The Mighty Female Blogger

Women and Blogging - Andrew Sullivan

Honestly, I don't buy it. I know just as many women who blog as I do men. This is a rather silly report that doesn't tell you anything substantial while giving grist to those who want to maintain the superiority of men over women. Well, it'll be hard to do that when all the scientists involved have stilettos embedded in their heads.

The Email of Panic

White House Refused to Open Unwelcome EPA Email - Slashdot

Now I've been known to avoid opening an email from a professor that I was pretty sure would contain some ego-bruising words, but for Christ's sake, this is the federal government, not graduate school. Suck it up, open the email and take the hit. What a bunch of fucking cowards.

Atomic Super Kitties

It's roughly an hour before I normally wake up, but doing a favor for my sister involves an early rise and then a drive to the airport. So while the article itself is making little sense to me, I had to give it a try just for the title alone: "Creating Three-Dimensional Qubits in an Atomic Cloud." I really don't know what that means, but it sounds cool in that weird 'we can make atomic monsters' sort of way. But will they have octagonal-shaped bodies and suck blood?

The Fall

Review: Centro-Matic/South San Gabriel: Dual Hawks - Stephen M. Deusner @ Pitchfork

I have to perform some righteous indignation this morning due to this review of Will Johnson's latest albums. Being a fan of Centro-Matic since All the Falsest Hearts Can Try was released, I've found myself increasingly disappointed in each new release after South San Gabriel Song/Music. Perhaps it was the timing of the records, or the feeling of their shows after 9/11, but Centro-Matic lost a bit of their edge then. Before The Distance and Clime came out, the recorded sound of Centro-Matic was raw and grainy, the lyrics were to the point in a roundabout way and the guitars had this live quality rarely found on a studio release. And there have been a couple of excellent songs laid down since then, but none of their ablums past 2002 have recaptured that glory of Centro-Matic's initial years.
It's fairly obvious that Deusner hasn't steeped himself in Will Johnson's early catelog. Had he then he would notice the dramatic shift in production with Distance and Clime. While that record has the same lyrical flair of earlier ones, I found it over-produced and far too clean for a proper Centro-Matic record. Personally, as much as I love Matt Pence and his abilities behind the drum kit, his production values on the last three albums have stolen the fire that made Centro-Matic such an amazing band. And then there's Johnson himself, who for whatever reason (he stopped wearing a wedding ring around 2003) has muted his once raucous mind.
The Centro-Matic of the late 90s and early years of the new century was born out of the ashes of Johnson's previous band, the Funland Band. After being seriously screwed over by Arista the band broke up with Johnson going off to do his own solo work just as lead singer Peter Schmidt took his music in a different direction with Legendary Crystal Chandelier. But those first Centro-Matic released were something to behold. I still have one of his cassette tapes Johnson sold at shows at that time. It was basically a demo tape with Johnson just singing and playing guitar on whatever he could find to record on. Redo the Stacks was similar except with the inclusion of drums, bass and piano along with the help of a local cellist. And so went the succeeding records as Johnson pulled together the line-up that remains today: Scott Danbom on keys and rythmn guitar; Mark Hedman on bass; and Matt Pence on drums. And these guys are still good guys. Hedman bought me a drink once simply because I was wearing one of their t-shirts that night.
These are regular guys and their Denton-based sound was edgy, different and authentic Texas music. Once they started touring the European theater, that sound faded. The greatest show by any band I ever saw was not long after the release of South San Gabriel in June of 2001. After that, the fervor of Johnson's music faded as their production became too clean and radio-friendly. I still love the band, but the magic is gone. Deusner, I think, doesn't know this because he wasn't there for those amazing first years. While his review is focused on Dual Hawks, it troubles me that the reviewer implicitly lacks the knowledge of what Centro-Matic once was. I miss that band and miss them all the more when I see them play now.

Ruth Marucs' Pretty Face is Going to Hell

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Bundlers - Ruth Marcus @ WaPo

It's understandable that those who believe in the power of the federal government to fund presidential campaigns would find Sen. Obama's decision to opt out (thus breaking his pledge with Sen. McCain if both became the respective nominees of their parties) underhanded. I would too, had I not already contributed to Sen. Obama in the primaries. But to attack Sen. Obama for utilizing a campaign contribution system that has relied primarily on single, small donations as being somehow against the very idea of democracy is just stupid. Sen. Obama was breaking fundraising records well before he won his first primary contest so get to the point Mrs. Marcus. Sen. Obama's campaign and platform have pulled in so many people and so much money that it doesn't need the tax dollars of Americans. The dishonesty of Mrs. Marcus' op-ed is only deepened by her failure to mention Sen. McCain's own gaming of the public financing system. Perhaps Mrs. Marcus is annoyed that after overcoming the most powerful political machine the Democratic party ever saw, Sen. Obama now has access to millions more in untapped funding. So Sen. Obama proves his bonafides to his party and suddenly the party wants to give him a shit load of money. And how is this surprising exactly?

For the Short Haul

Higher Oil Prices Are Starting to Bring Jobs Home - Slashdot

I find this highly amusing. My libertarian senses are tingling.

Electric Gods in Every Pot

As a follow-up to my previous post on the difficulties in implementing mass transit nationwide is this article from Ars Technica on the need for a rollout of gigabit internet access nationwide by 2015. The article discusses a report released by a DC local telecom law firm. The report argues that broadband internet has become as essential a utility as water, electricity and trash services. Again, I can fully agree with this kind of argument but as before the realities of putting a gigabit internet in place across the nation--including the last mile--are hard to overcome. It isn't as simple as running lines along telephone poles but getting those lines to every household, apartment and any other kind of abode (I'm looking at you, trailer parks). I'm not saying it's impossible, just highly problematic in the same ways getting nationwide mass transit is problematic.

21st Century Iron Horses

Psychodrilling - Matt Yglesias

This kind of post has become a regular feature for Yglesias' blog: the argument for more mass transit versus increased oil drilling. Now by no means am I in favor of pushing oil drilling into new areas of the American coast line just for the possibility of saving money on gas some time in the future. Still, this idea that mass transit is a cure-all to our energy problems, at least on the transport side of things, is rather ridiculous when you look at all the political, financial and technological hurdles you face just to get a transit program off the ground in a major U.S. city. Moreover, busing alone is not sufficient to get around the need for rail or subway lines. The city of Dallas had a working trolley system for decades until the mid 60s when the city council was convinced that buses were the way of the future. Fifty years later and Dallas is once again forced to admit that light rail and trolley lines are necessary to combat the ridiculous urban sprawl.
I agree that the U.S. needs a serious, nationwide program to implement mass transit in its major cities, but I just don't see that happening without a president expending a huge amount of political capitol to push through a bill that will naturally see billions of dollars in earmarks attached to it. And the cities themselves lack the will and funding.
Mass transit is a wonderful idea and one that I would love to see realized, but the political realities I fear are too great once you move a hundred miles inland from either coast. Until cities end the monopolies they typically give transit providers and the federal government ends its absurd propping up of passenger rail companies like Amtrak, I don't see the possibility of any rapid movement on mass transit. I wish the stance Yglesias takes was shared by more of our city, state and federal leaders, but for all the talk about expanding mass transit these politicians know well the slim chances of anything actually happening.

High School Republicans

Republican Self-Parody Watch - Ezra Klein

This little bit from Klein tells me just how jealous the Republican party is of Sen. Obama in that high school sort of way. Unlike the geeks and freaks of our high school days, Karl Rove apparently was one of those nerds who wanted to hang with the cool kids but was always laughed at. I took a different route: smoked in the parking lot, read a lot and practiced my look of death. Which in turn makes me unafraid of Sen. Obama and relatively not starstruck by him. But apparently Rove is afraid of Sen. Obama, even while he wants to be Sen. Obama.

Ignoring the Mind-Body Gap

George Lakoff: neuroscience of politics - David Pescovitz @ BoingBoing

I always have trouble with books and theories like this. The idea that somehow our political minds are hardwired, either by nature or by nurture, to favor one kind of political thinking over another smacks far too much of biological determinism. While slightly informative on how the brain works in a certain area, this kind of thinking typically ignores the philosophical problem of the mind-body gap by implicitly denying its existence. I will agree that Lakoff's earlier work on how framing a debate will affect the outcome but I think it takes that good idea and stretches it too far into the realm of hard science. We are not born liberals or conservatives (definitions which themselves change with each generation) and nurturing people to think one way or another has had little permanent success; i.e. the French Revolution, fascism and communism.
So take arguments like Lakoff's with a large grain of salt. They are interesting thought experiments but that's all they are.

