seasonal poetic disorder
bogus holidays make me tired, at blue period.
originally posted by daiichi
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November 30, 2002
don't do the rhyme if u can't do the time
Supreme Court judges take issue with rhyming colleague.
originally posted by daiichi
think before you link
On Sunday, hundreds of bloggers, diarists and other personal website publishers will link to resources about HIV and AIDS and reflect on how the disease has changed their lives as part of the Link and Think awareness campaign, an annual observance of World AIDS Day.Wired News: Linking, Thinking on World AIDS Day.
November 29, 2002
mitten, we salute thee
Suicide Girls isn't so much an offshoot of some kind of emo-porn phenomenon (as a past issue of Spin put it) but rather just a good example of the classic free-market tenet: Where there's a market, there's a way. After all, sex sells, even (especially?) if you bundle it with the DIY aesthetic, a connection to the punk and indie-rock community, and a liberal dash of personal weblogging.CP: Cynical, Bitter, Jaded As Hell. Also Naked.
originally posted by xowie
Tompkins Square
When you're gathered around the table with your relatives, some new stories are mixed in with the old familiars. This year, we found out that my grandmother went to high school with the daughter of a woman who was thrown from a burning ship as a baby. That story alone captures the imagination. How bad would that fire have been for a mother to throw her baby? Then I read some more about the burning ship.
The final toll of the General Slocum fire has never been fixed: 1,021 dead at least, perhaps 1,031, perhaps 30 more than that, and that number counts only those who were roasted or drowned in 30 awful minutes. Later, dozens of survivors committed suicide in their desolation; more yet were led vacant-eyed to mental wards. In the end, an entire neighborhood — a lively, laughing, gracious, prosperous, bustling lower East Side community called Weiss Garten — disappeared forever.
Other links:
New York History
Long Island History
A blog archive which linked to this NYTimes article.
A website for researchers and survivors descendants.
originally posted by Greer
painters and madmen
Giant guitarUnderground artists of Las Vegas.
of light-strummed
at dusk
it rests
by the intersection
Tuning not itself
like the organ keys
in a haunted house
but us
To make us see
we are the keys
and it the organist
invisible guitar player
of no spooky music.
originally posted by daiichi
different levels of ass-whupping
A television commercial for a local Toughman contest came on. They were looking for tough men and women to fight three one-minute rounds in nearby Louisiana. "I'm drunk. Sitting around in a room full of guys, who are all tough anyway, because they're all prison guards and I'm the only girl in the group. You know, I've gotta be tough, too. So the commercial comes on, and I feel it's my need to assert my feminine side here, so I say, 'Y'all aren't tough.' I said, 'You want to know tough? Women. Menstrual cramps and childbirth. We're tough. You people aren't shit,'" Mahfood recalls. "They loaded my drunk ass up in the car. Carried me down there. I registered. I woke up the next morning and said, 'Oh, my God. What did I do?'"Dallas Observer on boxer Valerie "The Wolfe" Mahfood: A Girl Named Suicide.
originally posted by daiichi
You'll never map me, Macer!
The scope of human ideas is infinite, some might say. But one researcher says he can count them, and he intends to do just that. Darryl Macer, associate professor at the Institute of Biological Sciences at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, plans to create a human mental map -- a database that would contain a log of every human idea.
For what purpose other than to feed artificial intelligence?
I believe in logging ephemera for posterity, but he might as well try chasing rainbows or catching clouds to pin them down.
originally posted by Jane Die
Don't touch me there, I mean it!
Death Touch: The Science Behind The Legend of Dim Mak, By Dr. Michael Kelly. This is the first book on dim mak written by a medical doctor. Dr. Kelly uses modern medical science to explain the true dangers and deadly effects of dim mak. In addition, he teaches how to use modern medical science to find and develop deadly dim mak techniques.
