage of the anti-defamation pressure that has booted shooting from Essex County.
A black person used to be described by the deaf by pressing the nose flat or pressing the nose with the letter "N" for negro. For an Asian person, the corner of the eye was pulled taut by the small finger hooked in a "J" for Japanese. One signed a Pole by thumbing a "big" nose. Greeks also had nose references and Italians were identified by making the sign of the cross on the forehead.This old article describes relatively recent changes in the American Sign Language lexicon.
It has a terrible effect on my personality; I get angry about everything. I hate the change. And finally when my body gets used to it, it's time to change again.There is a great political struggle in Mexico right now over daylight saving time.
The Guardian Weblog devotes a special issue to the year of the snake.
These bios are making me really sad.
Best interface ever: International Herald Tribune
It's like a soccer match. You can put up goals if you want to and you can put some white lines on the turf, but if there are no rules, you can kick your opponent, you can make a goal with your fist, one team can have 24 members and the other one only eight members. If there are no rules, there is no game.Hernando de Soto talks about why, as he puts it, capitalism triumphs in the West and fails everywhere else.
Watch what you eat... you never know if you are looking at an innocent bowl of soup or a deadly warrior in disguise!
Do you seriously think a news organization should ignore the swearing-in of a new president in favor of scattered protests around the country?Fox News's Brit Hume wrote this to an angry critic, reports Salon. Pretty snotty, but I admit I like the chutzpah it took to do it.Besides, we knew that covering it the way we did would infuriate you personally and that was an added plus.
Best wishes, Brit Hume
As I drove home from the rave, this song by Nine Inch Nails, called "Broken," came on the radio. It's an amazing song. It's enlightening and at the same time it's terrible -- it assaults you with sounds, as though you'd put a conch shell up to your ear to listen to a jet engine warming up. As you listen to it, it undoes all the music you ever heard before. It erases it. Every once in a while it's good to listen to "Broken"; it's hypnotic. But if you listen to it over and over again, you'll fry your listening gene. Built into the enlightening quality of it is this power to remove the ability to hear it.Matthew Klam writes for the New York Times Magazine about experiencing Ecstasy.
I dig Jozef Hand-Boniakowski's Fountain Pen and Ink Artwork.
ahhhhhhhh, to be thin and white in america.
originally posted by fflood
[F]or most writers, it's not so much their opposition to Bush's politics, or the fact of the Florida controversy, as the intellectual disgrace of the Supreme Court ruling, which bears on the issue of language, which is a writer's area of professional responsibility. Everybody understands that language is used in particular ways in partisan politics, and doesn't necessarily hold politicians responsible for it. Judicial language is another matter. The polis rests on it, which is why Dante, for example, put abusers of public language in the coldest pit of hell.
If memory serves, there has never before been a set of icons celebrating the great cross-cultural phenomenon known as Iron Chef. Thanks to the great artists at the Iconfactory, on January 25th there will be. Allez icons!
To change art: destroy ego,
kyosaku,
gargoyle drumming,
weather,
the first amendment,
this guy,
poker,
distant cousins(!?)
and
jazz.
Why I read MetaFilter >link<
What we know about Blogger Pro so far.
