randomWalks

The new Google Catalog Search is dope.

In my late teens, I saw "Wild Style." I went to a music store and told the man there I wanted two turntables. And he laughed at me, said "You don't need two, you just need one!"

infoshop.org interviews Katie Sierra via David Grenier.

blogdex social network explorer: randomwalks.com

From Follow Me Here:

Michael Moore’s publisher tells him his forthcoming book Stupid White Men and Other Excuses for the State of the Nation will not be distributed, and the print run will be destroyed, because the content is offensive and he is intellectually dishonest for not saying that the President has done a “good job” in recent months.

Library Juice 4:44

“There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty and vice versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you."

Doris Lessing

Hello, Switzerland.

originally posted by xowie

What do you get when you mix the best book ever written with the most prolific games designer of the last fifteen years? Lord of the Rings by Reiner Knizia. (...)

I can see the game becoming as popular as Settlers of Catan.

In wartime, people want a cocksure leader, the kind of guy who enjoys sparring with reporters, grins when things appear to go badly and shows occasional glimpses of our national craziness — you never know, he really might just decide to flatten Baghdad. Like Osama bin Laden, Rummy clearly digs the war, and while most of the Bush team walks around wearing permanent expressions of hemorrhoidal despair, he looks like he’s having fun.

originally posted by xowie

Adbusters: America vs. The World

Assignment: List direct American military intervention on other nations' soil from World War II to the present day. Do not include: indirect military involvement such as arms sales, however significant (e.g. Israel); nuclear threats or nuclear testing (e.g. Marshall Islands); establishment of controversial bases or defense systems (e.g. Western Europe, Saudi Arabia); humanitarian missions that did not involve combat; or the geopolitical impacts of military treaty development, acceptance or rejection. Discuss.

Hello, mycroft.pica.army.mil!

Seattle Metaphysical Library

TidBITS Mac newsletter on Digital Photo Goodies.

Infographic: clearing out the caves (CNN).

White-Out: The Outing of Whiteness - The experimental movie is an intriguing mix of extensive one-on-one interviews with whites and Blacks from Africa and the U.S., compelling scenery, and an innovative and unflinching historical perspective. Ms. Bradford has produced an incisive examination of how whites automatically assume their race and culture to be “normal”, all others “abnormal” to varying degrees, and how the absence of whites' examination of their own identity helps keep racism locked into place. She says, “Stepping out of our conditioning as whites and taking an honest look at our whiteness is one of the most important things we can do to end racism."

Although that description suggests that this movie uses Black people to represent all “Others” – excluding Asians, Latinos, and native peoples, as is too often the case when race is discussed – it still sounds like it could be useful for introducing a white audience to their own racism. I’d love to see it.

From “An Exchange on White Guilt” (part of Gregory Jay’s Whiteness Studies site):

Antiracism is not about guilt or blame. You don’t have to be guilty or blameful to receive privileged treatment at the bank, at the store, in the courts, in legislative policy, etc. just because you are “white.” This is not about individuals; this is about structures of privilege.

For two centuries laws and customs in the United States gave “white” people (a word that appeared in countless legal decisions and legislative acts) an unfair advantage over others. “Hard working immigrants” of European descent faced a hard lot, but their relative lot was made easier by the fact that they did not have to compete on a level playing field with nonwhites. The job market and access to education were thus skewed in their favor, just as men did not have to face much competition since women were denied the right to compete for most jobs or for admission to the best schools and colleges.

Again, these are structures of privilege, and they benefit people no matter whether those individuals want this to be the case or not. It doesn’t matter how fair and antiracist you may be, you are not the one they follow in the department store, but you are the one that gets her loan approved at the bank. It’s this structure and legacy of white privilege that’s appalling.

I welcome any conscious effort by European Americans to celebrate their heritage as long as this includes loudly denouncing white supremacy and the myth of the existence of “white” people.

In sum, with this decision, she broke the commercial press's legal monopoly on First Amendment protection, and extended that protection to an online periodical. This is a huge precedent. It applies to Indymedia. It applies to the website of Washington-based independent journalist Jeremy Bigwood, he wrote to me yesterday, because he's been reporting on Bolivia and the Andean drug war, too. It applies to any independent online journalist or website who makes a fair and responsible attempt to publish the facts and opinions on important public issues.

originally posted by xowie

Google has brought a huge usenet archive online, dating back to 1981 – check out the original rec.mag, alt.zines, and alt.etext Kyosaku announcement from November seven, 1994! (Kyosaku?)

Links to free culture (Marcel Mauss, the Free Store, the Situationists, the Internet gift economy, GNU, net.art, mail art, free music, free publishing, etc.) courtesy the Free Words project, via jessamyn.

The Utterly Surreal Test - Result

I am a Collection of Elvis Impersonators. I refine elastic nightmares with habitable abstract umbrellas. My perspective oranges enter forgotten densities of responsible soap. Evil lids of atomic paper eat my incomplete golf balls. Who spices folded robots? The Utterly Surreal Test

Although the world’s best Chinese food is served in Monterey Park, I am not brave enough to eat here. (Vegans read at own risk.)

originally posted by xowie

The most unusual (and visible) aspect of betel chewing is its effect on the salivary glands. You don't just salivate, you pour; and the saliva emerges from your mouth tinted a deep brick red. (...)

Perverse as it may sound, betel-drooling is quite pleasurable indeed. There is an almost orgasmic satisfaction to be found in the experience of saliva-ducts open to full throttle. Delicious above all is the aftermath: when the chew is finished, your mouth is left astonishingly fresh and sweet. You feel uniquely cleansed, drained, and purified.

On the one hand, I would have liked to have gone to DC’s “2nd annual” Zine Fair,“a celebration of diy publishing and radical thought” – which sounds a lot like the old indy rock yard sale, this time with an anarchist bent. I suppose it was a nice way for the city to celebrate my son’s first birthday, in any case.

In this fight for our cherished freedoms, those cherished freedoms should definitely be the first thing to go. Sieg heil, y'all.

Don't count me among those who quake that Mr. Ashcroft is shredding the Constitution. He does respect some rights, after all, like that of illegal immigrants and terrorists to buy guns in the U.S. without fear of government intrusion. And he just doesn't seem clever enough to undo the Bill of Rights, even with the president's backing. You have to have more command of the law than he does to subvert it.

originally posted by xowie

When they moved from a 65% cool computer ad format to an 89% luxury crap ad format, I let my subscription lapse. This means I have to wait a few extra weeks to read things like Wired’s October The Fellowship of the Ring cover story online.