Slumdog Millionaire award-winning actress Rubina Ali loses home in fire

The young actress who played the girl child in Slumdog Millionaire has lost her home in a large fire that spread through the illegal shanty town in which she lives in north Mumbai. Though she was promised an apartment after the success of the film, I guess they never got it for her?.....which is horror #2 in this story.

Read the BBC article.

Rubina is about 12 now. She was even cast in a Bollywood film after Slumdog. Why isn't someone with power doing more about her life situation? The section on the trust fund is interesting...and possibly quintessentially Western sketchiness.

TV: Wolverines are more awesome than you think.

"The wolverine is perhaps the least known mammal in North America and one of the least studied large carnivores in the world"
--Wolverine: Chasing the Phantom


Great episode of PBS's Nature.
Who knew actual wolverines were so interesting? They're like a dog plus a bear. They do not, however, have adamantium claws. What makes up for this reality is the fact that you will get to watch a full-grown man narrate the 1st-person experience of a wolverine :)

Watch it free at hulu or at PBS.com.

Exciting news in the world of Sci-fi television

Warning: shameless geekery and fandom ahead.

1) Firefly:
As a result of the SyFy network deciding to re-air the original season of Firefly, new life juice has been injected into the Bring-Firefly-Back movement. Who knows where this particular tributary of the river will lead--the organizers seem to be quite realistic about the likelihood of new episodes of Firefly starting up. But, I will continue to hold strong hope that the Browncoats will succeed in the end, as they certainly should. I think we are in a completely different cultural place from where we were in 2002. We are in a place of accelerated intersectionality. We are beginning to almost fetishize the blatant mash-up of genres. Mmmmm...delicious.
The Facebook Group and
Help Nathan Buy Firefly


2) Star Trek:
Netflix made a deal with CBS to offer ALL GENERATIONS of Star Trek for instant streaming. THANK THE GODS.

A genuine first reaction:

why i write...TED: Sheena Iyengar on The Art of Choosing

this video is not only excellent, entertaining, and addressing some of the most interesting conflicts in culture(s), it articulates a core reason why i write. i grew up in a house with parents that represented diametrically opposing cultural views on choice and the nature of the individual...so instead of choosing a camp, i became a poet and a buddhist sympathizer--always inhabiting the borerlands.

Analogy as the Core of Cognition

here is Douglas Hofstadter on "Analogy as the Core of Cognition"
from the Stanford Presidential Lecture Series in the Humanities and Arts.

sit down with some fruit and coffee/pizza and beer, and settle in for the hour. it's worth it.

Human + iPhone = Cyborg

Check out this Wired.com article about how an American filmmaker was crushed and stranded under Haitian earthquake rubble for nearly 3 days...and survived thanks to his iPhone.

Man Buried in Haiti Rubble Uses iPhone to Treat Wounds, Survive

TED Talks: Sendhil Mullainathan

Your mind lies--or just gets confused--in the final mile of a long journey.  This is an opportunity.

Dawn Dish Soap Commercial--a response

I was work multi-tasking, with the tv on in the background, and this commercial came on:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUkOgE4K7j4

and it evoked in me some very strong feelings.

1. It's a smart use of fuzzy animals. Watching videos of cute and cuddly creatures is oh so popular. Many blogs prove.

2. Saving animals from oil spills is a very particular aleviation of human guilt--if anything is a sounding signal of our materialistic human greed, it's oil. Dawn helps you save animals and alliviate your guilt.

3. All this is somehow revolting.

I was initially revolted by the use of ducklings to sell dish soap...

but I have to respect the smart marketing. I'm going to check up on whatever marketing numbers I can find for that commercial.

Thoughts? Feelings? Responses?

Why Social Media Matters--a video for your viewing pleasure

My friend and colleague, the social media maven Kerianne Mellott posted this video on her blog today.  Because of my job (and general marriage to the internet), I end up spending a lot of time explaining why social media matters.

Here are the numbers.  Watch it. love it.

Poetry in the Morning--Session 1

Here is the first session of my Youtube project Poetry in the Morning where I read work that inspires me, straight out of bed, with maybe a little coffee in my system.

Poetry in the Morning--Session 1: "Switching" from Juliana Spahr's Fuck You--Aloha--I Love You

Harry Potter v. Star Trek--the epic battle begins

one of the things i can’t get over, after a lifetime of star trek…why are their photos normal? normal frames. normal static 2-d images.

in Harry Potter v. Star Trek:

HP -1
ST-0

...and the battle begins.

Hire Me Now

Someone offer me an awesome writing/researching/house sitting/social media'ing/landscape designing/meditation instructing/organization coaching/editing/curriculum building/kid or dog training/house staging/marketing job. in the San Francisco area, or telecommute.

I'm awesome, and I have solid evidence.

kcerda@gmail.com

Getchyo New Media Art On--M.A.T. show at UC-Santa Barbara

I left work early yesterday to drive up to Santa Barbara and see the end of year show for the Media Art & Technology program at UCSB. It was awesomely held at the Calfornia Nanosystems Institute. I went to support my partner in crime's boyfriend and his work...but I also wanted to check out the work coming out of the program since I recently finished my time at the Center for Integrated Media at CalArts...competing programs and all.