In memory of angelheaded hipster Gregory Corso. Thanks to Levi Asher for the transcription.BOMB by Gregory Corso
---------------------Budger of history Brake of time You Bomb
Toy of universe Grandest of all snatched sky I cannot hate you
Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt the jawbone of an ass
The bumpy club of One Million B.C. the mace the flail the axe
Catapult Da Vinci tomahawk Cochise flintlock Kidd dagger Rathbone
Ah and the sad desparate gun of Verlaine Pushkin Dillinger Bogart
And hath not St. Michael a burning sword St. George a lance David a sling
Bomb you are as cruel as man makes you and you're no crueller than cancer
All Man hates you they'd rather die by car-crash lightning drowning
Falling off a roof electric-chair heart-attack old age old age O Bomb
They'd rather die by anything but you Death's finger is free-lance
Not up to man whether you boom or not Death has long since distributed its
categorical blue I sing thee Bomb Death's extravagance Death's jubilee
Gem of Death's supremest blue The flyer will crash his death will differ
with the climbor who'll fall to die by cobra is not to die by bad pork
Some die by swamp some by sea and some by the bushy-haired man in the night
O there are deaths like witches of Arc Scarey deaths like Boris Karloff
No-feeling deaths like birth-death sadless deaths like old pain Bowery
Abandoned deaths like Capital Punishment stately deaths like senators
And unthinkable deaths like Harpo Marx girls on Vogue covers my own
I do not know just how horrible Bombdeath is I can only imagine
Yet no other death I know has so laughable a preview I scope
a city New York City streaming starkeyed subway shelter
Scores and scores A fumble of humanity High heels bend
Hats whelming away Youth forgetting their combs
Ladies not knowing what to do with their shopping bags
Unperturbed gum machines Yet dangerous 3rd rail
Ritz Brothers from the Bronx caught in the A train
The smiling Schenley poster will always smile
Impish death Satyr Bomb Bombdeath
Turtles exploding over Istanbul
The jaguar's flying foot
soon to sink in arctic snow
Penguins plunged against the Sphinx
The top of the Empire state
arrowed in a broccoli field in Sicily
Eiffel shaped like a C in Magnolia Gardens
St. Sophia peeling over Sudan
O athletic Death Sportive Bomb
the temples of ancient times
their grand ruin ceased
Electrons Protons Neutrons
gathering Hersperean hair
walking the dolorous gulf of Arcady
joining marble helmsmen
entering the final ampitheater
with a hymnody feeling of all Troys
heralding cypressean torches
racing plumes and banners
and yet knowing Homer with a step of grace
Lo the visiting team of Present
the home team of Past
Lyre and tube together joined
Hark the hotdog soda olive grape
gala galaxy robed and uniformed
commissary O the happy stands
Ethereal root and cheer and boo
The billioned all-time attendance
The Zeusian pandemonium
Hermes racing Owens
The Spitball of Buddha
Christ striking out
Luther stealing third
Planeterium Death Hosannah Bomb
Gush the final rose O Spring Bomb
Come with thy gown of dynamite green
unmenace Nature's inviolate eye
Before you the wimpled Past
behind you the hallooing Future O Bomb
Bound in the grassy clarion air
like the fox of the tally-ho
thy field the universe thy hedge the geo
Leap Bomb bound Bomb frolic zig and zag
The stars a swarm of bees in thy binging bag
Stick angels on your jubilee feet
wheels of rainlight on your bunky seat
You are due and behold you are due
and the heavens are with you
hosanna incalescent glorious liaison
BOMB O havoc antiphony molten cleft BOOM
Bomb mark infinity a sudden furnace
spread thy multitudinous encompassed Sweep
set forth awful agenda
Carrion stars charnel planets carcass elements
Corpse the universe tee-hee finger-in-the-mouth hop
over its long long dead Nor
From thy nimbled matted spastic eye
exhaust deluges of celestial ghouls
From thy appellational womb
spew birth-gusts of of great worms
Rip open your belly Bomb
from your belly outflock vulturic salutations
Battle forth your spangled hyena finger stumps
along the brink of Paradise
O Bomb O final Pied Piper
both sun and firefly behind your shock waltz
God abandoned mock-nude
beneath His thin false-talc's apocalypse
He cannot hear thy flute's
happy-the-day profanations
He is spilled deaf into the Silencer's warty ear
His Kingdom an eternity of crude wax
Clogged clarions untrumpet Him
Sealed angels unsing Him
A thunderless God A dead God
O Bomb thy BOOM His tomb
That I lean forward on a desk of science
an astrologer dabbling in dragon prose
half-smart about wars bombs especially bombs
That I am unable to hate what is necessary to love
That I can't exist in a world that consents
a child in a park a man dying in an electric-chair
That I am able to laugh at all things
all that I know and do not know thus to conceal my pain
That I say I am a poet and therefore love all man