The flow of ch'i can be fatally interrupted by attacking these Dim Mak Points.
originally posted by Jane Die
November 28, 2002
mnftiu
Page Seventeen is huge.
originally posted by xowie
create something day
I've been thinking about Buy Nothing Day, and about anti-consumerism in general. And I'm considering the words of Starhawk, when she speaks of finding a more positive model for combatting globalization, beginning with what we CALL things. And I'm wondering if it might be more appropriate, rather than participating in Buy Nothing Day, to participate in Create Something Day.
So, with that in mind, I hereby proclaim Friday, November 29, 2002 to be the first annual Create Something Day. Draw a picture, write a poem, sing a song, make a sculpture out of found objects, do collage art, paint, dream, cook a meal, make a friend, write a letter, make a mix tape, start a blog...create something out of things you already have available to you.
Because, generally, when we cease to do something, we find something to take its place. If we cease to participate in consumerism, let's fill that gap with something positive. Let's fill it with something creative.
Because the opposite of consumption is production. And we can choose to produce things that are positive and healthful for others to consume.
If you wish to participate in Create Something Day, please trackback or comment here and let me know what you've created. It doesn't have to be a masterpiece. It doesn't even have to be tangible. It just has to be something that you feel has a positive impact.
(cross-posted at clothespins for the revolution, blog sisters, and Full Bleed)
November 27, 2002
setting tivo straight
Techno-profiling gone haywire, in The Wall Street Journal.Mr. Iwanyk, 32 years old, first suspected that his TiVo thought he was gay, since it inexplicably kept recording programs with gay themes. A film studio executive in Los Angeles and the self-described "straightest guy on earth," he tried to tame TiVo's gay fixation by recording war movies and other "guy stuff."
"The problem was, I overcompensated," he says. "It started giving me documentaries on Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Eichmann. It stopped thinking I was gay and decided I was a crazy guy reminiscing about the Third Reich."
while he's an undisputed musical genius . . .
"Use your mouse to catch as many babies as you can in the basket. Michael will try to distract you by dropping his latest, horrible records."
The Billie Jean MIDI is funny @ the Michael Jackson Baby Drop
originally posted by Jane Die
kenny g on the rtd
"He'll have jazz playing up his ass all day long! Man, he'll be sorry he met me, 'cause I don't let nobody run my life for me. I'm a man. Can't he see that? I'm a man. And I ain't doing nothing just 'cause some bus driver says so."Jazz up the ass, by Judith Lewis. Also, art-criminal JERK.
originally posted by xowie
November 26, 2002
sponsored by prozac
What would you do on poetry's behalf?
originally posted by xowie
being right wing
Laura and I were being sooo right wing. We sold a lot of people on our tax plans. For instance, there's the rape tax -- if you get raped, you pay a tax. This is to discourage rape. And the income tax.. up to $50,000 your income is taxed at 90%. Above $50,000, it's taxed at 2%. This is to encourage people to get rich. Of course, there are tax write-offs for Prada shoes and oil rigs. (...)
the economy sucks and i'm getting scared
A week before Thanksgiving, the organization already had reached its quota of 1,400 families -- something that generally doesn't happen until just days before Christmas. By Monday, more than 100 people were on the waiting list.Giftless in San Francisco.
"We're frightened to death," Dunmore said. "I'm having sleepless nights."
originally posted by zagg
dateline Opelousas
Sweet potatoes aren't really yams; yams, which belong to the genus Dioscorea, are grown widely in Africa, where they originated, and elsewhere in the tropics but scarcely at all in the United States. What we are dealing with here is Ipomoea batatas, which is not only not a yam but not a true potato. Believed to be a native of Central America, it is closely related to the morning glory, with the same purplish, heart-shaped leaves. Sweet potatoes, which are less dense and starchy than yams, are rich in healthful beta carotene, an important source of vitamin A.The New York Times: In the Kingdom of the Sweet Potato.
November 25, 2002
technology vs. environment
Where Computers Go To Die (via slashdot).
