Winter OlympicsPhoto Galleries (BBC)
BBC photo gallery: Winter Olympics closing ceremony
BBC photo gallery: Winter Olympics opening ceremony
BBC photo gallery: Winter Olympics closing ceremony
BBC photo gallery: Winter Olympics opening ceremony
Blair and Bush to plot war on Iraq (Guardian Observer). Tony Blair will visit the White House in April in order to “finalise Phase Two of the war against terrorism” in which military action aimed at toppling Saddam Hussein in Iraq will be “at the top of the agenda.”
Breaking the Cycle of White Dependence: LiP gives you Tim Wise. Or is it the other way round?
We were dependent on Mexicans to teach us how to extract gold and quartz from riverbeds, both critical to the growth of the national economy in the mid to late 1800's. And had we not taken over half their nation in an unprovoked war, the emerging Pacific ports so vital to the modern U.S. economy would not have been ours, but Mexico's.
Then we depended on Latino/a labor in the mid-20th century under the bracero program, through which over five million Mexicans were brought into the country for cheap agricultural work, and then sent back across the border when they were no longer deemed useful.
And we were dependent on Asian labor to build the railroads that made transcontinental travel and commerce possible. Ninety percent of the labor used to build the Central Pacific Railroad in the 1860's were Chinese, imported for that express purpose, and exploited because the railroad bosses felt they could control them better than white workers.
In fact, all throughout U.S. labor history, whites have depended on the subordination of workers of color by the marking of black and brown peoples as the bottom rung on the ladder, a rung below which they would not be allowed to fall. By virtue of this racialized class system, whites received the "psychological wage" of whiteness, even if their real wages left them destitute. That too is dependence, and a kind that has marked even the poorest whites.
“Is Metafilter a men’s room?” asks an insightful MetaTalk post. I have not yet read the thread.
Salon.com interview: Bill Clinton and Black America
My initial thought was, It can’t sit well with African-Americans to call any white man, a black man. But you note that it was tongue-in-cheek, right?
It certainly was tongue-in-cheek on Toni Morrison’s part. Anyone who reads the totality of what she said clearly understands that she’s painting a picture. But I think that in many ways it diminished what Clinton did to suggest that he is black. Because if you’re black and you did those things, now you begin to argue, “Man, you could have done more than that [for us], brother.” But the fact that he is white and did that much is quite remarkable.
Why do you think white people might wrinkle up their noses at the idea?
Largely because they don’t understand the history of the relationship between African-Americans and the 41 white men who have encumbered the Oval Office.
Looking through this slideshow of images (some are gross in a fakey monster movie kinda way) I got really irritated by all the candlelight vigils and mourning family members. THEY WERE DEAD! Come on! Boo hoo hoo- grandma was dumped in the woods and not crammed in an urn.THUMBMONKEY
Read Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground (translated by Constance Garnett) at the UVA Library Electronic Text Center.
A Diverse – and Divided – Black Community (washingtonpost.com)
America’s black community, which now includes more West Indian and African immigrants than ever, is no longer the monolithic group that many politicians, civil rights advocates and demographers say it is.My only thought as I skimmed the beginning of this article was, “I don’t know that the black community could ever have been considered monolithic,” and I was gratified to see that George had the same reaction.
A new African American community is being forged, sociologists and anthropologists say, in which culture and nationality are becoming more important than skin color. It is as diverse – and as divided – as the Latino community or the Asian American community, each made up of migrants from numerous nations.
No gay bears will leave this store!Hallmark gets homophobic on Grandma's ass.
Enron Designed Fake Trading Floor (Click2Houston.com)
The bankrupt energy giant, Enron Corp., designed and maintained a fake trading floor at its Houston office.
According to former Enron employees, on the sixth floor of the company’s downtown headquarters was a set, designed to trick analysts into believing business was booming.
“It was an elaborate Hollywood production that we went through every year when the analysts were going to be there to be impress them to make our stock go up,” former employee Carol Elkin said.
The Myth of the “Great Red Heartland” exposed, via your favorite Ashcroft-bashing cartoonist and mine, Tom “we are the majority” Tomorrow.
