randomWalks

DivX (not the DOA Circuit City DVD scheme) is a new codec which just might do for video what mp3 has done for audio. Check out MacDivX for more info.

American Pictures is a narrated slideshow documenting “a Danish vagabond’s personal journey through the American underclass.” Jacob Holdt tours the US in the spring and fall bringing the “mind-shattering experience” to standing room crowds at colleges and universities. I can’t wait to see it.

Sidewalks aren’t natural things. Paving over nature with concrete is the real graffiti. And since when does painting on a sidewalk ‘damage’ the sidewalk? It rubs off after a few months without a trace. Where’s the damage? City workers spray paint all over the streets and sidewalks with flourescent colors because there is a compelling reason for this. They are saying: Do Not Drill Here. There is a Gas line or a water line and if you drill here, there is a clear and present danger. That’s exactly what I’m saying. ‘If you keep building prisons and taking away money from schools and social programs, there is a clear and present danger.’

Sparky the penguin announced his candidacy for president on Monday, “because you could do a lot worse this year”.

“Sewage line feeds into Louisiana water line for 3 months”? Oh no, no no no no.

What some call cube art, I call a monumental waste of time – I feel it’s more descriptive. thanks, larkfarm.

Bjork is not an actor, which was a surprise for me because she seems so professional and really she is not. She is not acting anything in this film, she is feeling everything, which is very hard on her and very hard on everyone. It's like being with a dying person.

Baghdad is an urban version of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. The birds have gone as avenues of palms have died, and this was the land of dates. The splashes of colour, on fruit stalls, are surreal. A bunch of Dole bananas and a bag of apples from Beirut cost a teacher's salary for a month; only foreigners and the rich eat fruit. A currency that once was worth two dollars to the dinar is now worthless. The rich, the black marketeers, the regime's cronies and favourites, are not visible, except for an occasional tinted-glass late-model Mercedes navigating its way through the rustbuckets. Having been ordered to keep their heads down, they keep to their network of clubs and restaurants and well-stocked clinics, which make nonsense of the propaganda that the sanctions are hurting them, not ordinary Iraqis.

TAFKAPinkaPa.

“Breaking the Bank”, a video documentary of the a16 DC events, is now available on videotape and online.

Promising new (to me) blog: bjord.org, “which is officially known as the HQ for underground anarchist web developers building ecommerce backdoors for the revolution, running homebrew log software.”

Jason O’Grady of the PowerPage is providing live coverage of Steve Jobs' WWDC keynote.

Several years ago I was trying to educate myself about the Black Panther Party when I came across this so-called “Coloring Book” presented online as an authentic Party creation. It shocked me into thinking that the Black Panthers were too violently prejudiced to be worth my further investigation. Only today did I learn (thanks, monkeyfist) that the coloring book was a product of the FBI’s COINTELPRO – a project the US government undertook almost forty years ago is still undermining dissenting discourse and progressive political thought and action today.

Over the weekend, the Guardian Unlimited reported the almost-unbelievable story that “the US Air Force developed a top-secret plan to detonate a nuclear bomb on the moon as a display of military might at the height of the Cold War.”

Anyone who thinks Apple's revival is all about colors, curves and cutesy ads should take note -- this is real innovation. Apple didn't invent the technology -- it gets its AirPort cards straight from Lucent. But Steve Jobs et al deserve a lot of credit for seeing the potential in the technology, integrating it into their hardware and software, and bringing it to market at prices that have competitors gasping.

Check out this incredible satellite image of the smoke plume from the Los Alamos fire drifting across several states.

Ingolf is a young man with a bathroom obsession. His entire 65-square-metre apartment has been converted into a washroom. And he lives in it, dreaming of his girlfriend Eva, who is as beautiful as the shower attachment, and feels "My bathroom and I are one". He listens to Beach Boys' hits and Handel's Water Music, loves and sleeps in the bathtub. And when he dies, he wants a bathroom sink with pedestal and crossbar taps on his grave in place of a gravestone. Ingolf is the hero of our modern fairytale.

SimplyRadio.com broadcasts Simply Hip-Hop, Simply Electronic, and Simply R&B, Reggae and Soul in both Real Player and MP3 formats.

She’s the author of the best Indian vegetarian cookbook you can buy, but her passion is acting. Madhur Jaffrey talks to Teresa Wiltz of the Washington Post about racial identity, colonialism, and Cotton Mary, her latest film.

Found photos rock.

Columbia Journalism Review’s Who Owns What is a guide to the holdings of the major media companies. Blah blah blah trite transition blah blah, Working Assets (the long distance company who donates a percent of your bill to progressive organizations – or the progressive organization that offers long distance service) has launched an online radio station broadcasting progressive news, intelligent talk and alternative viewpoints.

The periodic table of comic books? Check out the rare appearance of molybdenum in issue 70 of Flash, January 1993 page 6. Chlorine is key to a plot twist in issue 188 of The Avengers Volume 1, October 1979. With references to every element and a special section devoted to metal men, this site has to be seen to be believed.

Cousin Kim, I say. Which is better? The kindly massa or the sadistic overseer? And Kim doesn't answer. Neither, I tell her. They are the same. Two parts of a whole. Today, folks won't just walk up to you and call you "nigger lips." Well, they might, but mostly it is the benign racists who are killing me softly. They don't recognize themselves in the mirror. They didn't mean anything by it. They harbor no ill will. They just don't care enough to step outside their comfort zone.

In Bob Levey’s latest column, he tries to fend off “a large, friendly, conspiratorial, Caucasian arm.” Mos Def describes the same arm on his latest album. Are you familiar with the arm?

It is early June, and Cousin Kim and I are about to watch "Roots," the landmark 1970s television miniseries about a slave family. Kim says she's heard of the movie but has never seen it. So I go to queue the video in the cassette player, but first I make a cup of tea. And straighten the pillows on my couch. Then I check my voice mail.

I am puttering. Procrastinating. Loath to begin. Because I don't know if our blood ties are strong enough to withstand slavery. And I am scared to watch "Roots" with a white girl. Scared of my anger. Scared of my pain. Scared that she won't get it. Scared of how much I want her to. Scared of the way race can make strangers out of family.