randomWalks

Two in the Times: a South African wine called Goats do Roam and the growing presence of women among sushi chefs.

"I don't see a difference between a chimpanzee," he states unequivocally, "and my 4 1/2-year-old son." (...)

Some talking points: Chimps have complex social interactions. They use tools. Research by Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham, among others, has shown that, even in the wild, they demonstrate an idea of the future and remember the past. They can count. And they can communicate in sign language at the level of a 3- or 4-year-old child.

Apparently, when Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her loosely autobiographical series of novels, she left out two pivotal years -- years she and her family spent in Burr Oak, Iowa. The family moved there after a grasshopper invasion pushed them into poverty and out of Walnut Grove, Minn.

New York Times: Books for Summer Reading.

Movie Title Screens Page - “A unique catalog of movies on video…specifically, screen captures of movie title screens! What good is it? Whatever use you put it to.” Kind thanks to xblog.

(randomWalks now supports RSS auto-discovery.)

Back in the day, having a board with more than one phone line was huge. Two lines meant more than one person could be online at the same time. This was heavy. But it was the end of something, too: the end of that amazing solitude you felt when the busies stopped, and the carrier finally screeched through, and you knew the board was yours. And then, for as long as you were online, nothing changed unless you changed it. Everything stopped; frozen in time, waiting patiently for you to peruse it, or ignore it. Two lines, though, and it was gone. It was just one more person, but that was a lot.

Cincinnati CityBeat: Shut Up, Already, Damn!: Talking black at the movies. I didn’t really like this article. So why did you post it? ‘Cause I thought you might want to read it.

Inuit elders and hunters who depend on the land say they are disturbed by what they are seeing swept in by the changes: deformed fish, caribou with bad livers, baby seals left by their mothers to starve. Just the other year, a robin appeared where no robin had been seen before. There is no word for robin in Inuktitut, the Inuit language.

"ArtBots," held at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn on Saturday, featured 10 robot-centric projects by artists, engineers and tinkerers and attracted hundreds of spectators. The show filled a warren of rooms with the whirr and whine of tiny electric motors. On the floor of one room, three robots made of Lego bricks topped with plastic dolls' heads pulled Japanese ink brushes across a scroll of paper, producing swirls of thick black strokes. When all three had finished their maneuvers, onlookers applauded.

Recent compositions include a bubbling symphony of boiling tea kettles, the gentle hiss of blank tapes being played through a stereo and the soft bumps of helium balloons hitting the ceiling.

One recent album was so quiet, listeners wondered whether it actually contained any sound at all.

MOTHER GOOSE & GRIMM: Monday: "On his day off, the Grim Reaper loves making parking meters expire." OK, Mike Peters, here's the three ways you ruined the gag. 1.) Why "on his day off"? It's confusing and irrelevant. 2.) Saying "loves making" it happen is a bad setup. Who cares what the Grim Reaper feels here? He's the Grim Reaper. You've got to do a lot more setup if you want to make the Grim Reaper's emotional state be part of the gag. 3.) The "expire" thing is worthless, and bolding it for emphasis is extra-worthless. The real joke is not some lame pun about expiring, it's the conceptual gag about how when the Grim Reaper comes by, the parking meters' time is up.

So from the original caption, we're left with ". . . Grim Reaper . . . parking meters . . . " Both of which are in the drawing, so you don't need to mention them by name. Now get rid of the Reaper's "heh, heh, heh" thought balloon--which is really just you laughing at your own gag--and you've got just the image: Death striding past a row of parking meters, which are going "click," one by one. Now that, Mike Peters--that's a strip you could sell to the New Yorker. If you weren't such a crappy artist, we mean.

Did you know how Margaret Wise Brown died?

You know, as I said in the first newspaper report about it, if I had to choose between losing my soul or losing my show, I'm glad I chose losing my show. You know, I never sold out. When I came over to the network, everybody said you're going to lose your edge. You're going to sell out. Well, I didn't and I got fired. And that's OK.