In Media Res

The last month has seen a dramatic decrease in the number of posts on this blog. I can list a number of reasons for this but most of them are unimportant or terribly personal in a sense that I cannot find it morally acceptable to write a post on it. But there are some things that I can mention which proves just how spastic I am.
First off, I've made a return to comics after more than a year not reading any. I'm still catching up but spending less weekly than I did before, which is a good thing. Still, I missed some good stuff such as the end of and Y: The Last Man and DMZ's ongoing brilliance.
Second, I've actually become a greasemonkey. After receiving a $600 quote on brake pad replacement I said screw it and did it myself for $150. Thus started my journey into the world of Audi performance parts and DIY repair. It's actually incredibly satisfying, if occasionally frustrating. I have a lot to learn, particularly after the 14 hour ordeal of replacing my intake manifold gasket. But my car is slowly improving and fuel economy is increasing as I replace some of the restrictive OEM parts with improved aftermarket ones. There's lots of money to spend and even more work to do (including some of my own ideas about modifications/improvements). I could easily spend as much or more on parts than the car's original price. Even so, it's worth it as I'm going to make that little 1.8L turbocharged engine work better than it ever has.
The third and perhaps most telling part has been the foul-up with my medication alongside the dramatic increase of the typcial work stress. The medication problems were my fault for the most part as I tried moving to a new anti-anxiety medication that failed in spectacular fashion. But I also started using another medication, albeit an expensive one, that has solved a lot of the associated problems with any sort of anti-anxiety regimen. The medication problem is fixed, I'm actually sane and active, and work problems are getting resolved.
This is the trouble with maintaining a blog. This blog is a work of love for me. It is not simply a vainity project or a way to keep my friends and associates up to date on my life. I've never considered my life, in and of itself, worthy of such attention. Instead I've always considered the blog as an outlet for thoughts, opinions and interests that represent my mind more than my life. I hope to make a return to regular posting. I've missed the catharsis of the blog, of the task of writing something short yet still informative and/or interesting. Or ranting from the roof tops, as is my want from time to time. I won't promise regularity, but I'll try to present some more free-form, original posts that I've had kicking around in my head for some time now. It might be fun or a complete disaster, but either way I'll make it interesting.

Flickr Feminist Art

Fun with Feminist Flickr - Jessica @ Feministing

I normally don't care for much of what the gals at Feministing have to say (too much second-wave, not enough third-wave) but I like the sentiment in this photo they posted.

DIY Fuck-Ups: Lessons Learn Edition

So I decided, while cleaning as much grime as I could out of my engine bay this past Sunday, to install the new intake manifold gasket purchased over a month ago. I had yet to do it since I wasn't quite sure how. Well, 14 hours of work later and I now know why I was right in my hesitation. But I found out a great deal about a 1.8l turbocharged VW/Audi engine. I also found out a great deal about proper preparation. So the two days, today and yesterday, that I thought I had to make some noise on the Interwibble were instead devoted to shredding my hands, injuring my body in new and unusual ways, and generally just fucking up until I fucked up in just the right way. So I'm ready to take the whole damn thing apart and see if I can put it back together again.

The FAIL Blog Never Fails

Drive Thru Bar? FAIL - The FAIL Blog

The FAIL Blog never fails to provide just what you need.

Mechanical Rings

Steampunk Jewelry: EDM Designs - Trend Hunter

It's not uncommon to find mechanical watches that have an authentic steampunk look to them. Even contemporary mechanical watches maintain that look. I've seen hundreds of pocket and wrist watch movements and everything from the jewels used to hold certain parts in place to the machined main plates and coils simply scream steampunk. But I hadn't taken the idea further to think of using a mechanical movement itself as a piece of jewelry. While I can't say I'm all that keen on the shank design (personally I would have gone with a simple open filigreed upper shank with a circular machining for the bottom of the shank) I do love the idea. The greatest challenge to crafting a piece like this (well, one of them) is creating a curved base under the movement to maintain the circular shape of the ring. The other is soldering the damn thing together. Watch movements don't take kindly to heat. Beyond the problems of flame discoloration, there's the metallurgical problem of silver being a poor conductor of heat and needing a high temperature flame (something in the range of 1700 degree Fahrenheit, which, by the way, is a hundred degrees short of the temperature crematoriums use to burn human remains). Personally, I'd like to see a ladies watch movement set in 14k rose gold. The typical shape of a woman's watch movement from the 20s and 30s is a rectangle. I think it could work as a light, but unique ring.

Reformation of Health - 95 Candidates

Daschle for Secretary of Health and Human Services? - Ezra Klein

This is probably the first in what will become a deluge of blogger/pundit recommendations for cabinet positions in an Obama administration. It's a little early I think--the man hasn't even had a chance to pick a VP yet--but since bloggers and pundits need not worry that much about their accuracy I'm not terribly bothered by it. Klein makes a good case for former senator Tom Daschle as HHS Secretary and also, in a way, makes a point toward Sen. Obama's potential as a president. While lacking in executive experience, Sen. Obama's legislative experience and the friends he's made in that time will come to great use in pushing his agenda. Knowing how the legislative branch work intimately is a key feature of Sen. Obama, in my opinion. Instead of needing to curry favor with the Senate, a President Obama would only need to pick up the phone and place the right call. It's also why keeping people such as Sen. Clinton where they are as they will prove helpful to a President Obama when he needs them. But, as I said, this is only the beginning of the wave of personnel recommendations we will see in the coming months.

The Thin Skies Bring New Dreams

Up Here, We Breathe What We Can - Zoetica @ Biorequiem

I really am loving Zoetica's current art series. It has this great fantasy/cyberpunk aesthetic that reminds me of two artists comic writer Brian Wood uses: Kristian Donaldson and Rob G. It really is excellent work so take a look at the rest of her site.

Absolute Cold=Absolute Hot

Absolute Hot - Peter Tyson @ NOVA

I've been meaning to mention this article on one of the weirder aspects of physics. Questioning what the hottest temperature is is the same as asking what the conditions were like at the first moment of the Big Bang. In other words, the hottest temperature is the highest temperature the laws of physics still apply in. Beyond that temperature, just as beyond absolute zero, strange things start happening and by strange things I mean things that physics can't explain. What makes the question even more interesting is the possibility that absolute zero and absolute hot are the same thing wrapping in on itself. If that doesn't get your brain sparking then you need a high-speed impact to your head.

Startling, Diverting Things!

You Ain't Trying To Be A Captain - Spencer Ackerman

I have to confess that Scott Summers, Cyclops of the X-Men, was never one of my favorite characters. Particularly since the Chris Claremont era, Cyclops has often been portray as an impotent and ineffective leader. Grant Morrison and Joss Whedon have definitely changed that. Starting with issue #114 of X-Men (retitled New X-Men at Morrison's insistence) Summers has finally come into his own as a leader of great tactical and strategic thought but with a seriously complicated internal struggle. Morrison wrote Summers as a man who tries as hard as he can to move beyond those struggles but finds that ignoring them cost him in the long term. The final story arc of Morrison's epic forty issue run involves Summers accepting the death of his wife and the love of his former enemy Emma Frost.
Whedon continues Summer's growth as a leader attempting to maintain his independence. Ackerman argues that Summers has always relied on someone else like Professor Xavier to validate his decisions. Whedon plays with this idea through Cyclops' relationship with Emma Frost and the tension Frost's presence brings. Kitty Pryde, character favorite of Whedon's, constantly questions whether Cyclops is making decisions on his own or if Emma Frost is controlling him. It's a great counterpoint to Ackerman's accusation that Cyclops in an ineffective leader. It's not that he himself is ineffective but has simply been written that way because no writer has had the balls to do anything different. The one-two punch of Morrison's New X-Men and Whedon's Astonishing X-Men has finally brought out the leader in Scott Summers. I can only wait to see what Warren Ellis will do with Cyclops once his Astonishing X-Men: Second Stage begins this July.