OK, but what you should really read is Silicon Hell, the classic environmental expose from the SFBG.
originally posted by jdavis
bounce rock skate roll
Seems that the better skater you are, the less interaction you'll have with other skaters: you'll be skating too fast for conversations; you'll intimidate beginners just by donning your custom gear - and you'll rarely fall down (providing fewer opportunities for someone who fancies you to help you back to your feet again -- one of skating's sweetest, most genuine gestures).Freaky Trigger, A Rink Like This.
November 24, 2002
def poetry jam on b'way
Lemon taught himself to read and write while incarcerated. Nine years ago, he watched poets performing at a community center. "I never knew they were poets," he says. "I thought they were rappers."CSM, Hip-hop takes center stage.
originally posted by xowie
speaking of hyper pit bulls
"We do not think justice has been done," they said in a statement. "The dog is still free and is a danger to society. Our children were lucky that they avoided grievous injuries -- other children may not be so lucky."Princess Anne Dogged by Royal Crime.
originally posted by daiichi
resistance growing rhizomatically
Happy Birthday, IndyMedia.
originally posted by daiichi
cast a spell on me
Elvis Mitchell on Velocity, starring crufty pagan Fairuza Balk.
originally posted by daiichi
crotchless panties of doom
Perhaps scantily clad multimillionaire supermodels flaunting a socially constructed notion of idealized beauty for an hour isn't the gravest threat to women's rights and mental health since the invention of the tube top and/or "Baywatch." Possible?Mark Morford on the Victoria's Secret fashion show thing.
originally posted by daiichi
waiting to die on a river of salvation
"Tell me, is there any point?" she asked. "Here, I have to work and earn my living. Death will come in its own time, and when it takes me away, I will be happy that I have been released from this world and its suffering."The shunned widows of Varanasi on the Ganges.
originally posted by daiichi
doc watson plays one, should you?
Pretty Seattle Times feature on the Tacoma Guitar company. I'm finally unloading my Martin (the one judlew's friend's dog ate); but for the offensive Indian branding, I would replace it with one of these Tacomas.
originally posted by daiichi
to witness the gospel of peace
The Name on My CrossA Poet's Notebook: At the Gates by Robin Kemp
April 23, 1990
Fort Benning, GeorgiaJuan Ramon Moreno S.J.,
I carried your cross
in the circular procession today,
shaking my rattle.I confess
I leaned on your cross a little
during the speeches,
rattling my applause.
Then looked over my shoulder.The soldiers stood
in little motionless groups
as if posing for photographs with their
personnel carriers,
in battle camouflage and riot gear.
They watched.
I couldn’t tell if they listened.I hoisted your cross
and turned your name around to face them.
Not to accuse anyone:
I wanted to feel the weight of the wood.
And I wanted them to notice
You had a name.
Not just another dark-skinned man on a cross.
- Stephen Wing
originally posted by xowie
featuring alonzo the mechanical pony
"New Years Eve, nine years ago," recounts Moss. "We had a bunch of this Jager knockoff crap called Beck Torova that nobody would buy or drink for free, not even the bums. Well, one of the bums said 'I'm not drinking that ass juice' and that's how it started."The Double Down Saloon celebrates its 10th anniversary.
originally posted by xowie
November 23, 2002
world's most destructive bank
Activists serve Citigroup with eviction papers.
originally posted by daiichi
letters to the editor
Writer Alison M. Rosen has contacted us to complain that we are not linking to enough articles by Alison M. Rosen. Such as Sucking Strap-ons by Alison M. Rosen. Or Textbook Love Affair by Alison M. Rosen. Or Dude, Where's My Double-Necked Guitar? by Alison M. Rosen.
originally posted by daiichi
with ketchup or nutrasweet and raisins
Ode to ramen.
originally posted by daiichi
he can't be all bad
Friends in recent years have thought they detected a glimmer of light amid the darkness of Fischer's tortured psyche. For one thing, he has a girlfriend—Justine, a twenty-two-year-old Chinese-Filipina living in Manila, who couldn't care less about chess and has no intention of writing a tell-all memoir.Rene Chun, Bobby Fischer's pathetic endgame.
originally posted by daiichi
my heart's telling me to kill saddam
''If you want to play the game of truth, I'll tell the truth, and the truth will burn. It's not going to burn me. It'll burn you. Why did you play the Israel card? Why did you play it, America? To try to discredit me?''NYT: Scott Ritter's Iraq Complex.
originally posted by daiichi
Flag of Iraq
Do you know what the flag of Iraq looks like?
