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GOP and Feinstein join to fulfill Obama's demand for renewed warrantless eavesdropping
by Glenn Greenwald
The Guardian
The California Democrat's disgusting rhetoric recalls the worst of Dick Cheney while advancing Obama's agenda.
To this day, many people identify mid-2008 as the time they realized what type of politician Barack Obama actually is. Six months before, when seeking the Democratic nomination, then-Sen. Obama unambiguously vowed that he would filibuster "any bill" that retroactively immunized the telecom industry for having participated in the illegal Bush NSA warrantless eavesdropping program.
But in July 2008, once he had secured the nomination, a bill came before the Senate that did exactly that - the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 - and Obama not only failed to filibuster as promised, but far worse, he voted against the filibuster brought by other Senators, and then voted in favor of enacting the bill itself. That blatant, unblinking violation of his own clear promise - actively supporting a bill he had sworn months earlier he would block from a vote - caused a serious rift even in the middle of an election year between Obama and his own supporters.
Critically, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 did much more than shield lawbreaking telecoms from all forms of legal accountability. Jointly written by Dick Cheney and then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller, it also legalized vast new, sweeping and almost certainly unconstitutional forms of warrantless government eavesdropping.
In doing so, the new 2008 law gutted the 30-year-old FISA statute that had been enacted to prevent the decades of severe spying abuses discovered by the mid-1970s Church Committee: by simply barring the government from eavesdropping on the communications of Americans without first obtaining a warrant from a court. Worst of all, the 2008 law legalized most of what Democrats had spent years pretending was such a scandal: the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program secretly implemented by George Bush after the 9/11 attack. In other words, the warrantless eavesdropping "scandal" that led to a Pulitzer Prize for the New York Times reporters who revealed it ended not with investigations or prosecutions for those who illegally spied on Americans, but with the Congressional GOP joining with key Democrats (including Obama) to legalize most of what Bush and Cheney had done. Ever since, the Obama DOJ has invoked secrecy and standing doctrines to prevent any courts from ruling on whether the warrantless eavesdropping powers granted by the 2008 law violate the Constitution.
The 2008 FISA law provided that it would expire in four years unless renewed. Yesterday, the Senate debated its renewal. Several Senators - Democrats Jeff Merkley and Ron Wyden of Oregon along with Kentucky GOP Senator Rand Paul - each attempted to attach amendments to the law simply to provide some modest amounts of transparency and oversight to ensure that the government's warrantless eavesdropping powers were constrained and checked from abuse.
Just consider how modest these amendments were. Along with Democratic Sen. Mark Udall of Colorado, Sen. Wyden has spent two years warning Americans that the government's eavesdropping powers are being interpreted (by secret court decisions and the Executive Branch) far more broadly than they would ever suspect, and that, as a result, these eavesdropping powers are being applied far more invasively and extensively than is commonly understood.
As a result, Wyden yesterday had two amendments: one that would simply require the NSA to give a general estimate of how many Americans are having their communications intercepted under this law (information the NSA has steadfastly refused to provide), and another which would state that the NSA is barred from eavesdropping on Americans on US soil without a warrant. Merkley's amendment would compel the public release of secret judicial rulings from the FISA court which purport to interpret the scope of the eavesdropping law on the ground that "secret law is inconsistent with democratic governance"; the Obama administration has refused to release a single such opinion even though the court, "on at least one occasion", found that the government was violating the Fourth Amendment in how it was using the law to eavesdrop on Americans.
But the Obama White House opposed all amendments, demanding a "clean" renewal of the law without any oversight or transparency reforms. Earlier this month, the GOP-led House complied by passing a reform-free version of the law's renewal, and sent the bill Obama wanted to the Senate, where it was debated yesterday afternoon.
The Democratic Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, took the lead in attacking Wyden, Merkley, Udall and Paul with the most foul Cheneyite accusations, and demanded renewal of the FISA law without any reforms. And then predictably, in virtually identical 37-54 votes, Feinstein and her conservative-Democratic comrades joined with virtually the entire GOP caucus (except for three Senators: Paul, Mike Lee and Dean Heller) to reject each one of the proposed amendments and thus give Obama exactly what he demanded: reform-free renewal of the law (while a few Democratic Senators have displayed genuine, sustained commitment to these issues, most Democrats who voted against FISA renewal yesterday did so symbolically and half-heartedly, knowing and not caring that they would lose as evidenced by the lack of an attempted filibuster).
To Read the Rest of the Commentary
31 Aralık 2012 Pazartesi
Chris Calabrese: Vast New Spying Program Was Started in Secret on a Bogus Pretext
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Vast New Spying Program Was Started in Secret on a Bogus Pretext
By Chris Calabrese
ACLU
The Wall Street Journal today published (alternate link) an in-depth review of a new, relatively unknown program run by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). Although we have been warning about the dangers of the program for months, and I testified before Congress about the issue in July, the Journal’s story conveys how controversial the program was even inside the government. It also describes the broad scope of new authority the government is granting itself.
As the Journal reports, under new guidelines issued by the Attorney General back in March,
The program is striking in so many ways. Innocent people can be investigated and their data kept for years. It can be shared with foreign governments. All of this in service of not just terrorism investigations but also investigations of future crimes. In effect, the U.S. government is using information it gathers for its ordinary business to turn its own citizens into the subjects of terrorism investigations.
Meanwhile, all of this is supposed to be against the law. The Privacy Act of 1974 says that information collected by the federal government for one purpose is not supposed to be used for another. However, agencies are attempting to circumvent these rules by publishing boilerplate notices in the Federal Register. Sadly, that practice has become far too common.