Bargaining Chips

Oh, wait, I remember why hardcore supporters of anything bother me--the dogmatic "my way or the highway" stance and the air of superiority it brings. Hence my problems with the feminist supporters of Sen. Clinton. And I never thought I would hear something like this from Hilary Rosen:

I will enthusiastically support Barack Obama's campaign. Because I am not a bargaining chip. I am a Democrat.

Stop Being So Goddam Precious

"Ask Not What Your Country Can Do For You..." - John Rogers @ Kung Fu Monkey

At the end of last week I wrote a confused rant of a post on the sexism versus racism issues flying about in the Democratic nomination. It was written out of anger and doesn't represent my rational thinking. But taking the post down seemed cowardly to me. I don't stand behind the vitriol of those thoughts but I'm willing to take the flak for writing them. They are my words and no amount of rejection can change that. Even so, I continued to think about the issue, quietly crafting an addendum built out of reasoned and logical thought. And goddamn if John Rogers didn't beat me to the punch.
The entire post hits on every single point I wanted to make and does so in a clear fashion--from the generational issues to the craziness of hardcore supporters on either side to the mainstream media's treatment of Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama's continued refusal to play into the mainstream media's hands. Moreover, Rogers goes beyond my original thoughts to talk about the egoism of Americans and how that egoism has nothing to do with race, gender or age. He pointedly takes Sen. Clinton to task for being "the weirdly Republican-lite, crazy rules-changing, stereotype-reinforcing panderer." And Rogers doesn't even entirely blame Sen. Clinton but the mindworm that transformed her from a serious leftist contender to a rightist dead-ender.
What Rogers is getting at is the failure of Sen. Clinton's campaign has far less to do with gender than it does with the way in which the campaign was run. Rogers argues that the most damaging aspect of the Clinton campaign was its effort to make Sen. Clinton's personal trials and tribulations every woman's trials and tribulations.
By tying herself to the feminist movement so closely, Sen. Clinton turned a generation of young women away from such feminism while telling the older generations of women that her loss was their loss. Had things been the other way around and Sen. Obama lost I'm sure legions of black pundits and supporters would make the same argument. Instead, it seems to me that Rogers is saying while either candidate's victory would be transformational, neither candidate's loss was a loss for their movements. Feminism will continue as it has with the advent of third-wave feminism. Sen. Clinton's loss of the nomination does not change that no matter how much the feminists allied with her claim otherwise.
Rogers ends his post with one of President Kennedy's more famous quotes about what you can do for this country. He calls on the same kind of sacrafice President Kennedy did by asking us "that the least we can do, for our country, is to stop being so goddam precious." He asks, simply, that we not believe that we, individually, are a part of some grand historical narrative. He asks that we make a sacrafice of our egos and agendas so real progress can happen. The final part of Rogers' post sums the issue up nicely: "We are small, our time is limited, people are shitty, death claims us all. The only lasting marks we leave in this world are the results of our actions, not our internal monologues." Rogers words are something to always remember when we are about to launch our latest salvos against politicans we don't entirely agree with. We will not live forever, but our actions and our words will.

The Cloud Hunters

A Most Thorough Cloud Inspector - Zoetica @ Biorequiem

At first I believed her to be a matron of cloud operas, but I was corrected. She is, as the title states, an inspector of clouds brought from the farthest reaches by skilled Cloud Hunters. I can only imagine the clothing she might create from such fine materials.

A Rant

So, let me get this straight--Sen. Obama is a Muslim-racist Christian-sleeper agent-opportunist while Sen. Clinton is a strong fighter who is being bullied by the big bad white males of America. You know what? Fuck the Democratic Party. They deserve what they get at this point. If a party can't win the White House after two terms of George Motherfucking Bush and a war that nearly everyone in America hates then they deserve it. This election was supposed to be a cakewalk. Things were supposed to change. And all I see is the same bloody stupid and selfish tactics of Karl Rove played out by the 'leader' of feminism. I've had it with the baby boomers and their selfishness. I've had it with the old people who protested in the 60s and 70s and expect us to bow down before them. If the Gore-Bush election didn't turn younger generations off of politics, then Sen. Clinton will. That's for damn sure. Sen. Clinton will lose this election--badly. Why? Because the old Republican machine Rove build will swing into action and everything the Clintons did wrong in the 90s will get 24/7 coverage. What? You thought that wouldn't happen? You thought the Republicans would just play nice and forget all about that? And you think the Republicans won't start digging into the last eight years of the Clinton's lives? This is what happens when you let white people decide everything. We had the chance to elect the first black leader of a Western industrialized nation that just so happens to also have the most powerful military arsenal in the world. But no, that wasn't good enough for the spineless Whitey Democrats. So fuck the Democratic Party for throwing away the one chance to actually do something different, to do something good for this nation. The baby boomers are holding on to their power as hard as they can. It's going to be one hell of a sledgehammer to their precious little heads when their baby boomer leaders start dying off and we come to power. This is what happens when you resist change, particularly historical change. Simply put, you can't and if you try then the worse it will be for you when things do change. So get ready baby boomers. Get ready oh feminists of the 60s. Get ready Sharpton and Jackson. Because you are all first against the wall and it's your own damn fault.

Sexism v. Racism: A Response

My friend Adrienne sent me a response to my latest posts on sexism and racism in America and naturally makes some points I hadn't really thought about. Here's the text of her email and my response follows below:

re: that, I think you should try again in comparing American racism and American sexism in your own head. I'm NOT SAYING that you were wrong to "choose" the former as ultimately worse than the latter, I'm just wondering if you're able to see that there is, perhaps, a case that they're potentially equal, or even that sexism might be worse? "Rape and harassment and abuse" is not the full extent of it, just as "slavery and lynching" isn't the full extent of the black American experience throughout history [although, are you really thinking about how the very existence of rape and harassment constricts womens' ability to live and act freely? I mean, this is no small thing].

Think of segregation, of the lack of opportunities and acceptable life roles and choices; think of the increased burden that women have had to carry due to having children and a career, or due to their potential partners being in prison (i.e., factor in the Drug War). Factor in how you're treated on the street and in your own house, emotional manipulation subtle and not-so-subtle, forced (implicitly or explicitly) child-bearing (or hidden abortions), the glass ceiling, the cruel inner-city living experience. Of being told that you are less capable of achieving than a white man because of your biology (again, women and blacks got this message for a loooong time). These are a few of the things to consider in the context of the black American experience and the female American experience. There's a lot more.

I'm just saying, I don't think it's as clear cut as you want it to be.

Unfortunately, Adrienne is right to say that the differences in sexism and racism are not as clear cut as I make them out as. They are a difference of degree, not in kind. And to add an extra layer of nuance, racism tends to run tandem with class issues as the Jim Crow laws affected not only blacks in the South but poor whites as well. My issue with the way sexism has been talked about throughout this year's electoral campaign is that many of the old guard feminists have attempted to make sexism morally equivalent to racism at the cost of those who are still fighting against racism. It isn't that women have had it easier than blacks or other minority, but they have faced less physical and mental violence, particularly white women. Moreover, women who understand where second-wave feminism went wrong look more towards gender equality versus biological equality. The issue is not so much proving that women can physically do what men can but realigning gender roles that impose certain expectations on men to act a certain way towards women as much as women are expected to accept such treatment.
What has happened is the turning of the feminist movement in the direction that the civil rights movement took once their great leaders fell. Americans don't like to talk about sexism, hate to talk about racism and class issues are almost anathema in our current political discourse. So we (especially white males) ignore these issues as much as we can. And the generation leaders after the initial movement in the 60s and 70s have become as, if not more, concerned with their influence as they are with advancing their causes. Women, just as blacks do, need new leaders not of the previous victimized baby boomers. Women no longer need leaders like Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan for the simple reason that third-wave feminists have rejected the radicalism of Steinem or Friedan. Perhaps if someone like the late Ann Richards were to take the lead, the feminist movement might shed it's radical aura that conservatives have saddled it with.
Another problem with the old guard of feminism is that they still maintain a caucasian-centric middle class perspective when feminism itself must move beyond that. Those women who suffer the most from sexism are generally poor, less educated and often are of a different color. The kind of elitism second-wave feminism brought, while advancing the consciousness of the nation, did not aid in bringing black women into the movement nor advocating for the end of the culture among black communities that so often see single mothers whose fathers are either jailed, dead or allowed to shirk their responsibilities. For second-wave feminists to cry foul at the treatment of a white woman in today's media makes them look less like responsible leaders and more like the knee-jerk black 'leaders' who do little but show up when a scandal happens (think the opportunistic Al Sharpton and the dumb as a bag of hammered dog shit Don Imus).
This is the key difference I see between Sen. Clinton's brand of feminism and Sen. Obama's brand of civil rights. Where Sen. Clinton remains locked in this radicalized form of feminism that younger generations no longer buy into, Sen. Obama has sought to transcend the issues of race but acknowledges that both sides, black and white, must start talking about race before such transcendence can occur. The same conversation must occur between men and women for true gender equality can rise. Men need to know what their gender role is within a gender equal society. Much like the whites who complained that blacks were getting a leg up while they were left behind, the men who witnessed second-wave feminism (particularly those of a conservative cultural-warrior bent) were convinced that second-wave feminists sought the emasculation of masculinity. People tend to operate by inertia and much like Newton's 3rd law of motion, every action is met by an equal and opposite reaction. So while radicalism is sometimes necessary don't act all surprised when you see an equally strong reactionary movement.
Such is the problem the Clinton campaign faces when their supporters cry "sexism". It's true that the Chris Matthews of the world have and will continue to make sexist remarks about Sen. Clinton but to argue that such remarks are against all women ignores the context of Sen. Clinton herself. While not responsible for even half of what is believed about her, Sen. Clinton has given little to sway those who do believe she is an egocentric, self-serving sociopath (as Andrew Sullivan would argue). And her surrogates only worsen the problem by repeating the claims of sexism, becoming increasingly shrill and polemical. Meanwhile, Sen. Obama and his campaign have deftly dealt with accusations of sexism and racism by actually talking about it versus writing an invective op-ed to the Washington Post or the New York Times. It's a case of action versus words and a contemporary man versus a woman of the past.

