randomWalks

If it's a little like eating an omelet through a really big straw, well, that's part of the beauty of it.

Missed us. Better luck next time.

In its original literal sense, "moral relativism" is simply moral complexity. That is, anyone who agrees that stealing a loaf of bread to feed one's children is not the moral equivalent of, say, shoplifting a dress for the fun of it, is a relativist of sorts. But in recent years, conservatives bent on reinstating an essentially religious vocabulary of absolute good and evil as the only legitimate framework for discussing social values have redefined "relative" as "arbitrary." That conflation has been reinforced by social theorists and advocates of identity politics who argue that there is no universal morality, only the value systems of particular cultures and power structures.

In this country whites once set themselves apart from blacks and claimed privileges for themselves while denying them to others. Now, on the basis of race, blacks are claiming special status and reserving for themselves privileges they deny to others. Isn't one as bad as the other?

The answer is no. One can see why by imagining that it is not 1993 but 1955, and that we are in a town in the South with two more or less distinct communities, one white and one black. No doubt each community would have a ready store of dismissive epithets, ridiculing stories, self-serving folk myths, and expressions of plain hatred, all directed at the other community, and all based in racial hostility. Yet to regard their respective racisms--if that is the word--as equivalent would be bizarre, for the hostility of one group stems not from any wrong done to it but from its wish to protect its ability to deprive citizens of their voting rights, to limit access to educational institutions, to prevent entry into the economy except at the lowest and most menial levels, and to force members of the stigmatized group to ride in the back of the bus. The hostility of the other group is the result of these actions, and whereas hostility and racial anger are unhappy facts wherever they are found, a distinction must surely be made between the ideological hostility of the oppressors and the experience-based hostility of those who have been oppressed.

“Maybe we can talk about Revelations 3:17.” – Jill Scott, “Long Walk”

Alternet is carrying an interesting follow-up to Tim Wise’s School Shootings and White Denial essay, and of course it will precipitate a storm of denial over on MetaFilter, though I hope we can take the discussion in a different direction this time. Unfortunately there are more than a few people over there devoted to promoting color-blindness as the solution to racism out of one side of their mouth, and reminding me that I’m white (and therefore have no right to take certain positions on racism) out of the other.

Sweet Jesus, I’m staring at boxes…

BBC Q&A: Why do interest rates matter? This is like remedial Economics for dummies in lay terms, and I’m still not sure what’s going on.

Now that you’re back, let’s keep talking. Do you think the boxes make randomWalks too discontinuous?

I was about to steal another link from Follow Me Here, but then I saw another, and another… just go, now!

You have to remember that this was right after Vanilla Ice hit it big and then crashed. They lost interest when they found out I was white. But the thing about that experience that was most reassuring was that some producers told me, by listening to my demo tapes, that they thought I was black.

We attacked the Chinese Embassy and deliberately bombed civilian journalists at a TV station and how did pop music respond? With Livin' La Vida Loca.

“If distributing code is illegal, and these numbers contain the code, does that make these numbers illegal?”

In the summer of 1949, as the story goes, inveterate gambler Nicholas "Nick the Greek" Dandolos approached Benny Binion with an unusual request-to challenge the best in a high-stakes poker marathon. Binion agreed to set up a match between Dandolos and the legendary Johnny Moss, with the stipulation that the game be played in public view.

During the course of the marathon, which lasted five months with breaks only for sleep, the two men played every form of poker imaginable. Moss ultimately won "the biggest game in town" and an estimated $2 million. When the Greek lost his last pot, he arose from his chair, bowed slightly, and uttered the now-famous words, "Mr. Moss, I have to let you go." Dandolos then went upstairs to bed.

The bread I could eat three times a day, with or without different combinations of pulses, vegetables and spices, is n'jera, the flat bread made by Ethiopians from a grain called tef. The method is simplicity itself: you simply add a starter of batter that has stood since the last cooking and fermented naturally to more tef flour and water to make a new batter and let it stand until the bubbles begin to rise. It is then cooked on a flat surface no hotter than is necessary to dry it without colouring it.

Lingua Franca explores how the student-led anti-sweatshop movement is drawing economists on both sides of the issue into a public dialogue.

The Eden Project? This must be what they were talking about on All Things Considered the other day.

Most commentators characterize this mushroom ominously as "toxic" or "poisonous". Somewhat more lightheartedly, Aurora relates the apocryphal tale of the elderly woman who accidentally consumed G. spectabilis. She laughed and cried uncontrollably. When the authorities came to carry her away to the hospital, she remarked, "If this is the way you die from mushroom poisoning, I'm all for it!"

Tampa Tribune: Packing Pavement - “As the photographs on this page illustrate, what we call urban congestion is not too many people, but too many vehicles in too small an area.”

"Listen," she said, impatient with my questions. "There isn't really any training. Be aggressive. As long as they hear confidence in your voice, you're OK. Mostly they're calling because they're depressed and need a friend."

Eric Meyer, author of O’Reilly’s Cascading Stylesheets, is also known as the CSS Anarchist. Turn your new browser into a precision weapon with user stylesheets.

CSS layout techniques in effect. Standing on the shoulders of giants, randomWalks has done the dirty deed, divorced style from content (really just a trial separation), and is eagerly awaiting your honest opinion of the result. Bug reports welcome, pls include details. (If you’re using IE5+, NS6, or Mozilla and the site doesn’t look pretty much like this screenshot, then something’s wrong.) This site is not flattered by Netscape 4.x; for information about upgrading to a better browser, visit the Web Standards Project.

'American Desi' is a fun-loving romantic comedy reminiscent of the great teen films of the eighties like "16 Candles" and "Pretty in Pink," mixed with the fresh hip-hop style of "House Party" with a uniquely Indian flavor.?? From Kris, an All-American boy from India, to Ajay, an Afro-Centric Hindu homeboy, to Farah, a devoutly religious but modern Muslim girl, 'American Desi' tells the story of a unique set of characters and their culture from a decidedly hip and youthful point of view. Like the masala films of India, 'American Desi' is so full of music and dancing that it might very well do to Bhangra and Garba what "Saturday Night Fever" did to Disco!

We're in more danger from all the Chinese jumping in the air at the same time than we are from their supposedly huge increase in defense spending.

"What am I doing wrong?"