From the 11217 I transmit My area is thick my vision focused My jitterbugs limp n' learn as I squirm But I'm a team player so I waits my turn And when I get the rock I'm going straight to the hole My average per game is pure black soul In the 13-X styles the ignorance Got the clearance to speak intelligence on the block
I usually set my browser to default to a blank page (by deleting the “Home Page” URL in preferences) but I think I’ll try loading Daypop Top News Stories in new windows for a while. I haven’t looked at it before, but I am coming to love Daypop like I love Google.
We are the Chinese young man standing in front of the tank. And you? If you are nowhere to be seen, you are probably inside the tank, advising the driver.Asaf Oron explains why he joined a group of Israeli soldiers refusing to serve in the occupied territories.
Cats Painted in the Progression of Psychosis of a Schizophrenic Artist
The progressive escape of reality towards delusion is expressed in the pictures below. They have been painted by Louis Wain, an European artist in the beginning of this century. Since Wain was young, he used to draw and paint cats for calendars, albums, postcards, etc. When he became 57 years old, he was affected by schizophrenia, which overtook his life as well his art. The last 15 years of his life were spent in psychiatric institutions.His cats paintings started to change and to show startling images. Quite revealing of his psychotic condition were the cat’s eyes. See how they become fixed with hostility, even in the earliest paintings, because the psychotic probably tends to think that the world is looking upon him in a menacing way. Another sign is the fragmentation of the cat’s body. They become altered in a strange way under the psychotic’s gaze, and almost always are represented as distorted and phantastic shapes.
“This cat is alerted by an intuitional feeling that something is amiss."
The okayplayers take on interracial sex scenes in movies.
If you don’t believe in his God, John Ashcroft says you’re uncivilized and ignorant.
Read Eric Glish’s (he wrote the literal book) introduction to CSS layout for Apple.com and drink from the holy grail itself – a 3 column liquid page layout with a header, (and fully and clearly explained) with CSS (no tables). But that’s just a warm-up:
To make things interesting, I took the Apple Internet Developer home page, which makes extensive use of tables, and I re-coded it using CSS for all layout. (…)
“Over 100,000,000 people live withing a single day’s drive of Potter County, Pennsylvania.” Do you?
The Tomb of Horrors weblog (it’s not scary) points out an excellent overview of online comics worth reading in the Comics Journal called “Tape This to Your Cubicle Wall”. I recognize some of my favorites from the sample panels. Even if you don’t think of yourself as a comics reader, it can’t hurt to click on the panel that most grabs your eye and read a few screens.
See also: John Ridley on comic books for NPR
I’m going to steal some (unvetted) links from wood s lot today:
Holy fucking shit, man, you'll never guess who just walked in--www.mnftiu.cc: get your page eight on.
Changes in World Economy on Raw Materials May Doom Many Towns (NYT)
Stretched across the southern tier, from Arizona and New Mexico through Texas and Georgia and into Virginia, these small rural communities form the base of the national supply chain. They produce most of the oil and much of the ore, fiber and food. In past recessions, even if they did not bounce back entirely, at least they survived. But this time around, as the overall economy begins to show some signs of healing, things are ominously different in many of these towns.
Let’s work toward leadership that reflects the cultures and communities where Hip-Hop was born. That doesn’t mean that we can’t be active and feel invested in the culture, but we must be aware of how racism plays out in the power paradigm of America, and how it is controlling Hip-Hop culture.Dig the musings of a prominent online hip hop community in response to this article on the role of white people in hip hop.
Ever since Martha Stewart wrapped our planet (and others as far as I know) in her chilly perfection many people have become so uncertain of their decor that they simply quit having people over. They sit at night, alone, fumbling paint chips like rosary beads while pining for the perfect valance for the "keeping room". This sort of miasma drives us to abandon all sense of personal style and as an extension, our very personalities. Unable to trust ourselves at flea markets or antique shops, we flock to Pottery Barn to buy artificial flea market finds.Alton Brown looks at Kitchen Performance Anxiety.