Vonnegut on reviewer rage
"Any reviewer who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae." -- Kurt Vonnegut
November 22, 2002
the flip side of world war II
"I would say tiki, and people would say, `What's that?" said Mr. Fisherman, scratching his goatee, his eyes wide behind rectangular glasses. "Nobody had ever heard of it. I was sad."NYT, The Return of the Parasol-Topped Cocktail.
originally posted by daiichi
"this kid is whatever whatever, this ad is pretty funny"
It was about Chinatown, and the formation of Chinatowns in America. I lost like three pages of it; it was terrible. It was a really, really good paper.
i dowse for love
The order to return to life is often delivered by a religious figure like Jesus or Buddha, but a recent study done in India revealed something striking: at the end of the tunnel of light the Indians were met by a government official. "In three independent reports, the Indians said they were told to go back because there had been a bureaucratic mistake. Something along the lines of, ‘Oh, so you are Kumar from Calcutta? The person who was supposed to die was Kumar from New Delhi!’"Report of a lecture at the Parapsychology Foundation on E. 71 St.
originally posted by daiichi
Mad Monks on the Web
I'm really not terribly interested because I think that behind Man and Woman is spirit. And spirit is spirit. And that's where I live. I don't give a damn whether a person is a man or a woman. It's just not that interesting to me.Mad Monk Jim Crotty interviews Ram Dass. Also see the Monk List: D.C. (NY, LA).
November 21, 2002
i don't know the world anymore.
"Quick, what two countries have had a longstanding conflict over the region of Kashmir? Thirty-six percent of the young Americans who answered that question in National Geographic’s recent geography survey got it right. How would you do?
National Geographic commissioned the Roper survey to test the geographic knowledge of 18- to 24-year-olds in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Sweden, Great Britain, and the United States."
The last time I took geography I was in junior high, I think. So I didn't do so well. You wanna try?
originally posted by Jane Die
does the music get sad that it isn't free?
TOKYO — Sony Music Entertainment (Japan) Inc said Wednesday it will release next January music compact disks (CDs) equipped with a new technology to prevent illegal copying and protect copyrights.
From Japantoday in ENGLISH.
In a related story, Music Industry Unveils New Piracy-Proof Format: A Black, Plastic Disc With Grooves On It.
originally posted by Jane Die
feels good when your heart wakes up
The song, says Lewis, is about those periods of being in a "love drought where you feel incapable of love and you can’t get yourself to snap out of your own self-centered world."Rilo Kiley singer Jenny Lewis, by Alison M. Rosen.
"It’s just another hopeful song," she says, "Because, God, it feels good when your heart is no longer slumbering, and it wakes up, and there’s a person or song or friend that snaps you out of your own craziness."
originally posted by daiichi
death to fat cat radio
From the executive summary of a Future of Music Coalition report, much more of which is also online.The radical deregulation of the radio industry allowed by the Telecommunications Act of 1996 has not benefited the public or musicians. Instead, it has led to less competition, fewer viewpoints, and less diversity in programming. Deregulation has damaged radio as a public resource.
This research makes an overwhelming case that market consolidation intended by the act does not serve the diverse needs of Americans citizens. Substantial ethnic, regional and economic populations are not provided the service to which they are entitled. The public is not satisfied and possible economic efficiencies of industry consolidation are not being passed on to the public in the form of improved local service.
little girl games
"What about where I'm the princess and you're my zombie slave?"
originally posted by xowie
The Washington Post: Scientists Planning
The Washington Post: Scientists Planning to Make New Form of Life.