Sexism v. Racism Pt. 2

'Look What They've Done To Her' - E.J. Dionne Jr. @ Washington Post

Apparently I'm on a bit of a sexist rant today as the stance female supporters of Sen. Clinton have taken completely ignores both what Sen. Clinton has done to electoral politics but also the greater achievement of putting the first black man in the office of the President. Not fifty years after the Civil Rights movement and America has the chance to elect a black president but because some white women are so focused on their own issues we might lose that opportunity. And for who? Sen. Hillary Clinton, the woman who smeared other women who accused her husband of sexual harassment, the woman who played up the race card in states like West Virgina and Kentucky, the woman who will do more to harm the cause of women just for the sake of her own ambition. And who is she doing this against? A black member of her own party, not the old white guy from the other party. Whenever I hear white women complaining about how the media has treated Sen. Clinton I have to remember that: a) the mainstream media is a joke; and b) Sen. Clinton seems more than willing to destroy our chance to have a real world-historical moment by voting a black man into the most powerful office in Western history. To argue that electing Sen. Clinton would be a first for women everywhere completely ignores the likes of Chancellor Merkel and Prime Minister Thatcher; two women who have and had control over two of the most powerful economies in the world. And it just pisses me off that white women in America are so willing to ignore that for Sen. Clinton.

Sexism v. Racism

Limits and Ambitions - Ann @ Feministing

See, I knew Ruth Marcus was full of it when she wrote her op-ed on the 'ambition gap' between men and women in politics. The whole piece just didn't feel right in the sense that I knew there were other, more legitimate explanations than simply that women were not as ambitious as men. But Ann from Feministing nails down what it was that troubled me. Even so, Ann brings up another point that I find troubling: the idea that sexism is just as bad as racism. Yes, I will agree that sexism is bad, particularly in today's media and most of the more serious problems in organized religion come from religious leader's attempts to control sex through women. But, if I recall my American history correctly, 700,000 American lives were not spent on getting women the right to vote. Nor did white American women in the 20th century have to worry about getting lynched among other things. If you want to make the case that sexism is as bad as racism then you have to take it out of a 21st century American context and look at all of world history. But comparing American sexism to American racism not only mitigates the plight not just of blacks but of any minority in America but also overstates the plight of white women in America. Yes, rape and sexual harrassment and abuse are terrible things. But to say that it's worse than what blacks in America have had to go through ignores black history. Of course this comes from a white male third-wave feminist perspective, so take it with as big a grain of salt as you'd like.

White Culture and the Democratic Party

Why Krugman is Wrong - Andrew Sullivan

This interesting post by Sullivan argues against two items in Paul Krugman's latest op-ed on Sen. Clinton and some comparisons she has made throughout her campaign. The two items Sullivan has problems with are Sen. Clinton's comparison of this campaign to that of Robert Kennedy in 1968 and the comparison of her own self as an LBJ to Sen. Obama's MLK. Krugman argues that such comparisons and the resulting charges of tone-deafness on the part of the Clinton campaign are nothing more than manufactured scandals. Sullivan believes Krugman's full of shit, which I agree with, even if I don't think the word scandal is appropriate (stupid and ignorant yes, scandal no).
What makes Sullivan's rebuttal interesting though, is his contention that Sen. Clinton, particularly with the LBJ comparison, is arguing that black and gay Democrats should rally behind her because she is taking the standard line of "you vote for us, we'll take care of you. And "we" is always white and straight and connected." That contention on Sen. Clinton's part is exactly why she is losing large and traditionally loyal parts of the Democratic party to Sen. Obama. It's also why Sen. Obama's supposed gaffe over the bitterness of poor and struggling working class families hits the mark. Sen. Obama understands better than Sen. Clinton that what many Democrats and independents are looking for is not someone who will "take care" of them but someone who will provide the opportunities and incentives to take care of themselves. It's a strange position for a progressive politician such as Sen. Obama to take since it implies a more hands off approach to progressive politics. Yet it makes sense in the type of message Sen. Obama is campaigning on--a message that government can help you but you will have to make some efforts on your part as well. It's the type of message that runs counter to the traditional charge that liberals wish to create a nanny state while maintaining the values that make Sen. Obama liberal.
But more than a shift in approach to pushing liberal values, Sen. Obama's platform of post-partisan change drastically pivots away from the attitude of older Democrats like Sen. Clinton by saying that minority Democrats will no longer have to rely on the white, straight and connected members of the party. Could one consider that a subtle playing of the race card? Perhaps, but I think more than playing the race card, Sen. Obama's message is saying that the race card doesn't matter any more. It's a brilliant positioning of himself against Sen. Clinton. Where any comment that might imply Sen. Obama is using his race against Sen. Clinton comes off as an attack on Sen. Obama's race by Sen. Clinton, the position Sen. Obama has struck makes it difficult for anyone in the Clinton campaign to use the race card in the necessary subtle manner. The typical dog-whistle attacks become obvious almost immediately. And while I still don't think of such attacks as scandals, I do think that they show a grave misunderstanding of the movement Sen. Obama has inspired.
It's that misunderstanding of the approach Sen. Obama has taken that has so harmed the Clinton campaign. The allusion to Robert Kennedy's assassination is only the latest in a long line of comments that fail to undermine Sen. Obama's campaign while making either the Clinton campaign or Sen. Clinton herself look out of place and of a previous generation of politics. Even though Sen. Obama has claimed a massive majority of the black vote it wasn't due to anything Sen. Obama or his campaign did but a response to the ingrained white superiority attitude of the Clinton campaign. Although, I must mention that I don't think Sen. Clinton is bigoted against blacks, but much like the gays of the 1990s, the Clintons and their campaign simply expected the black voters to fall in line. It's an attitude about whiteness that the baby boomer generations have trouble understanding. It's also an attitude that post-boomers lack, or at the very least are far more aware of than the boomers are.

No Love for Crazy People

Blogging will resume momentarily.
Reinsertion to begin soon.
Medication is leveling.
Please return the towels.

A Sweet Rebuttal

Adrienne wrote in with a woman's take on Sen. Obama's usage of the word 'sweetie' that runs counter to my argument. She writes:

Now, granted, I'll give him the "it's just a bad habit" excuse, but that means he needs to make an active effort to stop saying sweetie in the future.
Here's a simple rubric, from my perspective: "dear" or "sweetie" or anything similar is okay and innocuous when it comes from a) a relative; b) a good friend; c) a fabulous gay man; or d) a man over the age of 65.
Coming from any other man, especially in a formal or professional context, it is grating, condescending, and really quite obnoxious, even if he doesn't necessarily mean it that way. But the effect is to minimize what you're trying to say, because you're a woman.
I know this is one of those things that gets feminists branded as humorless, but fuck it all. This isn't like holding a door open, which is common courtesy. This is more akin to catcalling or something--being treated w/ disrespect because you're a woman.