To Read the Rest of the Report
By Chris Calabrese
ACLU
The Wall Street Journal today published (alternate link) an in-depth review of a new, relatively unknown program run by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). Although we have been warning about the dangers of the program for months, and I testified before Congress about the issue in July, the Journal’s story conveys how controversial the program was even inside the government. It also describes the broad scope of new authority the government is granting itself.
As the Journal reports, under new guidelines issued by the Attorney General back in March,
The rules now allow the little-known National Counterterrorism Center to examine the government files of U.S. citizens for possible criminal behavior, even if there is no reason to suspect them. That is a departure from past practice, which barred the agency from storing information about ordinary Americans unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.
Now, NCTC can copy entire government databases—flight records, casino-employee lists, the names of Americans hosting foreign-exchange students and many others. The agency has new authority to keep data about innocent U.S. citizens for up to five years, and to analyze it for suspicious patterns of behavior. Previously, both were prohibited.
The changes also allow databases of U.S. civilian information to be given to foreign governments for analysis of their own. In effect, U.S. and foreign governments would be using the information to look for clues that people might commit future crimes.
The program is striking in so many ways. Innocent people can be investigated and their data kept for years. It can be shared with foreign governments. All of this in service of not just terrorism investigations but also investigations of future crimes. In effect, the U.S. government is using information it gathers for its ordinary business to turn its own citizens into the subjects of terrorism investigations.
Meanwhile, all of this is supposed to be against the law. The Privacy Act of 1974 says that information collected by the federal government for one purpose is not supposed to be used for another. However, agencies are attempting to circumvent these rules by publishing boilerplate notices in the Federal Register. Sadly, that practice has become far too common.
To Read the Rest of the Report
Best of the Left: #600 It shouldn’t matter but it does (Racism)
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#600 It shouldn’t matter but it does (Racism)
Best of the Left
Ch. 1: Intro – Theme: A Fond Farewell – From a Basement On the Hill
Ch. 2: Act 1: Racist Rant Gets John Derbyshire Fired From National Review – Young Turks
Ch. 3: Song 1: Enzymes – Enzymes – Single
Ch. 4: Act 2: If you’re black, put your hands in the air – Thom Hartmann
Ch. 5: Song 2: Teenage Dirtbag – Scala & Kolacny Brothers
Ch. 6: Act 3: Bill O’Reilly’s Race Relation Management – Jimmy Dore
Ch. 7: Song 3: We Are Young (feat. Janelle Monáe) – We Are Young ((feat. Janelle Monáe) – Single)
Ch. 8: Act 4: Racism Without Racists – Mumia Abu-Jamal
Ch. 9: Song 4: To Kill A Mockingbird Theme: Scout’s Song
Ch. 10: Act 5: Consumer brand racism – Blacking it up
Ch. 11: Song 5: Fix Yourself – The Innocent Bystanders
Ch. 12: Act 6: Landlord Posts Whites Only Sign at Pool, Won’t Apologize – David Pakman
Ch. 13: Song 6: Mondo ’77 (feat. Francis MacDonald) – Vanilla Sky (Music from the Motion Picture)
Ch. 14: Act 7: Don’t Re-Nig 2012 Anti-Obama Bumper Sticker Seller Defends N-Word – Young Turks
Ch. 15: Song 7: Think About It – Flight of the Conchords
Ch. 16: Act 8: Race shouldn’t matter but it does – Blacking It Up
Ch. 17: Final comments: Part 3 of 3 on the blindness of exuberance: “Bully” and it’s producer’s distrust of his own audience
To Listen to the Episode
Best of the Left
Ch. 1: Intro – Theme: A Fond Farewell – From a Basement On the Hill
Ch. 2: Act 1: Racist Rant Gets John Derbyshire Fired From National Review – Young Turks
Ch. 3: Song 1: Enzymes – Enzymes – Single
Ch. 4: Act 2: If you’re black, put your hands in the air – Thom Hartmann
Ch. 5: Song 2: Teenage Dirtbag – Scala & Kolacny Brothers
Ch. 6: Act 3: Bill O’Reilly’s Race Relation Management – Jimmy Dore
Ch. 7: Song 3: We Are Young (feat. Janelle Monáe) – We Are Young ((feat. Janelle Monáe) – Single)
Ch. 8: Act 4: Racism Without Racists – Mumia Abu-Jamal
Ch. 9: Song 4: To Kill A Mockingbird Theme: Scout’s Song
Ch. 10: Act 5: Consumer brand racism – Blacking it up
Ch. 11: Song 5: Fix Yourself – The Innocent Bystanders
Ch. 12: Act 6: Landlord Posts Whites Only Sign at Pool, Won’t Apologize – David Pakman
Ch. 13: Song 6: Mondo ’77 (feat. Francis MacDonald) – Vanilla Sky (Music from the Motion Picture)
Ch. 14: Act 7: Don’t Re-Nig 2012 Anti-Obama Bumper Sticker Seller Defends N-Word – Young Turks
Ch. 15: Song 7: Think About It – Flight of the Conchords
Ch. 16: Act 8: Race shouldn’t matter but it does – Blacking It Up
Ch. 17: Final comments: Part 3 of 3 on the blindness of exuberance: “Bully” and it’s producer’s distrust of his own audience
To Listen to the Episode
Bill Moyers Journal: Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI)
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Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI)
Bill Moyers Journal
"The only solution to any problem is to get to work on it."
That phrase is the motto of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI) profiled on THE JOURNAL. In its 36 year history the CCI has addressed a number of issues through grassroots organizing — and political action.
Like the original populists of the 19th century south and west, the CCI began its organization around the battle between individual farmers and corporate farming interests. Today they are trying to battle a bill that would allow industrial-scale farms to spread liquid manure on top of frozen or snow-covered fields, a practice deemed hazardous to the environment and a potential health risk.
The CCI has also taken on the challenge of preserving a core aspect of the American dream — fighting abusive lending as well as offering financial classes and counseling to encourage and safeguard home ownership. And the CCI is embracing the changing demographics of their state by supporting the many Latino immigrants who are working the in meatpacking industry. The CCI has taken on labor, discrimination and immigration issues. And again hearkening back to those early populists — the group is a firm supporter of getting big money out of American politics through it's arm, Voter-Owned Iowa.
As member and farmer Larry Ginter puts it, the founding fathers liked a good fight — so should their heirs.
"There's a saying, 'Revolution begins in a peasant hut.' You got to fight for the justice. You got to fight for the fair wage. You got to fight for housing. You got to fight for healthcare. Fight for the elderly, fight for family farmers and workers. Fight for the environment. And that's what Iowa CCI does."
To Watch the Episode
Bill Moyers Journal
"The only solution to any problem is to get to work on it."
That phrase is the motto of Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement (CCI) profiled on THE JOURNAL. In its 36 year history the CCI has addressed a number of issues through grassroots organizing — and political action.
Like the original populists of the 19th century south and west, the CCI began its organization around the battle between individual farmers and corporate farming interests. Today they are trying to battle a bill that would allow industrial-scale farms to spread liquid manure on top of frozen or snow-covered fields, a practice deemed hazardous to the environment and a potential health risk.
The CCI has also taken on the challenge of preserving a core aspect of the American dream — fighting abusive lending as well as offering financial classes and counseling to encourage and safeguard home ownership. And the CCI is embracing the changing demographics of their state by supporting the many Latino immigrants who are working the in meatpacking industry. The CCI has taken on labor, discrimination and immigration issues. And again hearkening back to those early populists — the group is a firm supporter of getting big money out of American politics through it's arm, Voter-Owned Iowa.
As member and farmer Larry Ginter puts it, the founding fathers liked a good fight — so should their heirs.
"There's a saying, 'Revolution begins in a peasant hut.' You got to fight for the justice. You got to fight for the fair wage. You got to fight for housing. You got to fight for healthcare. Fight for the elderly, fight for family farmers and workers. Fight for the environment. And that's what Iowa CCI does."
To Watch the Episode
Julia Leyda: "Something That Is Dangerous and Arousing and Transgressive" - An Interview with Todd Haynes
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"Something That Is Dangerous and Arousing and Transgressive": An Interview with Todd Haynes
by Julia Leyda
Bright Lights Film Journal
JULIA LEYDA: You've done several movies that are very clearly woman's films, but the movie that I am most fascinated with in terms of gender is Velvet Goldmine, which is not usually interpreted in that context.
TODD HAYNES: No, except it's probably gotten the strongest female fan base of any of my films. And what's wonderful for me is to see new generations of young women, even as we think we progress as a society and there are new options available to each new generation that seem to be catering to that market more acutely, still Velvet Goldmine offers that market something that they're not getting elsewhere. I always love it when girls come up to me at festivals and that's the one, that's the movie that really turned them around.
JL: I'm interested in how you use the trope of playing with dolls in Superstar and Velvet Goldmine as a way to figure gender, embodiment, desire, identification. You said in an interview that playing with dolls is what you're doing in Velvet Goldmine, using it as a metaphor for the filmmaking process, to play with the characters of the idols more than making an actual biopic about bisexual pop stars. So what about the female characters in Velvet Goldmine? Fans, rock and roll girls like Mandy — talk a bit about them.
TH: Interesting question. The character of Mandy was probably one of the hardest roles I've ever had to cast. We did a really thorough, international search for who could play Mandy. When I look back on the experience, I'm amazed at how many actresses agreed to read for the role who don't often do so. I think what was difficult about Mandy was that she, and the Angela Bowie template for that character, harkened back to a kind of performative femininity of which there are very few contemporary examples anymore. I see it as the Patti Smith divide in terms of rock and roll and public depictions of femininity, whose image emerged finally, after so many variations on the codified mannerisms that were available to women in midcentury American film, for instance, and popular music (although there have always been interesting deviations from this). I think over time a lot of the affectations associated with performing femininity had fallen away, to the point where you came to this iconic figure of Patti Smith, whom I see as similar in a way to the Jude figure in I'm Not There, a very androgynous, more masculine-identified figure. For young actresses reading the role of Mandy it became clear that recent examples of that kind of almost camp presentation of an affected, theatrical persona were very hard to locate; I think of Liza Minnelli, and maybe Parker Posey was one of the later examples, of almost a gay male idea of femininity.
One thing that was very interesting about Angela Bowie is the way she navigated the English and American influences and her accent would come and go, and that was one of the things we wanted to incorporate into the performance, but that's very tough on an actor. We wanted to make it understood that it's a mutable way of fixing into each culture with some fluidity. I mean, there's no question that Angela Bowie was a central driving engine — her autobiography is amazing, and it's supported by most of the documentation and oral histories of those years — in the transformation of David Bowie, who was experimenting with different kinds of feminine representations but ultimately fixed on this Warhol-infused figure of the Ziggy Stardust character. It was really Angela Bowie who championed these kinds of characters, part of the second-generation Warhol clan, who made their way to the UK and appeared in this play Pork in 1971. They just loved her and she loved them, and in a weird way Bowie was sort of a spectator, an observer of this love and energy. And I think, based on what she wrote in her book and other documentation, she was very interested in the gay liberation movement that was burgeoning at the time and she wanted to appropriate it, take it on, and become the spokesperson in a rock and roll vernacular for those ideas.
I don't know if this relates directly to doll-playing except that it really might be the last time that you see an active female figure freely utilizing artificial terms of self-expression and persona in an unembarrassed, unabashed, almost radical way. That was in a way the fascinating counterpart to the more aloof, silent, objectified figure that Bowie assumed as Ziggy Stardust. Of course, there was also that hardcore influence from the American music that he loved — the Stooges, the MC5, and the Velvet Underground and Lou Reed — as the final ingredient to give it that kind of duality, the cross between English musical traditions and this American hardcore, a direct assault. He needed both of those, but there was still a kind of passivity and object-ness of that figure that seemed more quiet, and more comfortable being an image, an idealized beautiful façade that people could project onto; whereas Angela Bowie was active, pulling the strings and moving the levers — in that way, I think, making him up so that he was the doll that she was playing with. So a lot of that energy and that fire and fearlessness I think could be attributed to her.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
by Julia Leyda
Bright Lights Film Journal
JULIA LEYDA: You've done several movies that are very clearly woman's films, but the movie that I am most fascinated with in terms of gender is Velvet Goldmine, which is not usually interpreted in that context.
TODD HAYNES: No, except it's probably gotten the strongest female fan base of any of my films. And what's wonderful for me is to see new generations of young women, even as we think we progress as a society and there are new options available to each new generation that seem to be catering to that market more acutely, still Velvet Goldmine offers that market something that they're not getting elsewhere. I always love it when girls come up to me at festivals and that's the one, that's the movie that really turned them around.
JL: I'm interested in how you use the trope of playing with dolls in Superstar and Velvet Goldmine as a way to figure gender, embodiment, desire, identification. You said in an interview that playing with dolls is what you're doing in Velvet Goldmine, using it as a metaphor for the filmmaking process, to play with the characters of the idols more than making an actual biopic about bisexual pop stars. So what about the female characters in Velvet Goldmine? Fans, rock and roll girls like Mandy — talk a bit about them.
TH: Interesting question. The character of Mandy was probably one of the hardest roles I've ever had to cast. We did a really thorough, international search for who could play Mandy. When I look back on the experience, I'm amazed at how many actresses agreed to read for the role who don't often do so. I think what was difficult about Mandy was that she, and the Angela Bowie template for that character, harkened back to a kind of performative femininity of which there are very few contemporary examples anymore. I see it as the Patti Smith divide in terms of rock and roll and public depictions of femininity, whose image emerged finally, after so many variations on the codified mannerisms that were available to women in midcentury American film, for instance, and popular music (although there have always been interesting deviations from this). I think over time a lot of the affectations associated with performing femininity had fallen away, to the point where you came to this iconic figure of Patti Smith, whom I see as similar in a way to the Jude figure in I'm Not There, a very androgynous, more masculine-identified figure. For young actresses reading the role of Mandy it became clear that recent examples of that kind of almost camp presentation of an affected, theatrical persona were very hard to locate; I think of Liza Minnelli, and maybe Parker Posey was one of the later examples, of almost a gay male idea of femininity.
One thing that was very interesting about Angela Bowie is the way she navigated the English and American influences and her accent would come and go, and that was one of the things we wanted to incorporate into the performance, but that's very tough on an actor. We wanted to make it understood that it's a mutable way of fixing into each culture with some fluidity. I mean, there's no question that Angela Bowie was a central driving engine — her autobiography is amazing, and it's supported by most of the documentation and oral histories of those years — in the transformation of David Bowie, who was experimenting with different kinds of feminine representations but ultimately fixed on this Warhol-infused figure of the Ziggy Stardust character. It was really Angela Bowie who championed these kinds of characters, part of the second-generation Warhol clan, who made their way to the UK and appeared in this play Pork in 1971. They just loved her and she loved them, and in a weird way Bowie was sort of a spectator, an observer of this love and energy. And I think, based on what she wrote in her book and other documentation, she was very interested in the gay liberation movement that was burgeoning at the time and she wanted to appropriate it, take it on, and become the spokesperson in a rock and roll vernacular for those ideas.
I don't know if this relates directly to doll-playing except that it really might be the last time that you see an active female figure freely utilizing artificial terms of self-expression and persona in an unembarrassed, unabashed, almost radical way. That was in a way the fascinating counterpart to the more aloof, silent, objectified figure that Bowie assumed as Ziggy Stardust. Of course, there was also that hardcore influence from the American music that he loved — the Stooges, the MC5, and the Velvet Underground and Lou Reed — as the final ingredient to give it that kind of duality, the cross between English musical traditions and this American hardcore, a direct assault. He needed both of those, but there was still a kind of passivity and object-ness of that figure that seemed more quiet, and more comfortable being an image, an idealized beautiful façade that people could project onto; whereas Angela Bowie was active, pulling the strings and moving the levers — in that way, I think, making him up so that he was the doll that she was playing with. So a lot of that energy and that fire and fearlessness I think could be attributed to her.
To Read the Rest of the Essay
27 Aralık 2012 Perşembe
What I've Learned at SXSW So Far
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The first thing I learned was that when people remind you all day to set your clocks ahead an hour on Sunday night, you should probably do that. Instead, I woke up the next morning thinking I had plenty of time to make it to Paul Lamere's panel "Finding Music With Pictures: Data Visualization for Discovery" only to discover that it was, in fact, happening at that very moment, thanks to the ridiculous scam that is Daylight Savings Time. Fortunately, Paul has posted his slides over at Music Machinery (linked from his name, above) and so when I have some more time I am going to try to piece together what he talked about based on a smattering of pictures and text.
I also learned that the SXSW Animated Shorts are not as good as the ones at Sundance that I was lucky enough to see a few years back, and in retrospect I should have skipped them entirely to attend the "Bloggers Fight Back: Legal Workshop for Music Bloggers" panel. But since I didn't, don't be surprised when I start writing this blog from jail.
