randomWalks

Cameroonian architect Edouard Din’s KmtSpace.

originally posted by xowie

Richly textured backgrounds, constant visual surprises, a thrilling music score--this 'toon gives you your cable bill's worth... Creator Genndy Tartakovsky (Dexter's Laboratory) raids the history of illustration, art and cinema with the gusto of a kid playing in an attic. He gleefully cobbles past, present and future into a supercool fantasy of classical Japanese art, Hanna-Barbera, expressionism, anime, '60s film and '50s modernism, just for starters... Best of all, in an era of chatty, hyper 'toons, this action show knows when to stand still and shut up. Tartakovsky uses generous pauses for drama and laughs, and has no problem going 10 minutes at a stretch without dialogue...

originally posted by xowie

There have already been 78 migrant deaths this year along the U.S. - Mexico border.

originally posted by xowie

8 Goths and 22 Norwegians on exploration journey
from Vinland over the West We had camp by 2 skerries
one days journey north from this stone We were and
fished on day After we came home found 10 men red
with blood and dead Ave Maria Save from evil

originally posted by xowie

On Sunday, August 12, the front page of the Washington Post brought us yet another story about white suburban youth, who, to the amazement of their parents, friends, and the media, turn out to be stone cold criminals. This time the headlines emanate from "nice neighborhoods," in Northern Virginia: places where sinister crimes aren't supposed to happen.

But, as authorities have discovered, one of the most significant drug operations in the region's history was being run from this "nice, safe" place. And not by dark-skinned street-hustlers preying on vulnerable teens and getting them hooked; but rather, by the former soccer-playing little leaguers who this nation grooms to run major corporations, hold political office, or merely typifies as normal, all-American boys.

In the instant case, the accused, from the Prince William County hamlets of Chantilly and Centreville are youths who reporter Josh White describes as "good kids," who "went bad." When was the last time a black or Latino drug dealer or gang-banger was described this way? To those who study media, implicit in most news coverage when they do it is the suggestion that it's because they were congenital criminals; it was their IQ or pathological underclass families. They don't "go" bad, they just "are" bad.

But when stories are written about pale-faced killers or dealers, or in this case both, sympathetic adjectives fill the pages. Crime becomes human interest -- a cautionary tale. We are encouraged to identify with the instigators of the mayhem in ways we never would be were they dark or poor.

Listen to those quoted in White's story. First there is Prince William Detective Greg Pass who explains, "None of this happened in bad neighborhoods... It bothers everyone involved that in many ways these kids are mirror images of the detectives working the case, except they have chosen to go the wrong way." Sympathy, recognition, identification, and all of it, by the officer's admission, due to the fact that these kids are "mirror images" of the detectives themselves. And what does one see in the mirror after all? One's face: one's white, middle class suburban face, to be precise.

Just as the media generally "deracializes" incidents of white deviance, portraying them as the aberrant, inexplicable acts of aberrant, inexplicable individuals, (unlike the same from the dark and poor which are often portrayed as group tendencies), so too did Josh White in his piece on Wolfe, Barber and Petrole. Instead of pointing out the fallacies of white suburban denial and the blindness that besets so many of the residents in these "nice," places, White and the Post offered up a quixotic melodrama: good kids gone wrong; sympathetic, misguided youths posing as hardened criminals and coming to a tragic end.

Planet of the Dubyas and other great Tom Tomorrow toonies.

originally posted by xowie

"I'm working on lots of issues," he said.

>nudge metafilter awake

I hope to participate in the expansion of WhitePrivilege.com, which has already become a great resource on the eponymous subject, so keep your eye on it. I’ll stick a link in flux where you can be sure to find it.

Did you hear about the Trash Bloc? Some anti-authoritarians are planning a bloc for the weekend of the protests that would go around Washington neighborhoods and pick up trash. I think we can all get down with that.

• abolishthebank.org - central organizing site with maps, food, housing, contact, and issues info
• Mobilization for Global Justice - the "S30" site featuring housing, organizing, and issues info
• Wearing Masks is Not Illegal - examination of the D.C. Code by the Partnership for Civil Justice
• outreach - posters and flyers for download
• Indymedia DC
• IMC Gathering - September 6 and 7 in DC to train and coordinate
• Anarchist Briefing Center on the World Bank and IMF - c/o infoshop.org

Great Buildings Online “documents a thousand buildings and hundreds of leading architects, with 3D models, photographic images and architectural drawings, commentaries, bibliographies, web links, and more, for famous designers and structures of all kinds.”

Variety editor Peter Bart is out of work. Here’s why.

originally posted by xowie

Lesbian fans invisible to WNBA, except in Girl Bar.

originally posted by xowie

The epic at Milk Hill, and other great circles of 2001.

originally posted by xowie

washingtonpost.com: Route 1

I knew that Bob Crane of "Hogan's Heroes" was murdered in 1978, and I knew that it had later come out that he was very involved with pornography, and liked to film himself and friends. (It's likely the murder weapon was the tripod from his video camera.) But now Crane's son has set up a Web site where people can pay to see Crane's nude photos and sex videos. Dude, this is just wrong. He was your dad. Have some respect.

Swimmingholes.org details over 400 natural swimming spots in twenty states in the Eastern U.S. and a few in the West.

It's a great film but bloody, a body is shredded and suchlike, and not quite what he wanted to see, poor fellow.

Lesbian Girl Scouts. Cookies. Uniforms.

originally posted by xowie

I thought I was the quickest the quickest the quickest mind alive and the quickest with words but words cannot catch up with these changes, these changes are beyond words, beyond words, beyond words. While I repeated these words I felt the waves of pleasure like those of the most acute pleasure of lovemaking . . . I felt the impossibility to tell the secret of life because the secret of life was metamorphosis, transmutation, and it happened too quickly, too subtly.

originally posted by xowie

One acre of cannabis hemp produces as much paper as 4.1 acres of cut-down trees.

originally posted by xowie

"I thought to myself: What am I going to do that's going to make a difference?" That night, O'Keefe dreamed he was surrounded by singing birds. They were hidden by leaves, but their songs swirled through his head, a glorious dawn chorus. Then, in his dream, he awoke to eerie quiet.

originally posted by xowie

Pop-Quiz Question: If it were a military spy plane being held hostage in Genoa, instead of four young pacifists, would the US government then feel the need get involved? The question, of course, is rhetorical; we all know the answer. Home of the brave, indeed.

originally posted by xowie

The ACME Mapper puts a snappy interface onto Microsoft’s Terraserver database of satellite images of the surface of the Earth.

The purpose of the terror, economic strangulation and daily humiliation is not obscure. It was articulated in the early years of the occupation by Moshe Dayan, one of the Israeli leaders most sympathetic to the Palestinian plight, who advised his Labor Party associates to tell the Palestinians that "you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave."