randomWalks

“Not directly experiencing racism is, in fact, directly experiencing racism.” Aaron, uppity-negro.com

This week, the government refused to comply with a federal judge who ordered that he be given the underlying evidence justifying Hamdi's treatment. The Justice Department has insisted that the judge must simply accept its declaration and cannot interfere with the president's absolute authority in "a time of war."

Is that one of those guitars that’s, like, a heart-shaped triple guitar?

My inner child lives in an Earthship.

I'm black and I'm going to do anything I want to do. Then it'll be black because I did it.

Get Your War On 13

What kind of title is “San Francisco’s ‘Sleeping Giant’ Awakens” for an NPR segment? How often do we see white people described with racialized, monolithic, and anthropomorphizing imagery?

“When Shiva holds the center of the stage, the role of the personalized Brahman is colored with death and destruction. Shiva’s stern asceticism casts a blight over the fields of rebirth. His presence negates and transcends the kaleidoscope of sufferings and joys. Nevertheless, he bestows wisdom and peace and is not only terrible but profoundly benign. Shiva’s nature at once transcends and includes all the polarities of the living world.” “Shiva opens his third eye only in anger, and the offender is burnt to cinders.”

“30 Years After the Murder of George Jackson: A 29-minute documentary about the origins of the modern anti-prison movement.” Who was George Jackson? I’d never heard of him until I read of him at Full Bleed. This audio documentary is the top Google result about the activist who was murdered in San Quentin prison in 1971.

Washington Post: At 70, Master Jhoon Rhee Is Still Getting in His Kicks. He taught Bruce Lee to kick, trained more than 270 members of Congress, and does at least 1,000 push-ups and a few hundred sit-ups every day.

I'm all for random searches . . . but I do think the number of Caucasian, lactating mothers who have passed through al Qaeda training camps is negligible.

The Memory Hole: “You might think that Kennedy revealing an A-bomb a few blocks from the White House would be highly newsworthy, but you’d be wrong.”

ME: You put it all into WorldCom, didn't you?

CITIGROUP: Funny how nobody ever calls it warm, soft cash.

ME: Uh-huh, uh-huh. Point taken. But just out of curiosity—you know, not that such things matter to me—exactly how much of my cash do you still have left?

CITIGROUP: Don't wait until someone says "Your money or your life" to remember that they are two different things.

ME: Oh, sweet Jesus. It's all gone, isn't it?

Doc Searls says “Bring on the WiFi Radios!” Also of interest: Radio’s titan hits the skids, in which Eric Boehlert looks at the antitrust cases facing Clear Channel Communications, a.k.a. Why Commerical Radio Sucks, Inc.

There’s a lot going on over at Blogroots – new look, new TrackBack-enabled weblog-related post aggregator (when will Blogger Pro support TrackBack?), and the highly-anticipated We Blog is due out in two days. In other news of limited interest, dive into mark has a good summary of the proposed changes in XHTML 2.0 (which look just great to this web head).

I did a triple-take when I saw this gay-themed Snapple ad at a Metro station this morning.

Corky Lee was set on his course in junior high school by a famous photograph taken at Promontory Point, Utah, in 1869. The picture commemorated the completion of the transcontinental railroad and showed workers posing with two trains, one from the Central Pacific line and one from the Union Pacific. But something was wrong with this picture. No Chinese workers.

Thousands of Chinese men worked on that railroad. In fact, Mr. Lee said, the saying "He doesn't have a Chinaman's chance" comes from the fact that when the Sierra Nevada had to be blasted for the railroad, the Chinese were usually the ones lowered from cliffs laden with dynamite and fuses. Each time they went down to set the charges, they got paid a dollar more. But when the time came to party and be photographed, the Chinese were nowhere to be found.

Since Mr. Lee first laid eyes on that photograph, he has devoted himself to making Asian-Americans visible.

And the best thing is Twinkies have so many preservatives that they never go bad. If you got trapped in the room, you could eat the Twinkies for years.

One of the benefits of 21st-century economic and cultural globalization is the overdue nod toward artists like Hélio Oiticica, who turn out to have been doing things 30 or 40 years ago that pass for new today.

"It's the search for peak experience, something that's really going to be special," says Adam Eidinger, a District political organizer. "It happened to me just last week. There was a concert at Fort Reno -- Fugazi." His cell rang. "There's this guy, Bernardo, who's one of the biggest swarmer cell-phone people I know." Came the restless call: " 'Where are you? There are all these people here!' And he wasn't just calling us. He called 25 people. Pretty soon everybody he knew was sitting on the grass, and none of them knew they were going to be there that morning."

If the death of five Americans leaves Mr. Bush “furious," you’d think the death of one would at least find him peeved. According to unconfirmed reports, however, the shooting of an American citizen – shot in the head and chest while her 9-month old son sat on her lap – in Palestine by the Israeli Defense Force registered as a slight itch on the back of the President’s right knee.

I don't think it's that women are less sexual than men. I think they could or would like porn if the situation were different. There are still fairly big taboos about women admitting to being interested in porn - even for the ones who rent pretty racy stuff from upstairs. And the movies would have to be different. There'd have to be more about why these people are having sex. A better reason than Tab A fitting into Slot B, at least.

And, from what I do know about porn, the sex would have to be different. It doesn't look like the women on porn boxes are having that much fun. They're always being bent or twisted into uncomfortable positions, or trying to avoid sperm being shot directly into their eyes. The fact that the men watching want to see as much as possible means that the women don't seem to be getting touched much. They're just getting poled by some guy who's apparently deliberately avoiding their erogenous zones. Whee. So we don't get many women downstairs. I hope the few brave feminine souls who do go down there find what they're looking for.

Oh, by the way... Management found out about this journal and the NPR piece over the weekend.

I am not fired.

Kobun Otokawa Roshi, 64, drowned Friday, July 26, in a pond near Lucerne, Switzerland, while attempting to rescue his daughter Maya, 5, who had fallen into the water. Maya also drowned. Roshi leaves his wife Katrine, their daughter Tatsuko, 7, and son Alyosha, 3. He also leaves two grown children: Yoshiko, 29, of Albuquerque, N.M., and Taido, 31, of Washington state. The loss of a great heart always leaves a void. His was a life worthy of celebration.

The New York Times' wine tasters hold forth on Wheat Beer, the Antidote to Summer Heat. (Don’t miss the tasting report.)

Rest easy, old friend, your targets are covered.