When I finally got into some panels, I learned even more. Mainly, I learned that metadata is the magic word of the day. First up was the "Love, Music & APIs" panel featuring speakers from Echo Nest and SoundCloud. Their main point was that APIs are the new currency in music apps, and if you don't have one, you're not really playing in the same game as everyone else. They had a slide listing all sorts of cool music companies with APIs - interestingly enough, Pandora wasn't listed. I wondered why not, as they seemed to be in the heart of the music recommendation space, and my friend Lori quickly realized "they must not have an API." I felt so sad for them. The panelists talked a lot about Music Hack Days, finally answering the question of what actually happens at those things. The answer: a lot of smart people make a lot of really interesting and cool music apps in a very short amount of time, nearly all of them based around APIs. And what do those APIs revolve around? Metadata. That was also the topic of the second music-related panel I attended that day, "Music & Metadata: Do Songs Remain The Same?" The panelists here used a pretty broad definition of "metadata," using it to cover everything from the spelling of a song's title (apparently when users submit their own titles to most metadata repositories like MusicBrainz or the old CDDB, you can end up with 176 spellings of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door") to things like a song's cultural impact or a singer's unique and recognizable turns of phrase. The main takeaway is that metadata may start out in the hands of the artist, but quickly becomes "owned" by listeners, users, remixers, etc. Metadata is cultural currency in much the same way that APIs are technical currency. Combined, they are helping make this a fascinating and wonderful time to be a music nerd.
The last thing I learned is that the line to see Surfer Blood was too long last night, so I will be trying again tonight. Of course, there are about 50 bands (and a movie) that I want to see all playing at the same time tonight, so I have no idea what I'll end up seeing, but I'll tell you all about it here!
Web Developer's Lament
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This one's for all the web developers out there...
I'm on a "working vacation" for a couple weeks up in Belfast, ME, staying in a house on the bay. Somehow working from here doesn't feel quite as much like work as it does when I work from my usual office location. However, events have conspired to make it feel as much like work as it possibly could - namely, a client has been doing their best to make sure that no piece of code I write this week is ever actually done, due to the specifications changing daily, not unlike clouds shifting in a summer breeze.
So I wrote this song to explain how I feel. [This isn't all about this particular project, but that was a good starting point.]
This is a live recording made down by the water.
Lyrics:
They changed the specs again
Just when I was nearly finished
Said the client changed their mind
I don't know if I can take this
They changed the specs again
I've already written so much code
And the thought of starting over
Makes my sanity erode
Chorus:
Why won't they just let me finish?
Why can't I just be done?
Why won't they just let me finish?
Is this their idea of fun?
They changed the specs again
Pushed the launch up by 2 weeks
They've added a shopping cart
God, my knees are feeling weak
They changed the specs again
To match the new designs
They want it to just "work like Google"
Lord, I'm losing my mind
[Chorus]
I give up, I give up.
I give up, I give up.
Let's add some features, I give up.
Let's build a CMS from scratch, I give up.
Let's refactor every function, I give up.
Let's start calling ourselves agile, I give up.
Let's have a status meeting, I give up.
Let's adopt a framework, I give up.
Let's add members' only area, I give up.
Let's change databases, I give up.
Let's review my timesheet, I give up.
Let's never document anything, I give up.
Let's outsource to India
Still More Holiday Music That Doesn't Suck
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"Christmas music." "Holiday tunes." "Mind-numbing winter-themed muzak pabulum." Call it what you will, our ears are subjected to a lot of crap every winter. Well, Wired For Music is here to help, with yet another edition of our patented "Holiday Music That Doesn't Suck" playlist.
This year's playlist has some songs that a lot of you will probably already know, but I've had enough people ask me about them in the past that I finally decided to put them on. Hopefully there'll be some surprises on here too for more "advanced" listeners, whatever that means. And it even features one song I swore I would never, ever include (it grew on me).
Enjoy, and be sure to check out the playlists from previous years!
Hungry for more? Check out some of these awesome holiday playlists:
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| SK Holiday Open House by flickr user vastateparksstaff |
This year's playlist has some songs that a lot of you will probably already know, but I've had enough people ask me about them in the past that I finally decided to put them on. Hopefully there'll be some surprises on here too for more "advanced" listeners, whatever that means. And it even features one song I swore I would never, ever include (it grew on me).
Enjoy, and be sure to check out the playlists from previous years!
