San Diego

Here I am in San Diego, and I realize how long it's been since I posted. I'm posting some photos on my flickr site. Enjoy

LibraryThing | Catalog your books online

I f'ing luuv LibraryThing. I have cataloged all the books in my office. You can do up to 200 books for free. I'll be buying a life membership ($25) very soon. Check out my collection here.

Two Great Ideas

These great ideas were originally posted at one of my favorite new blogs, Rule the Web (named after the book by the same name by Mark Frauenfelder of one my other faves, Boing Boing)

Idea 1: Free voicemail from AOL, called AIM Phoneline. It's a free service if you settle for incoming calls. If you don't want to give out your main phone #, it's great. My number is 864-335-6221. Here's the link. You'll need an AOL or AIM (?) account to get the number and check your messages online, but it's free.

Idea 2: Using Twitter. I have a twitter i.d. (steplow) but it's pretty useless without a network of folks to interact with. Mark has a list of ideas for Twitter's actual real-life usefulness here. Let me know if you sign up.

Cheers!

home

I would live in one of these.

Check out the cozy living area:

101 Greatest George Carlin Quotes

Love the George Carlin. One of the first 8-Tracks I ever bought was one of his concerts. Yes, I said 8-Track.101 Greatest George Carlin Quotes

Ordinarily I hate these things, but:

Imus and hypocrisy

Salon.com has a selection of African American culture critics on the Imus issue. If you want something that's really worth reading on the matter, try this link. You may have to deal with advertising unless you subscribe to Salon already. One quotation from Greg Tate, author of Everything but the Burden: What White People are Taking from Black Culture: "Yet do I marvel at the power of hip-hop, still so marginal in American culture as a whole, if we use the minimal radio, television, film, news and even Internet space it occupies as a guide, to be the frame through which we will now attempt to grapple with the nation's racist-, sexist-, greed- and gossip-ridden soul."

From Joan Morgan, apropos of the issue of "where's the criticism of rap from the black community," as if Jesse and Al were the only recognized authorities capable of speaking for and to the black community: "Hip-hop has always had its own critics -- writers, scholars, activists, feminists, filmmakers like myself, Kevin Powell, Bakari Kitwana, Elizabeth Mendez Berry, Mark Anthony Neal, Tracy Sharpley-Whiting, Rosa Clemente, Byron Hurt, Tim'm West, MC Lyte, Yo-Yo, Davey D, Moya Bailey, Michael Eric Dyson, Greg Tate -- who have been dedicated to doing the incredibly gratifying, hands-on and unsexy underground work of critical self-examination and consciousness-raising in the last 20 years. Our motivation? We love hip-hop enough to hold it to its highest standards." How many of those people have even the most educated and erudite white people heard of? Other than MC Lyte, Dyson, and Tate (whose name I didn't know until connecting it with his book), I certainly hadn't heard them.

From the aforementioned Dyson: "Long before the Imus affair, there had been great concern in black quarters about the harmful impact of gangsta rap's lethal misogyny and its glorification of violence. But not until white bodies are at stake do black bodies become relevant or noticed -- and only then as a prop for a larger mainstream agenda, even if that is to prove how harmful black pop culture is and, by contrast, how even a powerful, arrogant white man like Imus can't escape its influence."

The significance of this discussion is that even enlightened media watchers like myself really don't know what's going on in black American outside of what the media is telling us. If we don't believe what the media tells us about the Bush administration (for example), why in the hell should we believe what they tell us about black America? Sort of a double standard, isn't it?

OUTRAGEOUS

Think Progress: Florida Legislature Forces University To Idolize Jeb Bush

More Battlestar, Season One Complete

Some thoughts on Battlestar: Galactica, Season 1. First of all, this show continues to disturb me. The moral ambiguity of which I wrote some time back (shortly after starting the series, in fact) continues, though it’s more clear who the “good guys” are—or at least it was until the cliffhanger. One of my friends (jec, who loaned me the series) asked about the significance of the fact that the humans are polytheistic while the Cylons are monotheistic. For a while, I thought it represented the impact of Judaism and Christianity in Europe and Asia Minor, where polytheistic religions gave way to the power of monotheism, even though it took a while. I gave up on this toward the end of these last two episodes because the series seemed to be heading in another direction. Some of this theme remains, however, in the form of the Moses-like Dr. Baltar, whose purpose appears to be to bring the Cylon plan, or God’s will, into fruition.