I still think it was an innocent enough phrase, or alternatively, used specifically to appeal to Mid-Western white attitudes. A word like "sweetie" is certainly something that a lot of white men in middle America will identify with. Even so, Adrienne does have a point (damn her eyes) about it's usage in a professional sense.

Sweetie and the Silly Season

So Sen. Obama off-handedly calls a reporter "sweetie" when telling her to wait a moment to answer a question, which he ended up not answering at all. To add to that, the senator has called other women sweetie at times. Now it doesn't appear as if the reporter in question is all that terribly upset, but the rest of the media is kicking the story around for some reason.
Honestly, I don't know why this momentary event required Sen. Obama to issue an apology. On one level there is a degree of sexism you can read into the comment. But on an entirely other level is the everyday mannerisms of a mid-western man showing his respect and acknowledgment of the reporter's gender. Now I've been known to call some of my female friends "dear" on occasion, particularly when I'm trying to get a point across. It's one part use of ethos and one part being from Dallas that directs me to the word "dear" versus "sweetie" but the intention is the same.
I don't believe that the comment was intended as any form of slander or to demean the reporter. If Sen. Obama wishes to apologize for it then that is his business. And if the reporter has taken offense to the comment then I can understand that as well. I one time called a female friend "dear" and was sharply rebuked for it, but only because she didn't get what I meant by the term. That reaction is a sort of knee-jerk feminism. However, it isn't the same as calling a black man "boy" or black people "those people". Terms such as those still carry with them the derision and racism of the past. So, while the furor over the comment is partially reasonable from certain perspectives, I don't think Sen. Obama was being anything but polite.

On Why Spackerman Is Better Than You

Quote of the Day via Spencer Ackerman:
"This means I might never live out my dreams of hibernating with polar
bears before riding the Polar Bear King into battle"

On Design and Jewelry

Interstitial Arts charity jewelry auction - Cory Doctorow @ BoingBoing

I have to say that there is an undeniable coolness to the Interstitial Arts jewelry collection. Based around the idea of designing pieces influenced by the first 19 stories from the Interfiction Anthology these pieces are crafted by the authors themselves in an attempt to capture physically some essence of their written work. The collection is up for bid here.
It sounds like a wonderful idea and some of the pieces are well-made and tasteful. But from a design standpoint, some of this is crap. One of the biggest failures I see in so-called jewelry designers is a failure to appreciate how the materials work and what happens, after a piece has been worn for years, when something breaks. Repairing a wire-based piece such as the one shown here will probably never happen. It's all a matter of metallurgy and gemology. The stones used simply will not stand the heat needed to flow solder over broken sections of gold wire, if you could even get the sections of wire hot enough without melting them first. Yes, it is interesting and unique, but hardly a masterpiece.
Ultimately it is the work of professional writers but amatuer jewelers. I do believe in the need for such side projects for those who spend most of their lives trying to bang out on a keyboard some idea in their head. The constrast between intellectual works and material ones is striking, to say the least. Jewelry work has brought me a great deal of comfort when faced with a difficult intellectual project. The simple explanation is this: at the end of it, you have a physical piece in your hands that you know is finished. That satisfaction of completion is rarely found at the end of an intellectual work, whether a novel or a piece of non-fiction. You are always thinking of ways to improve on it and the best advice I was ever given was that you have to find a place to stop and say, "I'm done." That moment is gratifying but not in the same way as holding a finished product in your hands. So while I might deride the designs I do applaud these authors for trying something new and different in jewelry design.

Fear of a Black President, Pt 249

He's a Different Color but We're the Same Kid, I'll Treat Him Like My Brother and He'll Treat Me Like His - Spencer Ackerman

Breaking from his normal foreign policy blogging Ackerman made a good decision in pointing to a John Judis article on racism in American politics. The conclusions of the Judis piece are not surprising--that latent racial bias still exists among many whites. What Judis is arguing here is that Sen. Obama must contend with such latent racism. Overtly racist attacks and ads will not work but dog-whistle types will among the working white middle class.
But Judis' argument reaches farther than the politics of the current election cycle. Relying on a good deal of research done in the past twenty years, Judis finds that a latent bias is prevalent among nearly every American. However, this bias is subtle and not easily drawn out. Where some might find this evidence of bias damning of the white middle class, I view it as a sign of progress since the Civil Rights era. It says, as Judis argues, that overt racism is not an acceptable social norm.
It also says that any remaining racism is so buried in the minds of people that when they do exhibit racist tendencies it is done so unconsciously. Being on a few generations past the Civil Rights era this is naturally expected. My generation, I believe, holds less latent racism than the last and the next generation, if the trend holds, should have even less unconscious racism than mine. What this points to is the potential for a time when even latent racism begins to disappear. The election of a black president will do a great deal of good in moving Americans away from this type of racism. It's not a cure-all, for certain, but it does prove that blacks can accomplish great things. Such a notion can embed itself in people's minds to the point that the latent racism is negated in many ways.

Marmoleum

Patchwork kitchen floor made from Marmoleum ends - Cory Doctorow @ BoingBoing

Cory Doctorow writes this brief post on Vermont Eco Builder's effort to layout a kitchen floor made from Marmoleum salvaged from a landfill. The Vermont Eco Builder's blog has a lot more information and photos to go along with their build including the process they used to create the color scheme and layout they wanted. Marmoleum is apparently an eco-friendly flooring made from organic materials.
It's a great use of recycled materials while providing an aestheically pleasing look to a kitchen floor. What's more, it's wonderful that the company installing the floor offers up their technique for laying the floor, meaning others can create their own Marmoleum kitchen floor. As Doctorow says, the effect is striking in terms of color and look.

Kindling a Revolution

The Future of Reading? - Ezra Klein
The Future of Reading - Ezra Klein @ Columbia Journalism Review

So Klein spends some time with Amazon's Kindle and has already decided that traditional books are not capable of handling the changes in content of the digital age. He does make some strong points: commentary and notations are far easier to engage in through digital books and a web connection. Time sensitive books such as those on political events could use instant update features to correct outdated material. And particularly controversial books would have a direct connection between the reader and the author. This is where the disruptive nature of the Internet injects itself in the real world.
Naturally, as a blogger, Klein is inclined to think of texts as reader-author relationships. Blogs have become some of the most read online texts in existence. And the mix of reader and author allows for debates to bring out new ideas and reworked blog posts. Klein argues that a similar debate can take place over political books such as Andrew Sullivan's The Conservative Soul. It's a strong argument and one I believe will prove true, to a point.
To offer a contrast, Klein takes a similar perspective with Max Boot's World War Z. The purpose behind the comparison is to illustrate where the Kindle fails as it distracts from the simplicity of reading for pleasure.
I do agree that a digital device won't replace those texts meant for pleasure. But I have to strongly disagree with Klein over the matter of non-fiction texts. What may hold true for contemporary political texts on contemporary political topics fails miserably when attempting anything of a lasting work. Example: Wittgenstein (yes, I'm using him again as an example) wrote two works of philosophy in his life time. His first, published in the early 20s was hailed as the founding text for logical positivism. Twenty years later Wittgenstein wrote another work on the philosophy of language completely at odd with his first.
I use Wittgenstein as an extreme example of how one's thinking can change, sometimes radically, over a period of time. A non-fiction work must have an endpoint. For academics, this is known as the point where you simply stop writing. You can use the texts available to you at the time but waiting for some new text to arrive that adds to your work is foolish and damaging to your career. At some point you have to end the research and the book as well. Moreover, the more time you study a subject the more your understanding increases. Some of the best work by philosophers and historians is done in the waning years of their life. A constant blog-like debate over a single text does little to actually improve the thinking of the academic. Nor does an academic have the time a blogger does to engage in such a debate, particularly since they have papers to grade, classes to prepare for and new topics to research.
Another point Klein misses is that research requires the quick movement from text to text as one is writing. A single device that contains all of the texts the academic uses is actually detrimental to the work. You need that ability to lay two or three books together at once to properly write an academic text.
So while Klein does have an argument when it comes to political texts and the potential digital devices have to improve the interaction with digital content, he misses the more important points of pleasure and academic reading. Yes, it requires the maintenance of a library of books but as Klein himself notes, paper texts have existed and adapted to new technologies many times before. The Kindle's potential is powerful, but that power is derived from its ability to deliver digital content or content that is improved by a close relation between the reader and the author. It's power does not, however, extend to novels and academic works for the very same reasons.