- Dean Martin - A Marshmallow World
"The King of Cool" gives us his take on this sugary classic. Dean's version was never as popular as Bing Crosby's, but it does feature some of his trademark near-drunken slurring, particularly on the last verse's "take a walk-with-yourfav-or-itegirl." This song makes me wish it was snowing right now. - Gruff Rhys - Slashed Wrists This Christmas
This is the first track of the Super Furry Animals' frontman's brilliantly titled "Atheist Xmas EP." It's a bit repetitive, but then, so this this whole season, isn't it? - The Futureheads - Christmas Was Better In The 80s
Not entirely sure why these guys are so nostalgic given that I think they're younger than I am, but it's still a great song. Apparently it's a big deal in the UK to release a single at Christmas time, which explains the existence of a few tracks on this playlist. Some of them work out great, and others...don't make it to this playlist. - The Gasoline Brothers - Hungover Boxing Day
This Dutch band really nails that feeling of waking up on Boxing Day and realizing - wait, what the hell is Boxing Day? Europe is weird. - Badly Drawn Boy - Donna and Blitzen
This song definitely sounds like it was written a few days before the deadline for getting on the Xmas single charts or something like that. The lyrics read like he was doing a holiday-themed Mad Libs and just plugged in words like "sleigh ride" and "reindeer" here and there. But the music saves it, especially those massive timpanis. - Marvin Gaye - Purple Snowflakes
Nothing says Christmas like (a presumably high) Marvin Gaye singing about "purple snowflakes" while his backup singers sprinkle phrases like "chestnuts roasting" and "tootsies toasting" all over the place. This song is ridiculously good, and his voice is just angelic. - Okkervil River - Listening To Otis Redding At Home During Christmas
I can't decide if this is more depressing than Tom Waits's "Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis" (featured on 2008's playlist), but it's damn depressing regardless. Seriously, go read the lyrics, I'll wait. Can you imagine if Jeff Tweedy still wrote songs like this? Wow, that would be awesome. - Morphine - Sexy Christmas Baby Mine
Still not depressed? Listen to a dead man croon "Merry for you. Not too merry for me./I want you here with me. Misery loves company." You're welcome. - The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl - Fairytale of New York
I resisted this song for the past 5 years - in fact, I really hated it until late last year when it suddenly just clicked for me. I don't know if it's living in New York or what, but one of my most-hated Christmas songs ever has finally wormed its way into my heart. This one's a classic that I'm sure you've heard a million times, but it still belongs on this playlist. - Barenaked Ladies - I Saw Three Ships
Just a pretty little palate cleanser. They really should have let Steven sing first, but that's being nitpicky. - Lord Nelson - A Party For Santa Claus
Feeling chilly? Let the hot island rhythms of Tobago (by way of Brooklyn) of this little ditty warm you up (or go drink some cocoa, I don't care). I like the message of this song - how come no one ever gets presents for Santa? - The Beach Boys - Little Saint Nick
Of course The Beach Boys would write a song about Santa's sled. This song is stupid, but I love it. And it features the brilliant line: "Christmas comes this time each year." Deep. - Aimee Mann - I Was Thinking I Could Clean Up For Christmas
A happy little song about getting off the ol' drugs for Christmastime. Isn't that sweet? - Ella Fitzgerald - Good Morning Blues
Leave it to Ella to have a bad time at Christmas. "Don't send me nothing for Christmas but my baby back to me" - it's a great time of the year to be alone, isn't it? - dj BC - Waltz Of The Flowers (reflower)
An interesting mix of a classic, from dj BC's "A Very Re:Composition Christmas." Lots of interesting stuff on that album, it's really worth checking out if you like classical music, remixes, or both. - The Ramones - Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight)
A message of love and peace for the holidays from Joey Ramone. [Presumably he and the person to whom he was singing were allowed to resume fighting on Boxing Day.] - Kanye West ft. CyHi Da Prynce & Teyana Taylor - Christmas In Harlem
Despite famously being from Chicago, which does not include Harlem, Kanye does a serviceable job with this sequel to Louis Armstrong's "Christmas Night in Harlem" (featured in 2008's playlist). I think the best verse here belongs to CyHi Da Prynce, who raps in character as Santa Claus. This song gets extra credit for the part at the end when Teyana Taylor starts singing the melody of "Strawberry Letter 23." - Milly & Silly - Getting Down For Xmas
Looking at Santa's outfit, I'd say that playing funk music at this time of year is pretty much a no-brainer. - Frightened Rabbit - It's Christmas So We'll Stop
These guys really do a great job with the whole "suicidal but catchy" thing. Sample lyric: "Oh it's Christmas so we'll stop/'Cause the wine on our breath puts the love in our tongues/So forget the names/I called you on Christmas Eve/In fact forget the entire year/Don't reflect just pretend and you won't feel scared." Yikes. - David Bowie & Bing Crosby - Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy
For a song that was conceived of, written, rehearsed, and performed in a little over an hour, this is pretty amazing. If you haven't heard this before, you're probably going to like it. I think it's all the more incredible considering the backstory (see link above). - Lovebyte - Auld Lang Syne
I actually cut another electronic instrumental song off this list, but I just had to give a nod to the robot inside me with this overly upbeat, bizarre version of the New Year's classic. - Sarah McLachlan - Song For A Winter's Night
Sarah McLachlan's take on Gordon Lightfoot's beautiful little song is spare and beautiful, and I find it really evokes the feeling of a cold winter's night effectively. Great harmonies, too.
Hungry for more? Check out some of these awesome holiday playlists:
- Annals of Spacetime
- Fuel/Friends
- ilovethis
- Wired For Music
Friday Playlist: Baby's First Playlist
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My wife and I recently had a baby girl (Alison, pictured above sporting a stylish baby towel). Parenting, of course, has its challenges, but it also has its joys - and a big one for me these days has been sharing music with my daughter. Music is a primary way that I communicate with the world (hence this blog), and my communications with her have been no exception. When I'm not singing her improvised lyrics to lullabies (or making up new songs entirely), I've been playing her different songs from my library and noting her reaction to various things. For example, Metallica seemed to make her gassy. She liked Aimee Mann, but only the early stuff. And she absolutely loves Spiritualized.
So I've compiled her very first playlist, comprising some of her favorites for chillout time, dance time, and sleepytime. I hope you enjoy it as much as she does.
PS A friend of mine gave me the gift of 3 albums from Rockabye Baby, namely lullaby versions of songs by Queen, Radiohead, and Led Zeppelin. Those are all awesome, and have the added bonus of lulling me to sleep, but I prefer to save those as secret weapons when I'm trying to conk her out, as opposed to just putting on music for her to chill to or dance with me to, etc.
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| My ridiculously cute daughter |
So I've compiled her very first playlist, comprising some of her favorites for chillout time, dance time, and sleepytime. I hope you enjoy it as much as she does.