The symbolism of the Cylon-human “hybrid” has escaped me for the moment, though of course there are various pop-cultural references (The X-Files, Demon Seed) that come to mind. The Cylons, at least the female ones, feel love, as well as other emotions, and the fact that they’re genetically human—or close enough to reproduce with human—indicates something more than the standard alien vs. man trope that is common to the genre. The Cylons are us: they feel the same emotions, they have bone and blood, they can procreate with humans. But they are at the same time something else: born of computers, they are copies of each other. They also appear to be networked somehow.

I’m planning to rent season 2 tomorrow. . . .

My favorite Fark headline in a while

"Kerkorian offers $4.5B to buy moribund Chrysler. Unfortunately, what Chrysler needs right now is Kevorkian, not Kerkorian"

Here's a link to the CNN story.

Here's Fark.

American Freedom Agenda

The American Freedom Agenda is a group founded by (mostly) former Republicans who have grown disillusioned with the strategies and tactics of the current administration regarding prosecuting the War on Terror. Specifically, they have a 10-point agenda calling for limitations on secret evidence, restoration of habeus corpus, and basically the restoration and recuperation of the Constitutional principles upon which this country was founded.

George Bush's favorite historian. - By Jacob Weisberg - Slate Magazine

Truly worrisome. George Bush shouldn't read so much.

Glenn Greenwald - Salon

Greenwald says "federal power is enlisted, and endlessly expanded, in service of an agenda of aggressive militarism abroad, liberty-infringement domestically, and an overarching sense of moralistic certitude and exceptionalism. This movement is neither 'liberal' nor 'conservative' as those terms are understood in their abstract form, but instead, is radical in its attempt to fundamentally re-define the American government and the functions it serves."

Greenwald's right most of the time, he writes well, and he uses evidence. The entry for today is but one example of his thoughtful thoroughness.

Salon should make him free to all, but if you don't have a Salon.com account, you'll have to view an ad.

10,000 Reasons Civilization is Doomed

10,000 Reasons Civilization is Doomed Have you seen this? Have any to add?

The man behind "Battlestar Galactica" | Salon Arts & Entertainment

The man behind "Battlestar Galactica" | Salon Arts & Entertainment

This is an interview with Ronald D. Moore about the show. I'm still in season 1, and have read numerous spoilers already. I can't wait to get to season 2. Anyway, as always with Salon.com, you either subscribe or you have to view advertisements to read. Cheers.

Popular Culture and Moral Ambiguity

Battlestar Galactica is a troubling program. I've just started watching the first season upon the recommendation of my friend jec. The moral ambiguity is something one doesn't see too often on network t.v. In the first episode (following the pilot/miniseries), the fleeing humans must decide if (possibly) killing 1300 people to save 47k is the right decision, and the decision must be made in scant seconds before another attack by the Cylons. The show's tone strikes me as somewhat supportive of the moral ambiguity of the war on terror. How many innocents are worth the lives of x citizens?

In the pilot, when Dr. Gaius Baltar fingers a smarmy ass as a Cylon because he's afraid of getting turned in, it's truly abhorent, yet the guy actually turns out to be a Cylon--does this mean that the people we have locked up in Guantanomo actually are terrorists? Or is it even worse?: that since we don't know, we must lock up certain suspected people because their discomfort could mean the safety of many more.

It's interesting to me that pop culture seems to be moving in that direction, with shows like BG, 24, etc.--even Heroes--all inhabiting areas of shadow and uncertainty. Of course, these shows also have (relatively) clearly-defined "good guys" as well, in keeping with the Western tradition of having a protagonist for whom you can cheer.

Glenn Greenwald - Salon

Glenn Greenwald - Salon

This article says a lot about the authoritarian tendencies in the American right wing. If you're not a member of salon.com, you'll have to watch an ad to view the article, but it's worth it.

p.s. If there's anyone out there, other than jec, reading this blog with anything approaching regularity (defined as coming back a second time), let me know.

All for now.