If the experiment works, the microscopic man-made cell will begin feeding and dividing to create a population of cells unlike any previously known to exist. To ensure safety, the cell will be deliberately hobbled to render it incapable of infecting people; it also will be strictly confined, and designed to die if it does manage to escape into the environment.
democratisation of anatomy
Before BODY WORLDS and public dissection is permanently banned, Prof. von Hagens has decided to resume the old tradition of public autopsy in Great Britain and to share the unique experience by opening a real human body in the presence of non-professionals. The aim of such an autopsy will remain professional, namely to establish the reason of death and to search for abnormalities. It will be performed on a consenting body donor.Last night, the first public autopsy since 1830 took place in London, and yay, we watched it on TV. Professor Gunther von Hagens, the man who invented plastination, brought us the Bodyworlds exhibition and popularised anatomy, may or may not be prosecuted for a breach of the Anatomy Act. Hagens opened up the cadaver and removed all the organs, including the brain. Reading half of these self-righteous crappy articles, you'd think that Krusty the Klown was the one opening up the skull with a hacksaw. Not so. It was beautiful.
log in, little revolutionary
Actually order and consume virtual McD's food, then use The Sims Online's "expressive gestures" in creative ways. Lie down and play dead. Emote the vomiting, sickness, or fatigue that might overcome you after eating a real life McNugget.Using Sims to bash McDonald's.
originally posted by daiichi
only i am sick enough to enjoy this story
"It's a car. It's not like I'm wearing her nightgown. It's a car. It was his car. He had been driving it. It was the only car he had."Rabbi Fred Neulander is dating Miss Vicki.
originally posted by daiichi
a groundswell of organizing
And the numbers continue to swell, as senior citizens, high school and university students, a range of religious denominations, blue-collar workers, veterans, progressive businesses, and women's, minority, and special-issue activist groups put their weight behind the cause.SFBG: Critical resistance. See also: Lisa Rein's movies (via Boing Boing).
originally posted by daiichi
lift as we climb
Younger readers, including young feminists, are not committed to getting news the old-fashioned way. The locally generated and popular "The List" (formerly "Hannah’s List"), for example, is a well-distributed weekly e-mail, an electronic bulletin board, that combines traditional what’s-going-on information with classifieds, links, and a who’s who in young feminist circles — all with clear emphasis on transgender concerns, an edgy area for some, perhaps, but completely acceptable for most twentysomethings.Boston Phoenix: Where did all the womyn go?
originally posted by daiichi
alt weekly oligopoly
This week, federal prosecutors also began interviewing former L.A. Weekly and New Times Los Angeles employees, seeking information about the two papers' competitive relationship. Among those the government lawyers either have questioned or are seeking to interview are the Weekly's former publisher Michael Sigman, ex-editor Sue Horton (who now edits The Times' Opinion section), former classified advertising director Jim Kaplan, one-time City Hall columnist Marc Haefele and former New Times columnist Jill Stewart.w00t! Justice Dept. opens alt-weekly inquiry.
originally posted by xowie
orwell is our litmus test
What's wrong with journalism today?John Pilger at The Progressive.
Many journalists now are no more than channelers and echoers of what Orwell called the official truth. They simply cipher and transmit lies. It really grieves me that so many of my fellow journalists can be so manipulated that they become really what the French describe as functionaires, functionaries, not journalists.
originally posted by daiichi
camera never lies
So you feel like your role is to gather evidence?Anti-war photographer James Nachtwey.
That's one of the things we do. We bear witness, we present evidence. It's effective not to do it in a cold clinical way, but in a human way. The images are a cold statement of fact, but they present the human tragedy. There are consequences to what we do and don't do, serious consequences for ordinary people.
originally posted by daiichi
November 20, 2002
not for the serious.
For Earl and those who share his proclivities. originally posted by Jane Die
puff puff give, man!
The Myth of Potent Pot: The drug czar's latest reefer madness
[White House Drug Czar John P. Walters] claims that marijuana is 30 times more powerful than it used to be.
