You can dress your kid like a fundamentalist Mormon

The pictures of prairie children...the "teen" dresses...there is just no end to my fascination with the FLDS.

fldsDress.com

Dolphin mass suicide

26 dolphins were found beached on the Cornwall coast. Because their lungs and stomachs were filled with mud and debris, some scientists are thinking it may have been a mass suicide. This Guardian article, despite its headline, leaves the issue pretty open-ended.

Dolphins are one of the animals believed to be most similar to humans emotionally. They exhibit complex communication strategies with each other and with humans, and are able to negotiate situations that require a good deal of higher order thinking.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this idea of dolphins committing suicide en masse, especially in such a brutal way.

Apparently it's popular in Texas...

Drank is the new "anti-energy drink" designed specifically for the hip hop community. It's grape flavored, it's spiked with a bunch of herbs and compounds to mellow you out...it's actually called Drank! On the can (see here in this Village Voice article...thanks Syd!) is something that looks like a cough syrup bottle...or as we here on the 3rd coast like to call it, a sizzurp bottle. There is no attempt to obfuscate what's going on with this product;
and that makes me appreciate it even more.

Charles Babbage's 8,000 parts

Charles Babbage's  Difference Engine #2 has been built (see: 1849 calculating machine; it's like a 19th century hand-cranked computer...très sexi....)  

Wired offers us a little video about it here.

It's on display until May 2009 at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, about 45 minutes from San Francisco proper.

Libraries are sexi...

Recently, a friend was telling me that if she does ever decide to get married, she wants to get married in a big library because libraries are her equivalent of a cathedral. Now, this friend often says brilliant things, but this tidbit on wedding locations seemed particularly delicious. People get married in all kinds of lame places (beaches, prisons, bars), why not a gorgeous library surrounded by the great texts of our species? Libraries are locations of a particular kind of atemporality which seems particularly appropriate for a ceremony that is suppose to bind you to another for the rest of time.

And then I happened upon this post from The Nonist.
Libraries are hot. Prepare yourself for some hot hot smut...

Modern Love

this is really excellent.

Medical Marijuana may finally get the feds off its ass.

It's refreshing to hear your presidential candidate...any candidate, really....say that going after medical marijuana is not a priority because there are REAL problems on which to spend our resources. Though the Bush administration seems to think that busting growers supplying the granny glaucoma market is just as important as stamping out violent crime and terrorism, you can tell from Barack's and the H-bomb's tones that they find it all pretty ridiculous.

It's this kind of rationalism that brings me small sprigs of hope. Now, the fact that the simple use of logic has become noteworthy...well that's a different issue.

(Warning: this post occurred before coffee) The Brits are bringing sexy back...

I know it seems a confusing statement, perhaps; they are, after all, British. This is not to say that Brits can't be sexy, it's just that I don't normally think of them as a bunch who "bring the sexy," so to speak. That is a job I normally leave to the French, their better dressed and better fed neighbors. The design for the new UK coins is out and here's what they look like.

I'm pleased with the choice. The designer of these new coins is Matthew Dent, a 26 year old Welsh man, proving once again that it's the young who seem best equipped to bring the sexy, especially to the Royal Mint, of all unsexy places. (There is, of course, a cut-off for this age statement. Below 20 or 21 one starts to encounter frighteningly unsexy things in the land of adolescent tastes.)

Hooray for the UK and its hot new coinage. Now, the issue of these coins still being in Pounds and not Euros is a whole other issue...

Upside: no lions

Maasai warrior's diary documenting his experiences of being in London for the first time for the London Marathon

"Everyone took photos of us, not the soldiers and horses. We are looking at one culture, and everyone is looking at us."

In looking for the whites of their eyes...

What exists in the intimate mingling of art and science is truly amazing.
At M.I.T. they're visualizing viruses. It's interesting to consider the question "What does the trojan fucking up my computer actually look like?" The fact that this work is being commissioned by internet security professionals as a way of showing the customer what they're up against also speaks to the ever-increasing visual nature of our culture.

Icons are what we know best.

And more strange things occur thanks to our gluttony

Chile's magical disappearing lakes; river tsunamis.

TextMap

I sort of tripped on this TextMap weblocation while in the process of more nefarious internet activities. I love the concept of this (perhaps it is a widespread approach I've simply missed...) This would be a great way to build a tightly controlled search engine for children (dibs on this idea).

Arbeit macht frei...

The modern running of the Olympic torch from Greece to the hosting country began with the 1936 Berlin Olympics; yes, this act of transcultural peace & pride came to us compliments of the Third Reich. Sometimes the sheer literary quality of this life is so filling you just can't help but chuckle at it.

I am generally rather suspicious of French President, Nicolas Sarkozy. To me he is a slippery character with a little too much hunger for status and wealth. Not to mention that he's pissing off his own people by messing with their laissez-faire pleasure-is-a-humanRight culture. BUT this being said, I think he's making an interesting move on the China v. Tibet front (the French do love their Buddhists.)

BBC reports that France's human rights minister, Rama Yade said:

"'Three conditions are indispensable for him to go,' she said.