Pretty Happenin' Degree

Apologies for the quality of the picture. There was a good 300 feet between me and my sister at that moment. But this is Lindsy Lawrence, PhD and I'm proud to call her my sister.

Oh, and she's way smarter than me.

Try Staking Awake for Three Years

Three-Year-Old Boy has Never Slept, Parents Maintain 24-Hour Vigil - Mark Frauenfelder @ BoingBoing

Not to belittle the plight of this boy, but I find the idea that this boy has never slept too far-fetched. If true, serious neurological problems should plague the boy: hallucinations, lack of internal body rhythm, trouble with focus, trouble understanding things, and a litany of other ailments that come from prolonged lack of sleep. I just find the story lacking credibility based on what little information given in both Frauenfelder's post and in the original news story.

Unity '08

Can I just say that I'm pretty damn tired of all the posts on an Obama/Clinton unity ticket? It's just stupid pandering to Clinton supports. Sen. Obama, once he does secure the nomination, should pick who he believes is the best running-mate, not the bloggers and pols out of DC. At least there are a few like George Will who believe Sen. Clinton should pack it up and go home already.

Standing In Love

Fromm on standing in love - Mark Vernon @ Philosophy & Life Blog

This is, quite possibly, the best expression of lasting love that I've seen written. I've always worried about the idea of falling in love because it entails the possibility that such love won't last. As Vernon remarks, this kind of love is a battle against loneliness for one's own ego. Falling in love is as much real love as it is being in love with idea of love. He contrasts this with the idea of standing in love--the point at which love becomes and open love, a love that welcomes everyone in because the issue of faithfulness is never in question. I've experienced this kind of love from some friends of mine who open their house with welcoming arms and let their love shine on you as well. There's no fear of loneliness but only the desire to let their love exist as almost a physical æther.
I do fear falling in love on the basis of the potentiality for my loneliness to return. I don't like loving the idea of being in love since it partially negates the other person, the person you are supposed to show the entirety of your love to. But I still have to risk it if I ever want to arrive at the point of standing in love. It's a sublime love and like anything sublime there's a mix of beauty and horror. Still, I leave myself open to that risk since their's no other path to standing in love.

New Model Army in Camp

One of the things I love about the developmental direction the Internet has taken is the DIY ethos that drives a lot of the innovation. I've written on this before and how disruptive this DIY ethos is. Take a few ideas, some knowledge of coding and suddenly you have a website drawing tens of thousands of people. Of course, for every success story there are hundreds of failures, whether of deployment, content or simple timing. Along with that is the ever-important "who you know" factor that can make or break a struggling site. A post on a few well chosen blogs will go miles to making your site the new 'it' site. My own blog struggles with such need for attention, but the attention, however minimal, is still there.
What the "who you know" factor also means though is that sometimes you end up with a clique of sites that trade links back and forth but rarely branch out on new sites. It's both the advantage and bane of web hubs. Yet, I don't begrudge the nature of web hubs and superhubs. Outlier sites, if they stick around long enough, always increase their chances of finding a few links to the major hubs. It's an instance where persistance pays off. While I keep this blog to help with my own sanity as an outlet for my nonsense, I still look forward to the day that this blog becomes something more than a vanity project.

Captain Nemo

NemoVoid.com

Not quite sure why I'm doing this--for certain this girl annoys the fuck out of me--but, well, here you go. Porn on a Friday night.

Open Container Laws

Parental Fail - The FAIL Blog

Man, if only my parents had given me booze instead of crack when I was that young.

The Paintings are Waiting

Art Transforms Depending on Time of Day - Trend Hunter

Artists Drzach and Suchy have come up with a new art instillation that involves paintings that change under different lighting conditions. While this is a relatively easy feat using different colors as the U.S. military does to test for color blindness, it does go beyond the mere scratch-and-sniff variety of color-changing art. First, the change in image relies on changes in natural lighting. Second, the paintings are in grayscale with a base-backing of white.
It's a perceptual change also. What was once an image of Marilyn Monroe will transform into one of Marilyn Manson. The paintings shown here are obviously from Psycho's famous bathroom killing. By showing how different light can produce a different image, the artists are playing on the properties of light and materials. Naturally this leads to a discussion on the reality of color and whether it is a real property of the object or a subjective experience of the viewer. Color-blind people might see a different image or no image at all while the small percentage of the population (primarily women) who have an extra color rod in their eyes might see something else. And I won't even go into what synethesists might see. Such complex philosophical questions posed by such a simple painting process. This I like.

It's the Games, Stupid

Yankee Fan Go Home - George Will @ Washington Post

No time for real commentary, but the op-ed is pretty good, or at least amusing. Have a read by one of the best and real conservative writers still out there.

The Doctorow of Steampunk

Steampunk in the New York Times - Cory Doctorow @ BoingBoing

It seems BoingBoing is on the ball about the NYT article on steampunk, but looking at it from an outward-in perspective versus my inward-out one. Still, different opinions make for good arguments.

Some Goodness for the Morning

Video Throwback: Pavement-Cut Your Hair - RCRDLBL

A bit of old fashioned 1990s indie goodness:

Glowing Walls

Wall Paper that Lights Up - Andrew Sullivan

I don't think I've posted about this yet, but if I have then apologies for the double post. Even so, I think it deserves more attention just for the sheer cool factor. Apparently the bottom layer is silver with a couple of other layers on top and a final wallpaper outer layer. The layering allows for the use of the wallpaper in regular applications, but personally I see this kind of tech being more applicable to avant-garde clubs and anterooms of exclusive consulting or advertising firms. Either way, it's wallpaper that lights up! How cool is that?

Smoke Coming from Recording Machines

A Place to Bury Strangers Too Loud for Record Press - Pitchfork

This is the reason why I love this band; so loud they break the recording equipment through pure sound. Not that I expect the production studio to be too pleased about that, but still, way cooler than most bands could hope to achieve. Looking at their tour schedule, their stop in Dallas is at the American Airlines Center, not a small venue by any means. So either they're touring with a major act or their sound is so big no other venue will take them out of fear of causing mass seizures. Again, what other band could provide such sheer noise pleasure?

The Commercialization of Steampunk

Steampunk Moves Between Two Worlds - Ruth La Ferla @ NYT

It's hard to define steampunk because much like any kind of punk, it intentionally defies definition. But some trends are apparent, much like with it's originator: cyberpunk. The ethos is based around the questions of humanity in the face of modernity and technology. While there are fashion statements to be made, the real thrust of steampunk is the idea of electric gods made human like Telsa, adventures like Charles Lindburg and dramas like the stories from the Great War. Steampunk reinvents the end of the 19th century as a time when the industrialist was also the genius of the time, when any technology was possible and society had quickly adapted to the radical shifts without much effort.
Sadly, this was not how it happened. Steampunk writers know this, hence the questions of morality and the human spirit. They are the same question we, and the cyberpunk writers, ask now. To make a tenuous historical hypothesis, I think the responses to modernity during the 19th century (a desire to return to a purer time, virulent nationalism and the rise of fascism, or at the very least it antecedents), kept the West in particular from arriving at any real answers. We are confronted with these questions again due to the rise of the Internet and all of its possibilities. The adventurers of steampunk flying airships and discovering impossible lands (Warren Ellis' Planetary should be required reading for both steam and cyberpunks) are translated into virtual adventurers moving between the physical world and the virtual with ease and where actions on one side have consequences on the other.
I do love the steampunk ethos as much as I love the ethos of cyberpunk. Both put these questions of what humanity means during times of great technological change. And both have their responses in characters that aren't quite sure of what is really happening but retain their humanity after great struggles with technology. The style, fashion and romance of both sub-genres, and now sub-cultures, are merely outward representations of these questions. However, as sub-cultures like steampunk gain wider acceptance I fear that the true punk ethos of anarchist reaction to the mainstream will lose itself in the commericalization of the culture. Just as goth, fetish and even punk its were subsumed by consumer culture, so too will steampunk fall before the needs of retail. Honestly, I believe that cyberpunk will remain the only non-commericalized sub-genre for a while due to its futuristic settings and necessary technological advances. Even so, commercialization will infect it as well.
Despite that, I don't think I will really mind such commericalization. It's inevitable in today's world. What I will mind are those who mistake the accessories of steampunk, the fashion and the attitude for the real ethos of steampunk. They, like the poser punks of the 1990s, will actually retard the progress steampunks seeks to accomplish. By ignoring the real questions steampunk poses, they will become another in a long line of fashion charactures. Yes, the fakers will come, because they have money and material desires to meet. But hopefully there will remain the writers and thinkers of steampunk and cyberpunk who look to constantly reinvent the style and shape of their genres.