PS A friend of mine gave me the gift of 3 albums from Rockabye Baby, namely lullaby versions of songs by Queen, Radiohead, and Led Zeppelin. Those are all awesome, and have the added bonus of lulling me to sleep, but I prefer to save those as secret weapons when I'm trying to conk her out, as opposed to just putting on music for her to chill to or dance with me to, etc.
- Spiritualized - Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space (Original Version)
I first played this for Alison when she was only a few days old. She had just finished eating and was in what baby experts call the "quiet alert state." So I figured it would be a perfect time to play her some tunes. I asked my wife what she thought a baby would like, and she said "Spiritualized?" I said yes. This is the original version of this song which includes lyrics from Elvis's "Can't Help Falling In Love" (the Presley estate made the band remove that portion of the song from this album's original release). The lyrics to the whole thing are pretty perfect to sing to a new baby. This is probably Alison's favorite song thus far (and one of my favorites, too). - Thievery Corporation - From Creation
She wasn't too taken with other Thievery Corporation songs, but she really seemed to click with this one. By "click," I mean she got quiet and stopped fussing and seemed to chill out a bit. I assume she likes these guys because, like her parents, they're from DC. - K'naan - Fatima
This song is actually kind of a downer, lyrically (it's about a young girl who was murdered, I think), but Alison really seemed to enjoy the rhythm, particularly in the chorus. [Editor's note: I'm saying things like "seemed to," "appeared to," etc. a lot because when I asked her what she thought of all these songs, she gave me no answer, so I'm having to go on educated guesses here.] - Cat Power - Living Proof
This is my favorite Cat Power song. Alison definitely seemed to enjoy it, but I don't know if it was genuine or if she was just trying to please me because she knows it's my favorite. Either way, she enjoyed being gently swayed in my arms to this song. Who wouldn't? Babies are supposed to like simple, repetitive melodies, and this one definitely fits the bill. - Yellow Ostrich - Mary
She seemed pretty relaxed during this song, which seems to be about the singer's friend who's on drugs. Alison overlooked the content and just focused on the soothing background, which definitely chilled her out. - The Snake The Cross The Crown - Cakewalk
Alison definitely identified with this song's ethos of "I just want to do the things that I feel like doing, and I want to be rewarded for same." Basically a baby's mantra. - The Beatles - Flying
I've been told that when I was a wee tot, almost nothing would soothe my jangled nerves as much as when my parents would put the big headphones on me and throw on either a Beatles record or something classical. Alison has a lot more Beatles to go (and classical, for that matter) but she seemed to take to this track - not a bad start. - Phish - Horn
I first played her "Bouncing Around The Room" which I thought she'd love, but I guess it was a little too simplistic, even for her. But she loved "Horn," especially the intro/chorus. She says she's psyched to hear Trey's solos on some live versions when she's a little older. - Self - Uno Song
I don't know a lot of Self songs after Subliminal Plastic Motives, but this one came up on shuffle the other week and she really dug dancing along to it. And by "dancing" I mean "me waving her around in my arms." Tapping out the beat on her back also seemed to help her burp, so hey - bonus. - Her Space Holiday - Sleepy California
Despite this song being about the slow death of the singer's estrangement from his mother and the painful death of his grandmother, Alison really seemed to enjoy it. She can be kind of dark that way. Or she was sleepy, it's hard to tell sometimes. - The Postal Service - The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
Another song that appeals to Alison because of her DC heritage. Also because it's slow and soft and beautiful and has a cool beat. And she likes when I sing along to it. - Jane's Addiction - Stop!
The first time I played this for her, I bounced her up and down vigorously along with the music - taking her up really high on the downbeats, particularly during the intro and chorus. My wife thought I was going to scramble Alison's brains, but Alison seemed genuinely happy. And it's hard to tell if a baby's brains are scrambled anyway, they don't do all that much higher-level thinking at this phase. - U2 - Trip Through Your Wires
U2 was another Amanda suggestion, and so far Alison has enjoyed most of what she heard. This song seemed to be her favorite, meaning she fell asleep during it. Right now her TTS (time to sleep) is a pretty indicator of how pleased she is with life overall. Alison also seems to love "Ultraviolet (Light My Way)" but I'm not a huge fan of that song, so it didn't make the list. - Grateful Dead - Box of Rain
I think Amanda suggested this album, too, and Alison seemed to love every track, so I picked this one because it's awesome. And she just fell asleep to it while I was writing this, so that's one in the "plus" column. - Radiohead - 4 Minute Warning
I mentioned above the lullaby version of Radiohead CD a friend gave us - it got me thinking about Radiohead songs in general, and I had an inkling that this song might be lullaby-esque enough in its current state to work on a baby. And I was right. I ended up playing this about 10 times in a row one night as she gently drifted off to sleep in my arms. [Editor's note: the fact that she woke up crying 10 minutes later has nothing to do with this song, that's apparently just how babies are sometimes.]
2012 Holiday Music That Doesn't Suck
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People have asked me over the years, "why does a nice atheist Jewish boy like you love Christmas music so much?" To that I have several answers, but here's 3:
1) About 60% of all holiday music [Editor's note: percentage not determined via any remotely scientific method] is different versions of the same song. I love cover songs for the way that a good cover can bring out what is unique about a band's sound. So it's not a big leap that I would really love hearing a bunch of different bands/composers/etc. all try their hands at the same handful of songs.
2) If you're going to imply that a Jew can't love Christmas music, you should probably tell that to the Jews who wrote many of the Christmas songs that are so famous today.
3) Most of these songs are not about Christmas. Seriously, why do the goyim get a monopoly on riding in a one-horse sleigh? Or letting it snow? Or walking through a winter wonderland? Or date-raping your girlfriend when it's cold outside?