Walters, whose official title is director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, inveighed against the demon weed in campaign swings through Ohio, Arizona, and Nevada (twice). At the heart of Walters' sermon: "It is not your father's marijuana." Today's users, he claims, confront pot that's up to 30 times stronger than what aging baby boomers smoked.
How did he know my dad smoked pot?
originally posted by Jane Die
texas firms line up u.s. aid in peru
Two Texas oil companies, Hunt and Halliburton, are trying to get public financing to develop what sounds like a horribly ill-conceived natural gas pipeline through a Peruvian rainforest.In the 1980s, Royal Dutch Shell prospected for oil in a 5-million-acre area of Peru's Ucayali Basin, slicing through the rain forest to conduct seismic tests. Poachers invaded, illegally harvesting trees and importing influenza, whooping cough and other maladies that killed four out of every 10 people in some indigenous tribes.
Shell geologists found no oil but discovered a "world class" natural gas field with potential reserves of 13 trillion cubic feet of gas and 600 million barrels of condensate, a fossil fuel that includes propane, butane and heavier hydrocarbons used in gasoline. Peru's government opposed Shell's plan to remove the gas.
Shell made a new effort in the 1990s, and tribal people objected, aided by environmental groups such as the tiny California-based Amazon Watch and the larger OxFam International. Shell tried to placate the opposition, paying $1 million for the region's first biodiversity review, conducted by the Smithsonian Institution's Monitoring and Assessment of Biodiversity Program. Scientists noted the jungle's "nearly pristine condition" and its wealth of unique, "unidentified species."
The scientists persuaded Shell not to build roads into the region and to adopt strict policies against contact with indigenous people.
But, in 1998, antitrust disputes with the government forced Shell to pull out of the project. Indigenous leaders were elated. Today, they feel differently.
"If we'd only known," said Lelis Rivera, director of the Center for Development of Amazon Indigenous Peoples, or CEDIA, "we would, one thousand times over, have preferred Shell."
targeting the media
With over-sized protest signs hanging from their necks or around their bodies and while shouting "Shame On The Washington Post" followed by "Tell the Truth ... Not The Lie!" and then "Spread the Truth and Not the Lies!" they marched in a circular formation on the sidewalk directly in front of the Washington Post making certain that one end of the circle was directly beneath the Washington Post logo, a symbol of corporate media, which is situated above the steps of the entrance way located at 1150 15th Street.
Activists in Washington D.C. protested the media's poor coverage of antiwar activities. Read the Black Voices for Peace statement. Meanwhile, antiwar protestors in Minnesota have targeted the Minnesota Star-Tribune and Minnesota Public Radio with similar grievances.
originally posted by zagg
What would Jesus drive?
originally posted by dm8k
murder is bigger than hip-hop
When the lyrics touched sore spots in those times, there was little concern among listeners that their favorite rappers could lose their lives. The landscape has since changed as more rappers begin to take sides in what is shaping up to be a hip-hop world war.VV: World war of words.
originally posted by daiichi
monkey-picked tieguanyin
AllAboutGeorge's Imperial tearoom with occasional randomWalkers.
originally posted by daiichi
anglonoiac, u.s.?
"Very often people do not understand the title of the country," Dr Howells told MPs of Commons culture select committee yesterday. "In America, people had heard of London, some had heard of England, no one had heard of the United Kingdom - they thought it was somewhere in the Middle East."Guardian UK, 'Americans ignorant of their UK kinsfolk"
November 19, 2002
black holes
This article about a fast-moving black hole also includes a wonderfully clear explanation of white dwarves, neutron stars and supernovas.
harvard speech code
Boston Globe: Harvard Law plan on speech causes stir. What do you think?Harvard's Black Law Students Association and some faculty have been pressing since last spring for a speech code that would punish offending students and professors. The law school community was ruptured at that time by a series of racial incidents - most notably one student's use of the word ''nig'' in an online course notebook, a professor's defense of that student, and another professor's comment that feminism, Marxism, and black studies have ''contributed nothing'' to tort law.