'An end to violence against the population and the release of political prisoners, investigation of the events in Tibet and the opening of dialogue with the Dalai Lama.

'These discussions should be about the recognition of Tibetan autonomy and the spiritual, religious and cultural identity of Tibetans.'"

Bold; I like it. I wonder if they'll really follow through. Personally, I hope a full boycott happens. It's economically terrifying, but the fact that we're nearing the end of the first decade of the 21st century and situations like what is currently happening in Tibet are happening all the time as the world sits by and stares at their feet...it's atrocious.

They're targeting monks for heaven's sake. These are people who have dedicated their lives to the practice of nonviolence and loving compassion. They have taken a vow to return to this hamster wheel of existence until all living beings are liberated from the toils of reincarnation and can reach Nirvana. I'm almost embarassed for the Chinese government.

Google puts an end to late college papers

April First is a truly underrated holiday.

Gmail Custom Time

Metacommentary: revisting the I

After further consideration I've certainly decided that a strict journalistic I is incredibly boring; there is nothing truly interesting to do with that body of language, and it's a flat and ineffectual voice in which to discuss events. It was an interesting thought process, but no. It borders on an affront to my aesthetics, so i'm over it.

in computer time

(I love a good Woot-Off; it makes the hours so much more exciting.)

Sidenote: Whitney Biennial

Right now @ the Whitney Biennial 18 out of 81 artists are associated with CalArts.



Fantastic!

metacommentary: the I

With this particular blog I'm interested in exploring the typical norms of blogging, or the act when it isn't largely for personal consumption. What I keep encountering in my posting, or pondering of posting, is this line that seems to exist between the public and private spheres. The role of the author in a typical current events/culture blog can range from simply regurgitating straight facts and articles, to an ongoing opinions column with little reference to the outside media. Somewhere on the more conservative side of that continuum is what is interesting to me at the moment.

But, where does the border region exist? I come from a writing tradition that engages heavily with the author's subjectivity, both through playing with personal languages and through utter negation of an author's presence. The I is comfortably present within many blogs, but it's a very formal and detached journalistic I.

I have to admit that there is also, for me, the presence of a subtle self-consciousness that arises from the fact that I am a woman. Self-reflection & non-linear insertion as opposed to a more distant self-reflexivity occurring in the serving of facts, are elements often associated with "feminine writing." And historically this is a way of engaging with language that is less valued in male-dominated circles.

Point:
It's interesting to navigate these terrains. Fresh topographies can bring out the most generative (internal)discourses.

Everything's better in French

Perhaps one of the biggest ways overlapping cultures influence each other over time is through the assimilation of each other's words. About 40% of English is derived from French. (This along with the Norman conquest in 1066 are my favorite things to think about when confronted with Francophobia.)

The French government is working hard to single out English words that have seeped into French culture (le mail, le spam, le cowboy) and then replace them with truly French words. The post linked below offers a nice little discussion of this initiative, the French language, and the realities intersecting it past and present. Personally, I got a nice little chuckle at the part describing how tact is originally from French.

It's a long post, but really worth the investment:
Charles Bremner on the eve of International Day of the French-speaking World.

Spring comes early

Good news: better tasting wines
Bad news: mass species starvation

Things are about to get really really bad in Tibet

Beijing seals off Tibet as deadline for protesters passes

And this is how China Daily sees it

The total blunder that is our presence in Iraq

From the NYT, yet another example of the Bush administration's complete inability to think things through (poor Colin Powell...):

Fateful choice on Iraq Army Bypassed Debate

Dubai's "The World"

This is an interesting time of transition for us as we move towards greater and greater acceptance of the fact that the planet is no longer so pleased with us, and the inevitable global spanking we're going to receive has already begun. I truly believe (and I think there are many with me on this) that a complete restructuring of the ways in which we interact with our environment is absolutely necessary right now.

"The World" off the coast of Dubai is a real estate development of an amazing magnitude; it's made up of 300 artificial islands that together form the shape of the world map. The developers have taken open water, piled a bunch of rock and sand on top of each other until land stands above the water, and then they reinforce the perimeters. The rhetorical games Nakheel, the project's developer, is playing on the topic of environmental impact are almost funny, claiming that they are in fact helping the marine life of the area. More space for coral reefs to develop? What is going to happen to all these new reefs when the islands and all their waterfront propery are populated by the world's richest people? An article in The Economist poses a great questions:

And focusing on what goes on under the water risks ignor[ing] a bigger question:
where is all the fresh water for this paradise coming from? Dubai is famous for a number of things; not among them is a plentiful supply of water. So where do they get water for the swimming pools, spas, gardens, dishwashers and hotel laundries? Most of it comes from desalination plants, which expend a lot of energy and release plenty of carbon dioxide.

Brilliant. It's wonderful that there are now more people choosing the bike over the car, and buying their food more consciously. But, severe ecological negligence like The World project must stop. Nakheel (and those who benefit from them) is like an ostrich with its head in the sand. With government/scientific reports popping up everyday warning of impending global water shortages, building another island oasis off the coast of the Arabian Desert is the last thing we need to be doing.