knowing my words to be the acquainted prophecy of all men
and my unwords no less an acquaintanceship
That I am manifold
a man pursuing the big lies of gold
or a poet roaming in bright ashes
or that which I imagine myself to be
a shark-toothed sleep a man-eater of dreams
I need not then be all-smart about bombs
Happily so for if I felt bombs were caterpillars
I'd doubt not they'd become butterflies
There is a hell for bombs
They're there I see them there
They sit in bits and sing songs
mostly German songs
And two very long American songs
and they wish there were more songs
especially Russian and Chinese songs
and some more very long American songs
Poor little Bomb that'll never be
an Eskimo song I love thee
I want to put a lollipop
in thy furcal mouth
A wig of Goldilocks on thy baldy bean
and have you skip with me Hansel and Gretel
along the Hollywoodian screen
O Bomb in which all lovely things
moral and physical anxiously participate
O fairylike plucked from the
grandest universe tree
O piece of heaven which gives
both mountain and anthill a sun
I am standing before your fantastic lily door
I bring you Midgardian roses Arcadian musk
Reputed cosmetics from the girls of heaven
Welcome me fear not thy opened door
nor thy cold ghost's grey memory
nor the pimps of indefinite weather
their cruel terrestial thaw
Oppenheimer is seated
in the dark pocket of Light
Fermi is dry in Death's Mozambique
Einstein his mythmouth
a barnacled wreath on the moon-squid's head
Let me in Bomb rise from that pregnant-rat corner
nor fear the raised-broom nations of the world
O Bomb I love you
I want to kiss your clank eat your boom
You are a paean an acme of scream
a lyric hat of Mister Thunder
O resound thy tanky knees
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM
BOOM ye skies and BOOM ye suns
BOOM BOOM ye moons ye stars BOOM
nights ye BOOM ye days ye BOOM
BOOM BOOM ye winds ye clouds ye rains
go BANG ye lakes ye oceans BING
Barracuda BOOM and cougar BOOM
Ubangi BOOM orangutang
BING BANG BONG BOOM bee bear baboon
ye BANG ye BONG ye BING
the tail the fin the wing
Yes Yes into our midst a bomb will fall
Flowers will leap in joy their roots aching
Fields will kneel proud beneath the halleluyahs of the wind
Pinkbombs will blossom Elkbombs will perk their ears
Ah many a bomb that day will awe the bird a gentle look
Yet not enough to say a bomb will fall
or even contend celestial fire goes out
Know that the earth will madonna the Bomb
that in the hearts of men to come more bombs will be born
magisterial bombs wrapped in ermine all beautiful
and they'll sit plunk on earth's grumpy empires
fierce with moustaches of gold
part ii
North Americans want to understand and we want to contemplate. They are activists and we are quietists; we enjoy our wounds and they enjoy their inventions. It seems to me that North Americans consider the world to be something that can be perfected, and that we consider it to be something that can be redeemed.
It's called "snail" in Italy, "swinging monkey" in the Netherlands, and "pickled herring" in the Czech Republic. Meet the at sign.
originally posted by dm8k
I like Skinny Pandas.
It's all about the Benjamin, baby. High Schooler DaJuan Wagner drops 100.
If you like playing in UVa's steam tunnels, exploring abandoned prison islands, or checking out lost subway stations like I do, you should read this Salon article and go to www.infiltration.org.
There were 28 searches for the week ending 1/13/2001 for
randomWalks at http://www.randomwalks.com/. Here are the top phrases searched:
This is so beautiful, it brings tears to my eyes.
originally posted by dm8k
As befits a slow post-holiday news day, the Washington Post has some good features today. Adam beat me to posting the article about Civil War apologists, as I thought he might. Other worthwhile reads:
I can still go to McDonald's and buy a Quarter-Pounder. Why doesn't that have to be a 113-grammer?
And...
"... Holden Caulfield is a white, privileged male," said Michael Moore, director of the literature commission for the National Council of Teachers of English. "In our very diverse schools, the drive to incorporate very multicultural reading is here to stay."
Our new government's cornerstone rests upon the great truth that the Negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world based upon this great physical, philosophical and moral truth. -- Alexander Stephens, vice president of the ConfederacyAnd so the next time a Confederate apologist tries to tell you that the Civil War wasn't "about" slavery, you just shout yee-haw!
I'm not entirely clear on the point of slipping out the back, as opposed to the front. Am I supposed to be afraid of the neighbors seeing me breaking up? Is the front door guarded by relationship-preserving rottweilers? Am I supposed to soften the blow by taking out the garbage?The Brunching Shuttlecocks rates various ways to leave your lover.
