randomWalks

Sorry Palestine was a dud. (What happened?) Let’s pick a lazy book for the summer, like Design for Community or I’m Just Here for the Food.

Tomorrow’s New York Times has a special section on children’s books.

Here is an exhausting bunch of links “on the idea of automatically creating back links based on referrers” which seem to have all been prompted by Jon Udell’s Blogspace Under the Microscope, although it seems to me that yaywastaken was the first to spark interest in this among webloggers by providing an easy-to-implement javascript referrer service. Most people would use this sentence to say something about the “semantic web”, but I must simply point you to write the web [dormant?] and a google search on the subject.

How to glue this to that.

I have stared at the sun, and for the sake of my sanity, will never again look directly at the consciousness of the online ueber-geek collective. [Rob Flickenger on EtherPEG at the Emerging Technology conference]

Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah has said he had to spend hours briefing US President George W Bush on Middle East issues at their last meeting.

"He listens and debates politely, but was not fully informed about the real conditions in the region, especially the conditions suffered by the Palestinian people."

Wal-Mart does not want the U.S. buying public to know that its famous low prices are the product of human misery, so while it loudly proclaims that its global suppliers must comply with a corporate "code of conduct" to treat workers decently, it strictly prohibits the disclosure of any factory names and addresses, hoping to keep independent sources from witnessing the "code" in operation. (...)

"There will always be people who break the law," says CEO Lee Scott. "It is an issue of human greed among a few people." Those "few people" include him, other top managers, and the Walton billionaires. Each of them not only knows about their company's exploitation, but willingly prospers from a corporate culture that demands it. (...)

Wal-Mart operates as a massive wealth extractor. Instead of profits staying in town to be reinvested locally, the money is hauled off to Bentonville, either to be used as capital for conquering yet another town or simply to be stashed in the family vaults (the Waltons, by the way, just bought the biggest bank in Arkansas).

Why should we accept this? Is it our country, our communities, our economic destinies--or theirs? Wal-Mart's radical remaking of our labor standards and our local economies is occurring mostly without our knowledge or consent. Poof--there goes another local business. Poof--there goes our middle-class wages. Poof--there goes another factory to China. No one voted for this ... but there it is. While corporate ideologues might huffily assert that customers vote with their dollars, it's an election without a campaign, conveniently ignoring that the public's "vote" might change if we knew the real cost of Wal-Mart's "cheap" goods--and if we actually had a chance to vote.

Why the Elvises, why the Spocks, why the guys who paint their bellies at football games? Why the Harleys buzzing toward Sturgis, why the Civil War reenactors?

In the case of "Star Wars," the why starts when you're about 8 years old, and you are sitting in one of those long-ago demolished twin cinemas that used to be in old shopping malls, and it is 1977, and your head has just been blown off. (...)

In one darkened convention room, a endless video loop shows old Kenner "Star Wars" toy commercials, which seem grainy and ancient -- little boys with John Denver haircuts, wearing turtlenecks and corduroys, dash across the back yards of some other era and play joyously with action figures and spaceships. There is something wistful in it, watching these commercials with a roomful of men who were those boys, and realizing that "Star Wars," like any drug, eventually leaves you bottomed out.

On a daily basis as a straight person…

• If I pick up a magazine, watch TV, or play music, I can be certain my sexual orientation will be represented.
• When I talk about my heterosexuality (such as in a joke or talking about my relationships), I will not be accused of pushing my sexual orientation onto others.
• I did not grow up with games that attack my sexual orientation (IE fag tag or smear the queer).
• I am not accused of being abused, warped or psychologically confused because of my sexual orientation.
• People don't ask why I made my choice of sexual orientation.
• People don't ask why I made my choice to be public about my sexual orientation.
• I do not have to fear revealing my sexual orientation to friends or family. It's assumed.
• I don't have to defend my heterosexuality.
• I can easily find a religious community that will not exclude me for being heterosexual.
• I am not identified by my sexual orientation.
• I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help my sexual orientation will not work against me.
• I can choose to not think politically about my sexual orientation.
• I can go for months without being called straight.
• In everyday conversation, the language my friends and I use generally assumes my sexual orientation. For example, sex inappropriately referring to only heterosexual sex or family meaning heterosexual relationships with kids.
• People do not assume I am experienced in sex (or that I even have it!) merely because of my sexual orientation.
• I can kiss a person of the opposite gender on the heart or in the cafeteria without being watched and stared at.
• People can use terms that describe my sexual orientation and mean positive things (IE "straight as an arrow", "standing up straight" or "straightened out") instead of demeaning terms (IE "ewww, that's gay" or being "queer").
• I am not asked to think about why I am straight.
• I can be open about my sexual orientation without worrying about my job.