Yet while law school officials have taken steps to soothe campus tensions since then, their primary action - forming the Committee on Healthy Diversity, which said it plans to draft the proposed speech code - has created a new wave of concern.
the man's a genius
Michael Jackson dangles child from hotel window in Berlin.
originally posted by xowie
support your local
The Sex Worker Arts Festival is under attack!
originally posted by xowie
protecting whose rights?
Then to make it shamefully clear what side the administration is on, the police forcibly removed Jessica from the auditorium, handcuffed her, took her to the UIC police station, charged her with "disorderly conduct," and held her in lockup till 4 am. There, one of the police who had been at the lecture confirmed Jessica's claims to the officer in charge, but this was tossed aside. When they released her, instead of carrying out their duty to insure she would get home safely at 4am, they left her to the mercy of an off-duty policeman who privately offered her a ride home and then tried to arrange for sex.
University of Illinois-Chicago accused of inhibiting free speech.
originally posted by zagg
Paul Muldoon Doesn't Mind Being Called a Difficult Poet
Nine is the ideal age to write a poem. You don't know what you're doing.The New York Times profiles Paul Muldoon. Some poems are over at Ploughshares.
another reason to move to takoma park
Co-op owners in Takoma Park, Md., have built an urban grain silo to store fodder for their corn-burning stoves.Collectively, the pioneers expect to keep more than 100,000 pounds of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere over the next year by switching from natural gas and electric heat.
"This is not just a wacky thing," Tidwell said. Every jurisdiction, big or small, urban or suburban, "should start thinking about a place [it] could put a corn silo."
Blackface and fraternities
The November 2001 incident at Auburn University, chronicled at tolerance.org, was the most high-profile incident of blackface at a frat party. But it was far from an isolated incident. In 2001 it also occurred at the University of Mississippi, though that frat was reinstated this week, as well as at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and the University of Louisville. And this year incidents have already been reported at Oklahoma State University, the University of Tennessee, the University of Virginia, and Swarthmore.
originally posted by zagg
interviewing is fun
With KidsPost teaching me how to be a reporter, who needs j-school?Lots of the people Strauss called didn't want to talk to her. Getting people to talk who don't want to is hard, but stories are more reliable and more interesting when they include the viewpoints of the people who are at the center of the story.
"It's never easy asking people questions about difficult times in their lives, but reporters have no choice," Strauss said. "I start out by sounding as professional and nice as possible. We usually have to call people more than once, so it is easier if you haven't been rude.
furthur
Egon is driving us out to see the collection. His ponytail is fluttering in the breeze. "A kind of weightlessness." That's how Kafka describes the experience of riding in a bus. "Like a voyage, where all your senses are more alert. Elevated. Because you sit up high." Participant and observer. "And everything is . . . more."I wish riding the Metrobus every morning made me feel like that. Meet bus collector Egon Kafka.
what's wrong with a little oprah-bashing
Status and anxiety figure prominently in his recent essay in the New Yorker on novelist William Gaddis ("Carpenter's Gothic," "JR"). In it, Franzen divides novelists into two camps: "Status" authors see difficulty as a signal of excellence that "the author has disdained cheap compromise and stayed true to an artistic vision." "Contract" writers want to entertain and connect with readers. This, Franzen says, is what he is. He then confesses, "I have started (in many cases, more than once) 'Moby-Dick,' 'The Man Without Qualities,' 'Mason & Dixon,' 'Don Quixote,' 'Remembrance of Things Past,' 'Doctor Faustus,' 'Naked Lunch,' 'The Golden Bowl' and 'The Golden Notebook' without coming anywhere near finishing them." Difficult books, he says, are no longer what he aspires to write.The overwhelming anxieties of Jonathan Franzen.
technophilia
Mark diagnosed himself with a minor case of "objectum-sexuality," a fetishistic attraction to inanimate objects, in this case, his Mac. "You may find the line between your attraction to your lover's face and your computer monitor starting to blur," he wrote.
