randomWalks

“What’s related?” asks Netscape.
“Similar pages,” says Google.

[Ahem] As society is little more than a consensus about the relative importance of common myths, the absence of new stories makes for a monotonous and confining culture. So those people who have the hardest time writing -- because their experiences are undervalued and their self-confidence often low -- consequently have the most new material to add to the Tapestry O' Tales. Writing a book is a political act, and because it's entertainment, it's a subversive one. If it's successful, the potential to cause individual change is several magnitudes higher than selling Socialist Worker on the streetcorner. Ed Abbey's The Monkeywrench Gang spawned Earth First!, so don't underestimate the power of a good story to imagine itself into reality.

A modest proposal in the Washington Post: We Need Less Labor, More Days. A slightly less modest proposal: FUCK WORK. And if you’ve never read it, today’s the day to read The Abolition of Work by Bob Black.

Tyler Cowen’s Ethnic Dining Guide – long list of ethnic restaurants in the Northern Virginia area. Cowen’s got a great thing going, but he would do better to keep his ethnocentric attitude out of his reviews.

Blog of Holding is a Dungeons and Dragons weblog by the author of Considered Harmful.

Stuff to listen to –

• John Lithgow's The Remarkable Farkle McBride -- eccentric actor is also an eccentric children's author
• NPR's Robert Siegel and ABC News reporter Robert Krulwich discuss hip hop, mistaking their racism for age and musical taste. -- listen to Siegel and Krulwich chortle and guffaw about their ignorance of black culture.
• You're Not Alone: a CD of "household sounds intended to evoke the presence of a non-existent partner"
• Thesis: Coeur d'Alene, Idaho's proximity to several white supremacist communities has spawned a culture of aggressive tolerance. -- But is there such a thing as too much tolerance?
• The Street Performer Protocol, or Busking in the Digital Economy -- considers the economic experiments of Stephen King and Brit prog rock band Marillion.
• NPR 100: Doors' Light My Fire a tribute to John Coltrane
• Home Birth -- Ina May Gaskin, President of the Midwives Alliance of North America and Dr. Yvonne Thornton, Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of N.J. debate the safety of home childbirth.

Recent Robot Wisdom highlights: a possible cause of Gulf War Syndrome, and the food of the future.

We ought to be able to learn a lot about the globalization of power by keeping an eye on the upcoming s11 protests in Melbourne, Australia. Sites to watch for early updates include indymedia melbourne and Green Left Weekly’s s11 site.

Time spent with my wife is time well spent. My wife lives in an invisible city, sleeps on Einstein’s pillow. I met my wife while reading subterranean notes. My wife wraps me in language I listen for in dreams. I love my wife most when she makes me laugh.

Sears presents… the school uniform superstore.

Tip for Mac-based mp3ers: SoundJam is nice for listening to streaming audio (i.e. f188 or squidradio), but SoundApp is extremely stable for those .mp3s on your hard disk (doesn’t even skip) – not to mention that it’s free as in beer.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. – Albert Einstein

Our approach is both pro-peace and anti-drug – William Jefferson Clinton

WAR IS PEACE – George Orwell

In the US, for over 20 years, to be against drugs is to be for the War on Drugs … That so many in the US do not immediately object to this flagrant display of Newspeak is a disgrace. – Bijan Parsia

Why am I composing this post on my Palm using the AvantGo Client for Blogger? Because I can, silly. Hmm, a few bugs (and typos) but this is dangerous – it could drive me to finally buy a portable keyboard and wireless connection.

The web could use more weblogs like Subterranean Notes, which seeks out great art on the web so I don’t have to.

''Along with television, entire areas of the reality we inhabit disappeared,'' wrote Avtandil Tsuladze, a newspaper columnist. ''There are no more politicians with their loud promises, no streams of compromising materials, no analytical programs, even the president himself has disappeared.''

''The first day was hard, but then I realized, this will undoubtedly raise the birth rate,'' said Vadim Byrkin, who works in Moscow. ''Someone should do a study in nine months, to see how many children were conceived in this week. My own activity has increased drastically.''

Coming soon to a computer interface near you: gesture recognition – “from simple pointing and grasping to the complex motions used to conduct an orchestra.”

Become a Certified Original Human – copyright your DNA.

One, two, three, four… I declare Thumb Wars? via footprints, which along with the parody site below is an organique production.

I just love ad parodies… can’t get enough. Found this link on the Adbusters Buy Nothing Day pages. I think this year I’ll have to find a way to engage some unsuspecting would-be consumers in the November 24 celebration.

The Japanese island of Miyakejima is being evacuated today after a series of volcanic eruptions sent steam, ash, and small rocks several miles into the air.

And on the sage one, we went through racking our brains trying to find a song that mentioned sage. And all we could come up with was Scarborough Fair by Simon and Garfunkle, which cost about as much as putting somebody on the moon to license it. Then we heard the Frank Sinatra version of "It's Not Easy Being Green." But somebody mentioned the Kermit version, and we were able to get the rights for that. Isn't it wonderful?

In today’s Post: a story about the student initiative to bring an Asian American studies program to the University of Maryland.

This was my first look at Photoshop 6.

If you don’t want to register with NYTimes.com try editing the URL to read “channel.nytimes.com/…” which should work for a while. Alternately, you can login with the username/password combo ‘cypherpunk/cypherpunk’. Update: try ‘cipherpunk/cipherpunk’.

Highlights of recent All Things Considered and Morning Edition shows:

• Hungarian WWII prisoner released from russian psychiatric hospital -- hospital workers mistook his hungarian for gibberish for 53 yrs?!
• work song for technology temps -- "got to do some consulting/way down in Palo Alto"
• couple's plan to set up beach decoys backfires
• psychiatric patients' Bible study group offers interesting insights -- "heaven is an amusement park with bumper cars; you don't need a license to drive"
• Walpole, NH is engaged in a project to record a year in the life of the town -- would be nice to see similar undertakings focus on ethnically, economically and geographically diverse subjects.
• inventor of the lava lamp was a nudist
• the Siberian mining city of Norilsk was built on the bones of the dead
• NPR 100: Carole King's Tapestry
• interview with the co-authors of the self-published Tales of a Punk Rock Nothing, a book about the Washington DC punk rock group house scene in the early 90s -- NPR's inane questions about the protests get a great answer "they don't lack anything. they have many messages, and that's a very complicated thing to understand... and if people paid attention i think there are a lot of articulate people who are there."
• writer Desiree Cooper wonders if 1700s classified ads about runaway slaves tell the story of her ancestors