Coolest Photo of the Day

When Volcanoes Spew Lightning - Annaless Newitz @ i09

This picture comes courtesy of the Chilean volcano that decided, after 9000 years, to get its groove on again. Apparently, this type of ash cloud and eruption are called 'dirty eruptions'. Even so, it looks glorious.

Sick

College Student Sexually Assaulted While Crowd Cheers - Jessica @ Feministing

This is one of the biggest reason why the culture of education we have in America is so fucked up right now. This group of men, who should all be charged with aiding and abetting the crime, are really nothing but overgrown boys with a sense of entitlement. And our education system perpetuates this by turning college into an extension of high school, except with fewer rules and punishments for the students. This girl did everything she was supposed to do and still was sexually assaulted and had her assailants cheered on. Of course these student will probably get nothing more than a slap on the wrist, thus negating the seriousness of their crime. And so our system of justice fails another woman, which reflects poorly on us all.

The Zen of FAIL

Sea World Fail - The FAIL Blog

Ah, I am at peace now.

New Model Army on the March

This addendum to my earlier thoughts on the rejection of the Internet in favor of reality is based around the ideas and theories on information management. Essentially, this is a defense of the Web 2.0 mindset and the nascent Web 3.0 that has yet to take any firm shape. What the Web 2.o mindset brings to the interweb is self-sustainment; user-generated content becomes the primary content on the web as does the management of that content. Blogs, social networking sites, microblogs, tagging (whether of online content or of physical space as Google Maps has taken to doing) and the rise of tag clouds all point to an interwibble that further blurs the line between online and offline.
There's a part of William Gibson's latest book Spook Country where the main character is taken into a house and told to don a VR headset. What she sees is a room filled with tags attached to every object and even the space of the room itself. While I don't think the VR goggles are quite practical, I do think the idea of spatial tagging is the culmination of four centuries of philosophical efforts to determine meaning and reference. It does so by radically redefining meaning as being exclusively perceptual. It also confirms Wittgenstein's theory on meaning-as-use as spatial tagging will lead to a spatial tag cloud where the most common meanings of an object will rise to the surface without sacraficing the lesser known meanings.
Blogs and microblogs function in a similar way as individual perspectives are both maintained and then joined by tags and tag clouds that expose mass consensus. Microblogs in particular are one of the most contextual forms of communication yet devised. They can be so contextual that inversely they become completely context-free. Such a paradoxical event is evidence of a new way of thinking scratching at the edges of our minds. Those who wish to avoid it would do well to stay off the intertubes permanently.
Tags and tag clouds are the best means at the moment to manage this deluge of opinions, notes and information. Bloggers that provide tags for each of their posts give their readers a sort of index by which they can search for posts more to the reader's liking. Readers can also add tags to a particular blog through sites like Technorati and Digg, thus taking the information management partially out of the hands of the individual. The tag cloud is perhaps the most critical of information management systems as it is entirely user-run. By placing the definition of online content in the hands of users it allows other users to add to, subtract from or simple learn by looking at the cloud.
What Web 2.0 provides is a self-generating, self-regulating internet. Rather than leave it in the hands of so-called experts, it allows the users, those who are there on the ground, to define and catalog what they see. By doing so, the users make the internet more useful as a tool to perceive the world all while redefining that world. Such paradoxical results are the most exciting part of the Web 2.0 shift and only portend the revolution coming.

Tagging Your Laptop

Dell Goes Urban With Mike Ming's Art House Laptops - Jason Chen @ Gizmodo

Yes, it's a gimmick by a multinational corporation, but it's in response to a gimmick by another multinational corporation so it's a wash. Still, I like the cyberpunk styling of the Dell covers far more than the ultra-thin Apple laptop. It's far more personalized than the impersonal nature of Apple designs. More importantly, it puts a graffiti artist's work out in the mainstream. Perhaps it might even inspire other people to try their hand at the art form.

Dance Practice as Fashion

Urban Elf Clothes--Elfenkleid - Trend Hunter

Okay, I'm sorry, but taking a standard theater actor's or dancer's wardrobe and calling 'elf fashion' is just plain fraud. It's as if some designer is sitting behind their sewing machine, twisting their mustache, and thinking How can I make something so simple and already available but call it a different name and make millions? I swear to god, if I see someone coming down the street dressed like this and they aren't going to dance practice I'll cut their Achillies tendons, the both of them. Let's see them pretend to be a dancer then, eh? Slovenly design does not get points in my book.

The Catacombs of Paris

Photos from the Paris Catacombs - David Pescovitz @ BoingBoing

The eerie beauty of the Paris Catacombs is hard to describe. It's the primary reason why large corporate buildings are relegated to the outskirts of the city, as the catacombs are so vast and have weakened the ground above so much that they can't support those kinds of structures. Personally, I think it's a place fertile with stories, much as the underground in London lead to one of Niel Gaiman's first books Neverwhere. This picture, provided by the National Geographic, is only a small reminder of the wonder and history that lie beneath the streets of Paris.

New Model Army

One of the strangest experiences one can have in the 21st century is to talk to someone who distinctly hates the Internet. I've just had that experience and still stand amazed. They speak of implementing subversive anti-cultural actions and yet hate the Internet. They have a DIY modeling site and yet hate the Internet. And they have a MySpace page yet still hate the Internet. I'm genuinely confused.
It's not that in this day and age everyone should use the intertubes. It's not that there's some cultural stigma for being interweb unfriendly. It's that properly subversive action must use disruptive technologies. I'm not here to defend the internet as it is commonly used. I'm here to state unequivocally that the internet is a massively disruptive technology whose true impact has yet come. Politicians from Howard Dean to Sen. Obama have shown us that the internet can bring about true public financing of political campaigns. Banksy and other artists have shown us how memes can spread in viral campaigns. Writers from William Gibson to Warren Ellis have shown us worlds where your internet persona is as real as your physical one.
The disruptive nature of the internet has been discussed well before the internet was about. Hyperrealism and the discussions of spatial relations during the 1950s and 60s argued that we are creating simulated realities built around ideologies of how space is managed and consumed. Supermodernism has taken this discussion even further by detailing how international architecture has shifted to the recreation of other, authentic spaces and the reproduction of the same spaces everywhere we go. The business man who flies from London to Hong Kong will find the same airline food, the same news kiosks in the airports, the same hotels and even the same landmarks. We travel through spaces but no longer create spaces to linger at.
The point is that simulated realities have already been predicted, have already arrived and have already ingrained themselves into our everyday lives. That the internet makes such simulations obvious does nothing to negate the fakery of reality as it is right now. We do not live in the real world. We live in a world whose meaning and shape is determined by the ideologies that inform our perceptions. Soon the division between our physical persona and our online persona will merge and already has for some people.
More than that though, rejection of mainstream culture does not free you from the shackles of modern ideologies. Modernism, postmodernism and supermodernism each show how tied we are to our perceptions and in turn how our perceptions are tied to how we define our world. The problem is, even if we attempt to radically redefine how we perceive and move through reality we are still trapped within the confines of a genre, subculture or some other form of ideology that stems from the original trunk of culture. Moreover, consumerism has already placed itself ahead of such thinking and caters to the desires of even the most radical of subcultures.
You cannot escape culture and ideology. The human mind is not capable of creating a new culture and ideology in a vaccuum. It will always draw from existing culture. Even the most schzophrenic patients have a framework of perceptions limited by exisitng culture. It's as Wittgenstein said in the Tractatus, that which exists outside of this universe might as well not exist at all because we cannot step outside of this universe. No radical break in culture has ever occurred, only radical disruptions.
The internet is a radical disruption. But like most radical disruptions that have come before, its full impact is not felt for decades after the event. The most radcial of disruptions in history all relate to the speed of informaiton. When information makes a dramatic jump in speed the culture around it typcially undergoes a dramatic jump as well. Unlike information though, you cannot expect millions or billions of people to make that jump at the same speed. It must happen generationally as perceptions and ideology shift to catch up.
The last such jump in informational speed happened during the middle of the 19th century. What came out of that was a quickening of technology and a coalescence of the masses that produced virulant nationalism and a contradictory desire to reproduce a 'purer' past of the nation. Two world wars and the desolation of an entire race of people later we finally caught up to the speed that information was traveling at. Now the internet has come and its jump in speed will require an even more radical shift in perception and ideology.
For this person who hates the internet, I'm sorry to say that the perceptual shift will leave them behind. They will be like the scientist still looking for the æther well after Bohr, Maxwell, and Einstein have come and gone. In essence, they will become an outlier, a space far removed from any nodal point. Their defense that they would rather live in the real world is pointless in the face of the cultural shift. They never were in the real world to begin with. I don't consider this person stupid though. Just someone trying to stake out a cultural position that cannot hold.