Way-ell, do I feel bad -- I haven't even STARTED Blu's Hanging. I just got it out of the library yesterday (I'm not buying any books, if I can help it -- we have too many already). And now my wife's reading it, because I'm finishing up Driving Mr. Albert. Which is great, by the way. (I always do that -- just say things are "great." Can I be any less descriptive?)
Anyway, the point of this is to say 1) I am reading, in keeping with the spirit of rWbooks, but I'm not reading the book I should be and 2) I will soon and 3) hcog, please keep hold of the book in your memory so we can talk about it soon!
For the mother they use "really gentle ska music. It's an update on 'Brady Bunch' music, a sort of groovy 'Brady Bunch.'"
Sam's Web Cam Cookbook -- exemplary use of hypertext.
Today's puzzle completed 3 minutes 10 seconds!
The traditional pomp and circumstance will be shaken and stirred with camp and remonstrance.Looking forward to the inauguration with the WP.
So now that I've finished the book and have had a week of distance, I am trying to practice analyzing it. I love emotional, heartstring-tugging books. I always have. Yamanaka does a good job playing to my reading cohort that likes triumphant little girls and boys who have suffered and the caring alcoholics and lesbians who help them along the way. Her poetic passages and her use of spirituality contribute to an atmosphere of living with death in way I appreciate.
I don't see this as a book centrally concerned with a young girl's struggle between obligation to family versus her need to save herself as the book jacket proclaims.
I feel like on the one hand Yamanaka is working with an important experience among a community that is rarely written about and on the other hand not doing it enough justice by using such a trite formula. Or, maybe more likely, a sellable one. I say this especially after reading an article on the "immigrant novel" in which a first generation Filipina American author discusses typical American editor expectations for publishable novels by immigrants and children of immigrants. She says they are expected "to tell the story of their childhood (and)...coming of age as foreigners in America." (Lara Stapelton, "Liberating the Immigrant Novel," Poets&Writers mag) Well, it seems like Yamanaka could have been wise in knowing the publishers she would have to please.
Judged simply against what I felt was missing, I am less able to give Yamanaka room for sappiness than I was before. Seeing everything kind of fall into place is disappointing and so much could have been used that wasn't. For example, the mother's death by clinging too tightly to the thing she believed would save her could have been a tragic family theme replicated by Ivah--maybe Ivah clinging to the caring of her siblings, maybe to the wife-substitute role with her father--that would have ended in her own actual or metaphorical death. Ivah shows remarkable health and adaptability. It is the author's choice towards heroism and it feels too neat. Other areas I haven't given enough thought to yet that I feel like there was more to mine are the pedophile/ sexual abuse/ sexuality in the book and the father. Not in the quantity of events showing the children vulnerable to sexual abuse or depicting the morose, absent dad, but something about the effects of these experiences and forces. But I gotta think about it some more.
originally posted by hcog
No coincidence that the two biggest pretenders on the net - www.randomwalk.com and www.aaww.com have home pages that look the exact same.
Steve Jobs has a potty mouth.
What palm apps do I need that I don't have? Please [discuss] thanks...
Liberals have attacked John Ashcroft recently with charges of racism. True? In a sense, sure. I'm not convinced that he's a bigot; I am convinced that anyone who would praise the malignant Southern Partisan is someone who doesn't have my family's best interest at heart.
Washington Post columnist Donna Britt says that calling anyone a racist who hasn't clearly demonstrated such bigotry is wrong, but I think it's a question of tactics. I don't think it's unfair to ask if this man who would be Attorney General of the United States is driven by an ideology that might run counter to the ideal of a nation united by equal protection (rather than defeated by it).
Indeed, Kendall Clark argues convincingly that to incorrectly identify racism is of far less consequence than to deny racism where it exists. I'll agree that anyone who makes such an accusation should be prepared to support their claim, but more importantly, anyone who expects to be granted a very powerful and visible position in the federal government should be prepared to answer a few simple questions.
Instead of "randomWalks" this site is now going to be "the best of plasticboy". Today on the best of plasticboy, we have: 2 reviews of Ken Burns' Jazz (review of Jazz, other review of Jazz) (mini bonus review of Jazz: fuck yeah!) and vegetarian recipes.
I posted about the idea of a books napster to randomWalks a while ago. But the problem is while it's ok for a music file to lose data, or to have the last 15 seconds of data cut off (my version of "Brooklyn" ends "where one of the greatest emcees, wa.."). Imagine being able to read all of Harry Potter except for the last 40 pages! That would be a terrible terrible thing.