Feminism in the North

Swedish Prostitutes

Re: the red pill

unclicked links = blue
clicked links = red

Quick! Prepare the hemlock...

Thanks to Ron Silliman's blog I've happened upon two interesting tidbits from The Toronto Star.

First, the director of the Leo Baeck Jewish Day school in Toronto was found to have graphic poems on his personal website (oh no!), and the parents of these k-8 students want him sacked. The more enlightened of the bunch say it's not about the existence of the pieces, it's that he chose to put them out into the public sphere.

Second, the naughty poems article built on the precedent of drama going down at Ryerson University where a freshman moderated (but did not originally start) a Facebook study group for his chemistry class. Specific homework tips passed about the group by its various members, according to the university, counts as cheating so they want to expel the group's moderator. The focus on the group, in practice, was not giving others final solutions to problems, but to brainstorm approaches to the problems. Which brings me to today's analogy du jour...

social networking sites : my generation(and on) : :
rock 'n roll : the BabyBoomers

Their rules are shifty, they challenge many social norms...and they lead to sex&drugs? They're an opportunity for dark characters to get their hands on our virginal youth. They're obviously the devil's playground.

The issue of the educator and his poems is a tricky one. I understand it could be disturbing to be the parent of a 6 year old and then see poems about sex and murder written by the person in charge of your kid's education, but it's completely unreasonable to expect someone to censor their creative work because they also work at a school. The argument that he should have known better than to put them out in public raises issues of ownership of private spaces. Do these parents own who this Prashker guy is outside of school? Do they own the personas he portrays in the metaverse? Why does visceral expression mean you're automatically unfit to deal with kids? All of these things also seem to be dependent on the assumption that a human being is a stable and coherent self. It's hard to accept that maybe the really nice and genuine guy who waves at you when you come to pick up your progeny is also the guy who wrote misogynistic murder scenes, and that those two elements really can live together in a single person in a totally healthy and organic way.

These are questions that often pass through my mind as someone who wants to teach and as someone who also writes "challenging" work. It's actions like those of these parents that keeps a lot of artists relegated to some kind of fringe status in the "productive world." If you engage with certain ideas/discourses on a regular basis and dare to not shamefully hide it away, you pose a threat to the very stability of society(?) You're unsuitable to be around the young? For some, simply unsuitable.

Trapped in the ring.

I was in a workshop a few days ago, and the drone of pointless comments being bounced around the table pushed me out of my seat and floating off into space. After visiting several possible scenarios of the small events of the next few months, making a mental list of items to Ebay, and a few not-so-deep thoughts on the history of pen construction, my awareness phased back in to the conversation right as someone said, "...one ring..." I had zero idea what the topic was, I can't even say that I was certain we were still talking about the same person's work, but being still half off somewhere in the ether, i jumped in without missing a beat and said aloud, "to rule them all, one ring to find them..."

Everyone froze in silence; I didn't finish the line. (really the messed up part of this story is that there were only two people in a room of 15 who vaguely got the reference. The Rings are straight up canonical; what kind of writers are these people?)

The point?
The point is that the infiltration of media into the meta regions of my un/conscious mind is something that never ceases to amaze me. That my brain will trigger mouth muscles and chest muscles, will pair symbols with semantic content to expel a series of sounds that somehow compliment another set of sounds...all done absent of conscious will, it's a little disconcerting.

Our interactions with the world (whatever that is) are increasingly mediated by devices. But, direct interfacing seems less culturally dangerous than all the things announcing little soundbytes into the air, flashing messages at us as we pass by. It is the repeated passive consumption of letting Fellowship of the Ring play in the background while working/cleaning/sewing that allowed my brain to spit out the corresponding part simply at the mention of "one ring," with essentially no conscious thought or choice around it. We are biological creatures (mostly), and it's amazing just how mutable that makes us.

The ultimate male...

picture it:

Captain Picard + President Bartlet = Picartlet

Getting your download on: more questions than answers

I live in Los Angeles, I’m a writing student, and my uncle is a screenwriter; the topic of the WGA strike is a pretty ubiquitous one in my day-to-day life. One of the big issues the Writers Guild is wrestling with is compensation for digital downloads.

Every few weeks the Uncle and I start talking about the strike and it inevitably leads to a throw down on whether illegal downloading will eventually be wiped out forever. He says surely it will, I say ehhh not so much. He is one of these people (and I love many of them) who thinks that Free Market Capitalism will always eventually correct itself and remain the best economic option we have. (this statement is pretty loaded, but i'm leaving it there for now all on its own.)

Should the experience of art be limited by your financial resources? As the supposed land of milk and honey, is it right for us to say you can only be enriched by certain arts if you have the disposable income for it? Is this the best way to cultivate art and ideas within our culture? Does this simply contain certain discourses within particular groups/realms of power?

I personally feel one should not have to choose between good music and going to the doctor. But, I also think artists should be compensated for their work. It seems to me that a big part of the problem is the structure of the system that exists between me and that artist.

In an imperfect world, what is the best balance between these factors?

A Beginning Point

FasterNewerShinierSmootherSmaller.PrettierPackaging.

No need to leave your car. No need to speak to the neighbors.

Multiple things, all at once, always.