What I saw was a lot of concern with the z-axis. Every program has its trends. At CIM this year it was about looking at the differences between metaphor and metonymy, and the issues surrounding highly participatory (often Relational) art. The MAT boys (and like 3 girls) were all really interested in negotiating virtual space. Some of the work was interesting--Andres Burbano's new take on the camera obscura for example--but largely it fell flat for me. A lot of the pieces would have been better had the tracking been tighter, the sensor delays shorter, etc...but I was a bit bored.

Karl Yerke's hard disk reclamation work was strong. He takes objects whose carbon footprints have already been spent, re-works them, and turns them into tools for music. Interesting outcomes, and satisfying interface.

I got to check out the Allosphere, and talked with JoAnn Kuchera-Morin who recently spoke at TED, which is a life goal for me (TED, not talking to her). It was a nice merging of my current world (art, new media) and my hopefully world-to-be, NeuroPsych.

Soon I'm going to have to post on the far more interesting part of this trip--the sociological craziness. The smell of douche/tool was thick in the air, but more on that later.

Football(soccer) + poetry = the Brits are rockin' it

The place of poetry in Western culture is a tricky thing. Here in the States we are probably more hostile towards the genre(s) than anywhere else. Poetry is for sissies (or at least girls), poetry is boring or too hard to understand--these are so often the assumptions i come across when i mention poetry to non-writers (ok let's face it, also when talking with some strictly-prose writers too).

i think this is a bunch of regurgitated bullshit. Most people who say these sorts of things haven't read more than a few Shakespeare sonnets and some Robert*vomit*Frost...i'm sorry to all the Frost fans, it's not that he was without skill and importance, i just can't get on board...


i found this video on sexartandpolitics' tumblr.
football + poetry video

The moral of the story: real men read poetry. What dude isn't going to score by busting out with some Rilke or Rumi? C'mon...

And for your reading pleasure i offer you this small list of links to poems i dig.

The Ballad of the Lonely Masturbator--Anne Sexton

Letter To the Woman Who Stopped Writing Me Back--Jeffrey McDaniel

The Quiet World--Jeffrey McDaniel

Book of the Things I Put Down My Bra--Elena Georgiou

After Rothko--Michelle Naka Pierce

A motley band of poetry missionaries...that's my next plan.

(I Love You M.I.T. Press...)

university presses....when they're endangered, we're all fucked.

here's an article from Inside Higher Ed

The Changing World of Slam Poetry

The New York Times:
Is Slam in Danger of Going Soft?

Establishing boundaries in the development of the information society.

Robert Darnton on Google & the Future of Books
from the New York Review of Books.

The beginning meanders through the Enlightenment way too long, but it eventually picks up speed.

My uncle baffles me sometimes…

Disclaimer: though this will sound like criticism, I actually mean this to be more of a neutral set of observations. Like watching beetles in the wild.

My uncle has lived in West L.A. for 30 years; he’s a liberal Hollywood type, well educated, well traveled. But, at the end of the day he is a baby-boomer man from the South, raised by a father who was kind of a selfish dick.

I am often surprised by things he says… for example, that feminists are anti-sex. His wife and daughters are obviously feminists, and none of them seem to have any sort of hang-ups about sex. Or his continued hope-in-vain that the internet’s affect on all media will just be a passing phase—slash—the internet is destroying the economy. Or, “My friend ___ is coming over to watch some football on the HD. So, don’t get scared if you hear us shouting.” As if I would assume there were gang fights breaking out on the mean streets of Westwood.

My uncle often takes whatever he wants with this sense of entitlement that I can really only characterize as old(ish) rich white male. (This isn’t white man hate. I love many rich white men. Many of them do amazing things on this planet.) He doesn’t do it out of malice, or any kind of special selfishness. It just doesn’t even occur to him to do otherwise (I should pause at this point to say that he is, by no means, a master of the nuances of emotion, though he is a really gifted big picture guy). If I didn’t know him, I think I would often be offended by these sorts of behaviors, but I do know him to be an upstanding and well-meaning guy, so I’m mostly just fascinated and want to do anthropological studies on him.

I started thinking about writing about all this because I was doing laundry. The basket I always use is a little bigger than the others because I only get the time to do laundry every couple of weeks (i have a lot of clothes…) I had pulled his laundry out of the dryer so I could insert mine. I left the larger basket sitting on top of the washer. His clothes were piled into the little basket. It all stayed in a pile, but it was more than should be in that little basket. I came back 30 min. later and his clothes were now in the big basket, space left over, and he had left me the small one.

I know that this wasn’t a “fuck you”…he just wanted the bigger basket, “a basket fit for a man,” I’m sure he’d say. And then I think about how it would never even occur to me to seize the basket someone else is obviously using. Who does that kind of thing?! The answer: a space cadet rich white baby-boomer man from the South.

Aliens in their habitats--nothing more fascinating.

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.