randomWalks

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

On John Stuart Mill and Eccentrics, Women, Minorities, and the Concept of ‘Othering’

There is an increasing backlash against the movement to diversify American society. Some people feel that to keep us all in our own separate spaces is perfectly acceptable; as it was, it shall be. There is no need to modify a system that works for the majority, because, after all, that is the notion on which our bountiful nation was founded. There is no need for us to look outside ourselves and gain perspective from the experiences and opinions of persons different from us. “Mankind speedily become unable to conceive diversity, when they have been for some time unaccustomed to see it.” (13) If the majority (or, whoever is perceived as the majority) has already placed itself in its comfortable, conformist, white suburban environment, and it has every intention of remaining there, then what is the use of learning about conditions elsewhere? When that majority speaks, we are obligated to listen. However, the majority does not always know what is right. A majority of Americans wanted to maintain slavery, deny women the right to vote, and, yes, dismiss the charges against President Clinton, all because they did not want to face the difficult questions these issues would force them to acknowledge. We are resistant to change because we fear it. If women and minorities were to be on equal footing with white men, that would force us to realign our priorities, power structures, and value systems. We would have to completely change the way we educate and socialize our children. In order to embrace eccentricity, we would also have to accept that there is no correct definition of what “normal” is.

The Left Opposition have released Mandate?, their response to the G8 leaders' claims to represent the ordinary people of their countries, and a rebuff to the contention that they have a "mandate" to pursue neo-liberal globalisation policies.

originally posted by xowie

“Are you lactating?”

originally posted by xowie

NYTM: Barbeque sauce, racists and Piggly Wiggly.

originally posted by xowie

Thinking Differently About Africa: Why isn’t Apple a larger force in Africa’s computer industry?

I grew up in a small Massachusetts town. This town had a clear river that flowed under a paper mill. The mill used to dump dyes into the river. The river coursed by my elementary school; every day it was a different color. Some days the river would be bright green, other days it would be bright yellow, and sometimes it would be magenta. I never knew what color it would be. I liked not knowing. I would stand on the bridge and throw rocks into the water and watch the multicolored scum explode to the surface. It was horrible and it was beautiful.

I think it had to be represented to the court that they were, in fact, gypsies. The implication is that their roots to the community are tenuous. I think it has to be said, for whatever it's worth, so that the judge might understand that these ladies . . . are more than just amateurs at what they do.

AlterNet – D.C. Protests resource page.

"I used to use the cover of ‘Stagger Lee’ [by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds] as a sound check until Hal had a serious meltdown one day," says Jones. "He broke a Budweiser bottle on the bar and told me he would gut me if I ever played the song again. He had cut his finger and stuck it in his mouth. I still remember his cold blue eyes and the little speck of blood on his bottom lip and the moment toward the end of the song when Blixa of the Bad Seeds begins shrieking. It was very surreal. This song is sort of a soundtrack to Hal for me, God rest his angry soul."

originally posted by xowie

Today's Serious Writers fail even on their own postmodern terms. They urge us to move beyond our old-fashioned preoccupation with content and plot, to focus on form instead -- and then they subject us to the least-expressive form, the least-expressive sentences, in the history of the American novel. Time wasted on these books is time that could be spent reading something fun. When DeLillo describes a man's walk as a "sort of explanatory shuffle ... a comment on the literature of shuffles" (Underworld), I feel nothing; the wordplay is just too insincere, too patently meaningless. But when Vladimir Nabokov talks of midges "continuously darning the air in one spot," or the "square echo" of a car door slamming, I feel what Philip Larkin wanted readers of his poetry to feel: "Yes, I've never thought of it that way, but that's how it is."

Protrude, Flow is an interactive magnetic fluid art installation, or something. Crazy.

"Sometimes he tries to talk to me but I don't like him. I turn my head,'' Simentov said.

originally posted by xowie

Seattle Weekly’s stoner edition.

originally posted by xowie

The "war on drugs" is rooted in racial bias. It is racially unequal in its implementation. And it is racist in its disproportionate impact.

originally posted by xowie