Constant Change

The Meaning of Obama - Andrew Sullivan
What The Old Farts Don't Get - Andrew Sullivan

I think I would have to side with the Gen-Yer who says that opting out of politics if Sen. Obama doesn't get the nomination is the smart thing to do. I say that because the kind of politics in practice now cannot sustain itself without a new generation to carry things on. If my generation simply says no to that then the older generations will either have to change or suffer a long and agonizing death. To opt out now is not to opt out permanently. To opt out now is to say that I am not willing to participate in a politics that does nothing but destroy. It is to say an eternal No in the Nietzschean sense.
The thing is, now that Sen. Obama has energized the younger generation of voters by appealing to the best in them, that's what they will begin to expect from their politicians. And when those politicans inevitably fail, these younger generations will look for solutions elsewhere. If conservativism was ever to see the rise of a self-sustaining, non-government oriented generation of voters then this is the time. It all depends on if the old politics prevails over the new politics. You'll have a few generations of voters who are pissed and willing to do something about it. We are willing to act, in other words. Whether it's protesting (and I mean real protest, not culturally-accepted protest), organizing new parties or proffering their own candidates of change, these new generations will prevail because time favors us for the moment. The boomers are a dying breed and so is their politics. Unless the boomers accept the inevitability of change then they lessen their voice in the future until they become silent in the face of our generations. And the same will happen to us with time. It's just the way things work is all.

Banging That Same Drum

Street Justice for You and Me - Spencer Ackerman

It seems like every few months or so we get another reminder of the Kafka-like experience of Gitmo. But it's worth reminding people that such an institution still exists, along with the mindset that created it in the first place. Ackerman sums up the problem of Guantanamo Bay and why it still matters:
You would have to be a fool to give the Bush administration the benefit of the doubt. And you
shouldn’t have to. That’s the point of a justice system — to establish guilt and to vindicate
innocence. Instead we have Guantanamo justice, under which the basic facts of not a single
dispute can be demonstrated compellingly."
It's the issue of innocent until proved guilty that makes Gitmo such a blight on our world image. We have a judicial system, as imperfect as it is, that is intended to deal with these kinds of matters but the Bush administration refuses to use it for those detained at Guantanamo. If, instead, we put these detainees through the judicial system and see how it all shakes out then we can regain some of our moral standing in the world's eyes. And when you are fighting an enemy that can run to any country in the world you need that kind of moral standing to negotiate, pressure and even run military operations in nations that harbor terror suspects.
So until places like Guantanamo are closed and the attitude of indefintely holding suspects without charges is ended, it is worth it to sound like a broken record on the issue. The nation needs that constant reminder or else it disappears from the front pages and even from the news entirely.

More Nazi Analogies

Ben Stein: "science leads you to killing people" - Mark Frauenfelder @ BoingBoing

The stupidity of such statements coming from the likes of Ben Stein is actually staggering. Stein should know better that what the Nazis proffered as science was nothing more than ideology parading as science. But since that is what Stein himself is doing, he can't acknowledge that. Accusing science as leading purely to mass murder is only part of the flimsy argument Stein makes, not to mention the violation of the ancillaries to Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies. Stein consistently shows a misunderstanding of the nature of science (or even what counts as science) all while making a critical strategic error in thinking that by trying to disprove the theories of science he will somehow prove the theories of Intelligent Design. I think it was Richard Feynman who said it best that the only sure way of defeating a theory (or ideology) is to supersede it--to make the theory obsolete by arriving at a better theory that either explains more or does so in a less complicated way or both. But this would require Stein to have a grasp on what science is without letting ideology rule. It's sad to witness the fall of a man of intelligence like Stein. He once had the hard-won respect of my generation and now he has shattered that respect by siding with those who dress up ideology as science.

Diatribe

Merging Fashion and Technology--Vogue: "Let's Get Digital" - Trend Hunter

So this is the post that broke the proverbial camel's back. Of course the people who know me and who I talk to regularly didn't have a problem with me sending it to them. They expect it. We trade links all the time because not all of us regularly read the same blogs. When something of interest comes up I snap off a note to a friend who I think will like it. Sometimes I'll send several posts to one person in a day and sometimes a few days will pass between sharing links. It's just the nature of the world wide wibble.
I probably should have expected a new person to the link club to find my actions strange or overwhelming. But I didn't expect that person to verbally clock me one. That's just frustrating and annoying. It's like trying to help an old lady across the street and then getting beaten with her purse.

Chelsea's Generational Problem

Too Solemn for Her Generation? - Ian Shapira, Washington Post

I have to say, I never felt that Chelsea Clinton was part of my generation. She's only a year older than me, but even so, I think of her as this uber-privileged kid. She's the student who organized the bake-sales for women's shelters, the car-wash for the youth center and spent three summers overseas in various Third World countries 'doing good work'. She'd have a whole cadre of people who hung on her every word and action. And the rest of the student body would have hated her, not because of her work, but because she's using her privilege to advance only her interests. She's boring and while she may have a strong grasp of all the details of policy, she has no head for theory, or rather, she can't see the forest for the trees.
My generation is politically active in a way the previous generations were not. Now with that banal observation out of the way, I can say that Chelsea acts as if she's from the previous generation, from the earliest of the Gen-Xer's or the last of the baby boomers. She Cares Deeply about Important Things and does Good Work, but what the hell does that mean? More importantly, so what? Chelsea comes from a mindset that still believes in American exceptionalism, that merely by being there we can turn things around for a foreign nation. Perhaps it's the cynic in me but sadly, I don't believe in such nonsense.
Contrast Chelsea's experience with that of Sen. Obama's during his time as a community organizer. Yes, the critics will say Sen. Obama was jockeying for a political position and perhaps there is some truth to that, but so what? At least he was consistently on the streets and doing what he could for communities hit upon hard times. It wasn't glamorous or lucrative and it's a difficult path to take to political office. Chelsea, on the other hand, hasn't had to fight for anything in her life. She hasn't had to prove herself and while her support for her mother appears genuine it leaves someone like me feels as if she hasn't shaken off the belief that whatever her parents to must, by virtue, be good. Of course, the rest of my generation has shaken off this belief.
And perhaps that's the key to why Chelsea doesn't appeal to me as a surrogate for her mother. She is a goody-goody as Shapria argues; a goody-goody like a twelve-year-old is, not like someone in their late twenties. And all the talk of how well-spoken she it and how respectful she is only serves to reinforce that image in my mind. I look upon a world beset by problems on all sides and see the complexities in attempting to solve even one of those problems. Not to say that I believe we can't do great good, but I don't believe, as it appears Chelsea does, that our parents can wave a magic wand and everything becomes better. Someone who looks to their parents and atill believes that they can fix all the problems in the world is someone I can't trust because that simply isn't true, even if your parents are a powerful political family.
Chelsea's disconnect from my generation stems from this absolute faith in the abilities of her mother. It's sincere but it's not honest. Again, contrasted against Sen. Obama and his wife and all the negative questions both of them have negotiated to the taboo of asking Chelsea anything too serious and again you see a sheltered twelve-year-old. If Chelsea can't stand on her own and face real political fire then she isn't a trustworthy surrogate but merely a mouthpiece. I, for one, have had enough of mouthpieces.