randomWalks

Excerpts from the Kurt Cobain bio.

originally posted by xowie

One big story out of Durban is last week’s general strike.

originally posted by xowie

"Allo? Allo? Allo? Allo? Allo? Allo? Allo? Uvaldo? Uvaldo? Uvaldo? Uvaldo?" shouts one man. He is using a phone card but might as well be trying to shout all the way to his home country.

originally posted by xowie

scene.textfiles.com: the ascii edge

Two from Westchester Weekly: The Zen of Being Poor and an interview with John Stauber.

originally posted by xowie

The last delivery by Mr. McFeely -- Rogers's middle name is McFeely -- was a videotape of artists at work, which Mister Rogers showed as part of the day's art theme. Then McFeely shook Rogers's hand, the first handshake between the two characters in 33 years. It was the only clue that this was the end of something, Newell explained yesterday.

originally posted by xowie

The documents indicate that the Pentagon sees the film business as an important part of public relations. "Military depictions have become more of a 'commercial' for us," said one memo quoted in an investigation by David Robb in the current issue of the media magazine Brill's Content... The film companies are often shown in the documents to be more than anxious to help. "We firmly believe that with the support of the US military, Armageddon will be the biggest film of 1998, while illustrating the expertise, leadership and heroism of the US military," wrote Disney executive Philip Nemy to the Pentagon.

originally posted by xowie

Maggie Krzywicka on reading Gravity’s Rainbow: Thomas Pynchon is a deeply disturbed man. Good luck.

Did you know Apple sells at a discount for homeschools? Cool.

Consumers will be able to electronically send TV shows to others with ReplayTV boxes, sources say, though the company plans to use software that limits the number of times a program can be played or sent.

Over and over again, articles about Burning Man claim Black Rock City as the writer's "community," a "home." In fact, the writers seem almost proud of themselves for being able to survive a week in the desert. That's great. I'm glad the writers feel like a part of something. But when was the last time you read an article about so many people putting all of their creative energy into San Francisco or Oakland? Maybe we should do something for the place in which we live the other 51 weeks of the year. Maybe we should, as the old blues singers say, "Make this goddamned house a home."

originally posted by xowie

• Yahoo UN Full Coverage
• HRI's Daily Updates from Durban
• Canadian Secretariat
• Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights
• ICARE daily reports
• BBC News Africa
• WP Africa

originally posted by xowie

The World Conference Against Racism is officially underway in Durban, South Africa today. Good coverage:

• the South Africa IMC
• the Guardian weblog

I had a wonderful sneeze once, from someone sitting behind me in a concert. It was a really lovely turquoise that came across my shoulder in a triangular sheet.

Bad jobs.

originally posted by xowie

"What a fence is doing 90 percent of the time is telling someone not to go here," says Mark Davis, president of the American Fence Association. "A fence will stop a pretty honest person. But anybody with a tool or ability to get in will get in."

"It's something designed to get you angry," says Jamie Loughner, a protester from Washington who joined the Medieval Bloc in Quebec City. "People become more outraged because they are so offended by the fence. . . . It's easy to shake your focus from what you're truly protesting."

"It gives you a very clear boundary, that people have in fact breached the law," says Thomas Seamon, a law enforcement consultant. "People are going to actively either climb over it or attempt to rip it down. Then there's no question you've broken the law."

"If you can make the fence a target so police aren't the target, or private property is not the target, or individuals are not the target, then this fence would have served its purpose," says Hubert Williams, president of the Police Foundation, a District-based outfit that provides research and technical support.

Let's catalog how copyright owners have used the DMCA so far: to silence a magazine publisher (2600 case); to threaten computer science professors (Prof. Ed Felten); and to jail programmers (Dmitry). And as for the public's first sale and archiving rights, copyright owners are poised to debut a host of DRM [digital rights management] technologies that will dramatically curtail these rights... The writing's on the wall -- how much worse does it have to get before the Copyright Office recognizes that the DMCA has fundamentally, and unwisely, unbalanced the Copyright Act?

originally posted by xowie

"Why are you starting with that gay stuff?" Lewis asked Rahman. "I'm 100 percent a woman's man. If he has worries about that bring your sister, bring anyone."

originally posted by xowie

According to studies by communications professor George Gerbner, people who watch more TV are more likely to believe that their neighborhoods are unsafe, to state that fear of crime is a very serious personal problem and to go out and buy new locks, watchdogs and guns for protection.

Paul Klite, the late Director of Rocky Mountain Media Watch, pointed out that "Murder, one of the least common crimes, is the number one topic on newscasts." According to the group Children Now, while the homicide rate dropped 33% during the period between 1990 and 1998, news coverage of homicides actually increased by 473%.

Children Now recommends that parents speak with their kids about the levels of violent crime reported in the news and explain to them that crime reporting is not accurate representation of reality. Perhaps parents should speak with their adult friends, neighbors, co-workers and relatives as well.

Outrageously overpriced, esthetically questionable, and taller than most bookshelves, this will be one of the first things you throw away the next time you move.

The first municipal police forces in this country were formed to catch runaway slaves. Northern cities found them useful for breaking strikes and suppressing demonstrations. All this so-called ‘protect and serve’ stuff is just public relations. I’ve never known a cop to catch a rapist, but I’ve known several of them to beat and gas protesters or shoot folks for the crime of Driving While Black. The cops exist to make sure that those in control stay in control, and that the masses don’t get out of hand. (...)

To me Reclaim the Streets is an entirely symbolic action. Yes it’s great to have a party and to get people to think about public space belonging to the public instead of to commercial interests, but having a dance party for a few hours isn’t high on my agenda. If we’re going to try to create a temporary autonomous zone why not take a section of the city and hold it for as long as we can — days, weeks, months, even years. To do that would require getting an overwhelming majority of the people in that section to want autonomy, otherwise we’re not a people’s movement but an occupying force. Even other short-term actions like work strikes have a concrete goal worth fighting for. I’m just not sure I’m completely behind a tactic that is so costly to us in terms of police brutality with so little possible payoff. Perhaps I just don’t understand Reclaim the Streets as well as I should, but I wasn’t inspired to take a beating from the cops over the right to listen to techno outdoors for a few hours. (...)

... you know what the real fun thing is? The real shits and giggles part of all this is that there were two groups on the street that day. One group carried guns and clubs, used chemical agents on unarmed civilians, made up laws as they went along (you can’t share food in the park, for example), and used violence to advance their boss' political career and try to intimidate folks from exercising their freedoms if those freedoms conflict with commercial interests. The other group gave food out freely, tried to avoid conflict by staying on the sidewalk, and was armed only with puppets and costumes. Yet the cops are praised in the media by the politicians, while the FBI has labeled Reclaim the Streets a terrorist organization.

It's important for children to wear their backpacks correctly -- on both shoulders, not just one (those trendy one-shouldered backpacks are definitely not a good idea) -- according to The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Oh that wacky New York Times: Kevin Smith’s 1st kiss fall fashion comic. p.s. - Kevin Smith has also put out an anti-Kevin Smith website.

originally posted by xowie

London vacations are cheaper if you pretend to be homeless.

originally posted by xowie

Nice cartoon with a happy ending.

originally posted by xowie