The MC-5 is a whole thing. There is no way to get at the music without taking in the whole context of the music too- there is no separation. We say the MC-5 is the solution to the problem of separation, because they are so together. The MC-5 is totally committed to the revolution, as the revolution is totally committed to driving people out of their separate shells and into each other's arms.

I'm talking about unity, brothers and sisters, because we have to get it together. We are the solution to the problem, if we will just be that. If we can feel it, LeRoi Jones said, "feeling predicts intelligence." The MC-5 will make you feel it, or leave the room. The MC-5 will drive you crazy out of your head into your body. The MC-5 is rock and roll. Rock and roll is the music of our bodies, of our whole lives- the resensifier (sic), Rob Tyner calls it. We have to come together, people, "build to a gathering," or else. Or else you are dead, and gone.

The MC-5 bring you back to your senses from wherever you have been taken to hide. They are bad. Their whole lives are totally given to this music. They are a whole thing. they are a working model of the new paleo-cybernetic culture in action. There is no separation. They live together to work together, they eat together, fuck together, get high together, walk down the street and through the world together. There is no separation. Just as the music will bring you together like that, if you hear it. If you will live it. And we will make sure you hear it, because we know you need it as bad as we do. We have to have it.

The music is the source and the effect of our spirit flesh. The MC-5 is the source and effect of the music, just as you are. Just as I am. Just to hear the music and have it be ourselves, is what we want. What we need. We are a lonely desperate people, pulled apart by the killer forces of capitalism and competition, and we need the music to hold us together. Separation is doom. We are free men, and we demand a free music, a free high energy source that will drive us wild into the streets of America yelling and screaming and tearing down everything that would keep people slaves.

The MC-5 is that source. The MC-5 is the revolution, in all its applications. There is no separation. Everything is everything. There is no thing to fear. The music will make you strong, as it is strong, and there is now way it can be stopped now. All power to the people! The MC-5 is here now for you to hear and see and feel now! Give it up- come together- get down, brothers and sisters, it's time to testify, and what you have in your hands is a living testimonial to the absolute power and strength of these men. Go wild! The world is yours! Take it now and be one with it! Kick out the jams, motherfucker! And stay alive with the MC-5!

I think if people understood they could give six copies of Dr. Seuss and every child could have one ... that translates better than saying give us some more money.

Dear Jess, Thank you for the old lady guide to being cool in 2002. I didn't even know the Breeders were touring again. Shows how much I know. I'm glad you had fun at the show . . . Love, Joanna.

On the long fall and recent rise of the fire lookout.

No one I know in the hip-hop community is really plugged into reparations, and I know a lot of people. Something is very wrong with that. It is the responsibility of those of us who are informed to reach our young people in their language with this idea that is age-old, and has no chance of being achieved without their support.

Get educated on the India/Pakistan conflict:

• BBC Q&A: Kashmir dispute
• Washington Post: The Conflict in Kashmir
• photographs of Kashmir
• Yahoo full coverage: Kashmir Dispute

Raj, 27 and from India, was smoking a cigarette outside the school where he took computer classes last fall when a white man walked up and sucker-punched him in the face. The same stranger had earlier taunted him, shouting, "You Muslims all grow up to be terrorists." The police officer who met with Raj in the emergency room refused to write down the phrase.

Raj (not his real name) found an attorney to help him lodge a bias complaint, both about the assault and the officer's conduct. During a meeting with a New York City prosecutor, his lawyer thought to ask, just in case, "if there would be trouble" for her client. (...)

The prosecutor was honest. If the feds came snooping, he said, Raj's nationality—and a criminal record reflecting a store robbery—could land him behind bars, no matter that he was the victim in this case. The conversation with the prosecutor so shook her, a hate crimes specialist not easily spooked by the system, that she advised Raj "to go underground. We suggested that when the prosecutor's office called him, not to return the calls. We told him never to apply for citizenship, not to leave the country and expect to come back, and if he sees a cop, to go the other way."

If you're going to put buildings on that site, build one of the seven modern wonders of the world, and please give us a skyline that will once again cause our spirits to soar.

Wiley Wiggins is guestblogging over at Boing Boing.

Freddie tried to explain it: We are made from cells that can divide and multiply and add and subtract.