Does hardware turn you on, baby?
I don't have a Mac. But I do have a wicked fetish for _______.
< mmm, "one fat and happy backbone" - oh yes! >
originally posted by Jane Die
my new linking technique is oh nevermind
In America, you don't have to be a celebrity like Oprah or Rosie or Martha to put out a magazine devoted to your own personal obsessions. Some energetic souls put out several zines. For instance, David Rees of Brooklyn, who chronicled his kung fu training in a zine called My New Fighting Technique Is Unstoppable, later went on to chronicle his job as a filing clerk in a zine called My New Filing Technique Is Unstoppable.10 years later, the Post notices the no budget self publishing phenomenon.
common errs
If you think its cliché to point out grammatical errors, you've got another thing coming.
originally posted by zagg
i want to be free like an eagle in the air
Their instincts as con artists, De Francesco reasoned, may have constituted the strongest inherent qualifications of his actors. One of them, Larry Miller, was asked in a television interview if he had any acting experience. "Other than acting like a damn fool? No," he said.SF Gate: San Quentin inmates taste freedom performing a play about slavery and liberation.
originally posted by xowie
swallow your pride, open your eyes
As long as you're not thinking of Tears for Fears' "Sowing the Seeds of Love" -- and now that you've just read it, I know for certain that you are not -- Tom Coates (via wood s lot) will.
consider me agog
''I'm not sure it will encourage people to read poetry ... But it does show poetry is moving to a more robust condition in America. It's returning a bit closer to the center of cultural life than it was 15 or 20 years ago.''Ruth Lilly gives $100 million to Poetry magazine.
originally posted by daiichi
bringing the random to this walk
occupy thyself
if your dreams are restless with
unfamiliar songs
love:"use power of now"
uncertainty in this box
is it just a meme?
Enjoy the Leonids and the Full Moon madness.
originally posted by Jane Die
November 18, 2002
This ridiculous display of self-righteousness
So you know that site Black People Love Us? The New York Times: Black-White Harmony: Are You Kidding Me?
"I think the anonymity of the Internet allows people to discuss issues without self-censoring and that's politically useful in discussions of race," said Omar Wasow, the executive director of BlackPlanet.com, the most heavily trafficked African-American Web destination, according to Nielsen NetRatings.(More good quotes at ALLABOUTGEORGE.com.)Mr. Wasow stopped short of calling the Perettis' project social activism. "This is more to me like a prank," he said. "A clever, socially engaged prank, but a prank nonetheless."
examination of what
http://www.bloggyopinions.com/Archives/boa_11_2002.html#84730645
If odd bits of news information is what you seek — you’ll be easily delighted in this site, but unfortunately there are many sites out there quoting random bits of news, and in no way does Random Walks come out on top.
NY Rising
forgot to link the NY Rising webpage
originally posted by hcog
beauty queens not pandilleras
Cristabel, 17, pulls up her top to show the numbers 'one' and 'eight' tattooed on her midriff, signifying her allegiance to the Calle Dieciocho, the 18th Street gang, named after a Los Angeles street. To enter the gang, she had to be ritually beaten by three of her 'homies' while the gang counted slowly to 18. On her back is a tattooed crucifix and RIP, in memory of her 'homegirl' who was killed by the rival Mara Salvatrucha gang last year. Cristabel's 17-year-old boyfriend, Nelson, has diecocho inscribed on his forehead, making him a walking target. It is ugly, but what is pathetically tragic is that it is spelt incorrectly - the tattooist has left the second 'i' out of dieciocho.LA style cholos in San Salvador (via RWWL).
originally posted by daiichi
this teapot is not conscious
At the heart of the Crick-Koch hypothesis is a simple idea with vast implications. It is that consciousness, rather than representing some spiritual or God-given quality, is a biological process like digestion or circulation, generated by the activity of neurons in the brain. As he wrote in his 1994 book, "The Astonishing Hypothesis": "You, your joys and your sorrows--your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules."LAT: Francis Crick tackles