The first chapter of Don DeLillo's next book, The Body Artist, is online. It's good stuff. When I finished reading it I was annoyed that I couldn't proceed to Chapter 2. I'll have to wait until next month for that. There needs to be a Napster for the print world.
those fiends!! Could this be true?
Sounds Eclectic is a two-hour weekly version of KCRW's amazing morning music show, Morning Becomes Eclectic. Recent live performances have included Beck, Coldplay and Shivaree. The shows are available in RealAudio.
Who is John Galt?
originally posted by dm8k
La-Z-Boy, Microsoft launch 'e-cliner' armchair
originally posted by dm8k
Boing Boing has posted all the links I would have recently, had I been posting, except for this incredible Beagle Bros tribute site which I've been willing to exist for the longest time. Here's where I've been spending time instead of posting:
thanks to rogers cadenhead for the Beagle Bros link.if you ever wondered what it was like to be at a sporting event at it's lowest point - outrageous overcommercialism and heartless fans, go see a 76ers game.
also, from the NBA all star ballot contest entry form:
If potential winner is a Canadian resident, he/she must correctly answer a 4-function arithmetic skill question to claim the prize after arithmetic skill question to be administered by telephone at a mutually convenient time.
piercing, an online comic.
The Asian American Movement Ezine is produced by a radical Boston-based collective working to document the history of Asian American activism. Like ModelMinority.com, it looks to be a great resource for Asian Americans and for anyone who wishes to broaden their understanding of racial issues in the United States.
I love this Ian MacKaye interview. At the end, there's a link to an older, but equally interesting Courtney Love rant on the recording industry.
What's going on here? First, Lynda Barry takes a break from One Hundred Demons--though if a novel is the result of the hiatus, I guess I can't complain. And today I found out Open Letters is kaput. Sigh.
A liberal will tell you the system isn't working properly. I will tell you that the system is working exactly the way it's supposed to. After reflection on my two decades plus of service, I am convinced that I only served the richest one percent of my country. In every country where I worked, poor people's poverty built and maintained the wealth of the rich.Stan Goff served in the U.S. military for two decades, much of the time with Special Forces training Third World armies.
New One Hundred Demons by Lynda Barry, last one for a while.
Americans reluctant to address the realities of continuing racism and white privilege have consistently portrayed Asian Americans as a "model minority" who have uniformly succeeded by merit.
While superficially complimentary to Asian Americans, the real purpose and effect of this portrayal is to celebrate the status quo in race relations. First, by over-emphasizing Asian American success, it de-emphasizes the problems Asian Americans continue to face from racial discrimination in all areas of public and private life. Second, by misrepresenting Asian American success as proof that America provides equal opportunities for those who conform and work hard, it excuses American society from careful scrutiny on issues of race in general, and on the persistence of racism against Asian Americans in particular.
The mission of ModelMinority.com is to provide this scrutiny in every possible way, so as to educate, inform, provoke, and inspire movements by individuals and groups toward Asian American empowerment.
What I'm trying to do is to target market my product towards a younger crowd, which no one is really addressing right now. Or at least to make it more contemporary. I mean what's up with the big hair? It's so over. So eighties.Annabel Chong, from actress to producer.
I found some definitions using Kualono.
originally posted by hcog
After a year of preparation, that war is about to begin in earnest. Against whom is it to be waged? Not against the coca cartels in Colombia or the consumers in Manhattan but against the peasants who plant the coca and against the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) who protect them. This will solve neither the civil war nor the drug problem.If you've had an uneasy feeling about Plan Columbia but weren't sure why, read this. Z Magazine has put together a great set of links if you want to learn more. For a quick fix read Chomsky on Columbia.
I somehow made my way to Hobbsblog and was struck by the fascinating depth of information in the Orange Bowl Special Edition -- last Wednesday, the Oklahoma Sooners played football with the Florida State Seminoles, right? Well, it turns out that the historical Sooners actually got their name by jumping the gun on a land rush and settling/stealing Seminole (among other tribes) land before anyone else had the chance.