"This is not weather that we see very frequently," said Jim Travers, meteorologist in charge of the Weather Service's Baltimore-Washington office in Sterling. "Although this spring's been pretty different."

The farmer's abiding friend for thousands of years, the honeybee in America stands on the edge of the abyss. In recent years, two tiny spider-like parasites have been weakening and killing bee populations across the United States. While the mass media have played up the threat of Africanized "killer" bees in the Southwest, the rest of the country has been losing 80 percent or more of its wild honeybee populations.

Man, I love me some canned fruit. I usually rock the fruit cocktail in its many varieties and syrup densities. Like the Del Monte "Fruit Naturals Chunky Mixed Fruits in Fruit Juices," for example. That's some good fruit.

Mamatron.org was created in response to an amazing community message board coming to its end. The closing of the HipMama (HM) community boards left innumerable mamas (including this one) feeling like they'd lost their homes, support systems, and friends. Mamatron.org was created to fill the void. In many ways, HM was used as a model.

According to their mission statement, HM was a place for "mamas of color, bi/lesbian/poly mamas, very young mamas, mamas on public assistance, sex worker mamas, single mamas, artist mamas, socialist mamas, green mamas, anarchist mamas, and pro-choice mamas." Mamatron.org will strive to be the same sort of place.

The hardest hurdle for me is that I just remember being in a really close relationship with a black man and being able to come home at the end of the day and say to him, `It's hard being me. It's hard being a black woman in a predominantly white field.' I needed to be able to say that to Jason or else I couldn't live with him. . . . He can take it. He knows how to give me space to talk about a situation with white people without having to defend himself.

“The Weblog Bookwatch searches weblogs that pass through the Recently Changed list at weblogs.com looking for links to books at Amazon.com. The books [listed] were the most frequently mentioned.”

Best of the [Happy|Pioneer] Valley, 2002

They live a Spartan existence. Sometimes they spend eight to nine hours a day cooking for the masses. These devotees did not spend hour after hour doing this so the landlord could rent their space to a chic restaurant for five times what they were paying.

Robert Christgau on international hip-hop.

O’Reilly is publishing a book on weblogging, due out in September.

It's a curious phenomenon -- all over the sunny Southwest, Latino teens enthralled with the mope-rock saint of Manchester -- but it's no weirder than middle-class white boys thumping along to "Fuck Tha Police." Alienation knows no borders. And it's thrilling to see it, a subculture free of all the strained nostalgia and wink-wink irony that accompany most retro trends. These kids aren't in it for the camp. They love the Smiths.

It's easy for social justice activists to tell themselves that since Jews already have such powerful defenders in Washington and Jerusalem, anti-Semitism is one battle they don't need to fight. This is a deadly error. It is precisely because anti-Semitism is used by the likes of Mr. Sharon that the fight against it must be reclaimed.

When anti-Semitism is no longer treated as Jewish business, to be taken care of by Israel and the Zionist lobby, Mr. Sharon is robbed of his most effective weapon in the indefensible and increasingly brutal occupation.

“The American Arab Anti Discrimination Committee urges all its members and supporters to contact Dick Armey and demand that he not only retract but also apologize for his endorsement of ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.”

How about the Washington Warriors?

“ClipIt! follows in the footsteps of programs like Deskswap, an application that allows you to share screenshots of desktops with other people, but is more interested in sharing the low-bandwidth information of everyday interaction. When multiple users are connected, their clipboards are uploaded and shared with each other, thus providing an ambient link and direct window into someone else’s activities. The project allows people to be aware of each other’s computer usage and to ‘get a feel’ for what they are working on or thinking about in real-time.” I am obsessed with the clipboard. I’m running ClipIt!, but I may be the only one – the only stuff I’ve seen so far is my own. Quick, paste the contents of your clibpoard into a comment!