Blu's Hanging is a very difficult read. I haven't felt this torn, horrified, voyeuristic, and draw in since I read Sapphire's Push. Yamanaka communicates palpable and omnipresent death and decay in the lives of the Japanese Hawai'ian children who are the focus of the book. She portrays a specific survival, authentic in the way the children ban together, are directed and held together by the oldest, and are attracted to both caretakers and danger. There are occasional sappy moments that are also a relief--Secret Santas at Christmas left me grateful for the break from the torrents of blood ticks and dead cats. I'll give Yamanaka some room for bathos. I can't quite get my finger on Blu's character--his obliviousness and sweetness made a little more sense when he was a younger child; I'm a little suspect especially since he's now in 5th grade. I'm waiting for his retaliation, fury.
The language used in the book is difficult for me to understand and many of the references unknown; I want to find a resource (maybe online)--at least a dictionary--to help me. This feels very insufficient--the context of the story, language, characters, and history is so important to experiencing the book. This is where I feel voyeuristic and I'd want more background info to ground my understandings.
The book has a history:
Soon after hitting the shelves, the book and its author were enveloped in a verbal fusillade of caustic e-mail and bitter editorials. Critics called Yamanaka, a 36-year-old Japanese American, a racist and her book a divisive diatribe that reinforced stereotypes of Filipino Americans as sexual deviants. Her supporters defended her right to free expression and pointed out that other ethnicities, particularly Japanese Americans, didn't look good in the book, either.This summer, the controversy reached a climax at the Association of Asian American Studies' annual convention in Hawaii. One day after the group gave its fiction award to Yamanaka, a member revolt forced it to rescind the honor. All but one of the board members then quit, leaving the organization in limbo and re-examining its own tenets.
This may be an interesting read.
originally posted by hcog
Check out the new Blogger server! Congratulations, you guys rock.
Time (?!) presents the best comics of 2000. via c-log, a comics news weblog I'd like to see take off.
The Poppy Garden's got it going on. Check out 4 January for a slew of J20 activism links.
Macworld San Francisco is right around the corner, and here at randomWalks, we're keeping the faith. thanks, morning news.
Young white men see white men at the top of nearly every organization, court, government office, military position, university, and other powerful structures visible in our society. They are fed an unrelenting stream of history books, literature, TV shows, movies, video games, and advertisements which tell them that the place for white men is on top, in control, in power, in charge and that women, all people of color, people with disabilities, lesbians, gays and bi-sexuals, and recent immigrants are inferior, less worthy, and not entitled to the same power as white men. Many of their parents reinforce this by telling them that they are special, they are leaders, they can be anything they want, and that it is up to them to achieve and be successful. They often end up feeling entitled to special attention, to time devoted to their interests, to resources put into their activities, and to money invested in their future. The messages of entitlement leads them to expect sex and care taking from women, service and deference from people of color, and gratitude, sacrifice, and self-abasement from recent immigrants, from homosexuals, and from people with disabilities. They become angry and confused when their sense of entitlement is not responded to, when others are demanding access to what they do not want to share, and when their ability to get to the top is threatened.I used this great Kivel quote (full article) in response to a post in this MetaFilter thread accusing this Slashdot comment of "racism" against whites (a fallacy, of course). All of this surrounds the Microsoft discrimination suit.
Microsoft's Xbox -- I saw it here first.
Hey, look at this: Pyra's asking for donations to help make Blogger go faster. I was gonna buy a Stalkers CD this week, but I think I'll Napster it instead, and use the $15 to ... um, buy food for my family. Then I'll find another $15 somewhere and donate it to my favorite company.
Adam--- Thanks for the link to the Joel Spolsky UI article. I got to reading some of his other essays and was blown away. This guy is amazing.
originally posted by dm8k
There's still time to nominate Dr. Menlo.com Blogs From Space! and Apathy for the most underrated weblogs of the second millennium.
The text in the Flash intro to the Rage Against The Machine site is something I've seen before (actually, quite recently) but I can't quite place it. Do you know where it's from?
"No one knows who installed the sculpture."
I got more satisfaction from this five minute clip than from that farce yesterday. I'd like to ring the necks of those food network program planners! Hopefully the new episodes will be better!
The book is called User Interface Design for Programmers, but the principles of UI design that Jeol Spolsky brilliantly illuminates apply to lots more than just software.