So I guess my point is, music is music, and good music is where you find it. And this music is good.
What are you listening to his holiday season? Tell me in the comments, and have a happy pagan December holiday!
- The Yule Ghoul - Sleigh Ride
The Yule Ghoul was one of my favorite Christmas music bloggers, though he/she (I think it's a he) seems to have abandoned the site last year. A couple years ago, he posted cover art and a track supposedly from an album called "The Merry Moog," which would be fantastic - if it existed. Turns out it was just a little joke, and this fantastic take on Sleigh Ride is actually a homegrown production by the Ghoul himself.
- Moses Kahumoku - Joy to the World
A lovely example of Hawaiian slack-key guitar playing by one of the masters, this peaceful rendition is perfect for sipping some eggnog by the fire (or in my case, by a TV showing a DVD recording of a fire). I love the pizzicato bits in the second verse. - Barenaked Ladies - Hanukkah O Hanukkah
This version is feisty and joyful, enough so that I can overlook the fact that apparently Steven Page doesn't know the word "sivivon" (Hebrew for "dreidel") and so substituted something that probably sounded right to him, but sounds like the name of a character from the Star Wars prequels to me. - Benny Goodman - Santa Claus Came In The Spring
I love the way the singer says "Santey Claus" in this one. And I love the arrangement. And the fact that it's really just a love song masquerading as a Christmas song. I like to think this song answers Dean Martin's question in "Marshmallow World" of "what if spring is late?". - Half Man Half Biscuit - It's Clichéd To Be Cynical At Christmas
Come for the title, stay for the mournful melody and clever lyrics from these sardonic Brits. - Atmosphere - If I Was Santa Claus
This song strikes a nice balance between aspirational and depressing, just like the holiday season itself. Fun fact: the guy rapping goes by the stage name "Slug." - Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings - Ain't No Chimneys in the Projects
This song makes a good counterpoint to James Brown's "Santa Claus Go Straight To The Ghetto." The horns get me every time, as does the "Jingle Bells" tease in the sax solo (which of course is also a callback to the aforementioned James Brown tune). - Black Prairie featuring Sallie Ford - (Everybody’s Waitin’ For) The Man With the Bag
This was one of only a couple stand-outs on the Starbucks "Holidays Rule" compilation. The Shins cover of Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" is decent, Paul McCartney's version of "The Christmas Song" is lackluster at best. Fun.'s "Sleigh Ride" is an overproduced saccharine nightmare, but I usually like that sort of thing, so maybe I'm just being Grinchy. I love the syncopation on the "if you've done everything you should, extra special good" part of this version, but it took me several listens to be able to sing along on the beat. - DJ John - The Christmas Massacre of Charlie Brown
Charlie Brown like you've never heard him before. I love how the samples describe what's going on in the song musically. - The Kinks - Father Christmas
A classic that's been absent from my playlists for far too long. Favorite part is when he asks Santa for a machine gun. - Darlene Love - Winter Wonderland
Another classic from the amazing "A Christmas Gift For You From Phil Spector." To be honest, all the songs on there kind of sound alike, but that's OK, because they are all absolutely fantastic. - Jimmy Butler - Trim Your Tree
This one's a great entry in my favorite musical genre: songs that are supposedly about Christmas but are really about getting down. Way down. Sample lyric: "I'll bring my beautiful Christmas balls/And sprinkle snow up on your tree." Yeah. - Matisyahu - Happy Hanukkah
Matisyahu released this song in conjunction with a Hurricane Sandy relief donation site, so go pay for a download and help out the good people of my adopted hometown. - The Raveonettes - Come On Santa
A simple comma would have dramatically changed the perceived meaning of this title. This one's got a nice repetitive drone, but the drums liven things up a bit. - Ukulele Christmas - Deck The Halls
I don't know who this really is, I couldn't find the artist information, but it's a really nice little version of Deck The Halls - it's nice to hear ukeleles not trying to sound precious. - Dawn McCarthy & Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Christmas Eve Can Kill You
This Everly Brothers cover is sad and beautiful and really rewards repeated listens to catch all the detail in the lyrics and arrangement. - Six by Seven - I Believe in Father Christmas
A nice cover of a sad Christmas song by Greg Lake (of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer fame). According to Wikipedia, Lake never intended for this to be a Christmas song. Huh. - Blitzen Trapper - Christmas is Coming Soon
I don't really have any idea what this song is about, but it's pretty. - Jordan Hirsch - Xmas Medley
I arranged and recorded this in December 2010 and I love it. It's a mix of "Angels We Have Heard On High," "Good King Wenceslas," and "Do You Hear What I Hear?". - BONUS TRACK!
20 Aralık 2012 Perşembe
Maximilian Yoshioka: Technocratic Totalitarianism: One-Dimensional Thought in Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville
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Technocratic Totalitarianism: One-Dimensional Thought in Jean-Luc Godard's Alphaville
by Maximilian Yoshioka
Bright Lights Film Journal
...
These two mechanisms of symbolic coercion, the arrow and the equation, refer to a broader phenomenon of mindlessness in Alphaville, or what Herbert Marcuse calls "one-dimensional thought," meaning basically an inability to think critically or "negatively" about the conditions of one's own existence. For the person who thinks one-dimensionally, affirmative statements about what already exists (i.e., political institutions, class/wealth relations, dominant ideologies) are all that is possible; consequently, any thought or desire that transcends those existing structures is inconceivable. For Marcuse, the existence of this type of thinking is not so much intrinsic to human beings as it is a socially constructed mechanism built by those in power to reinforce the forms of domination particular to their existence. The dogmatic repetition of the commandment "One should never say why; but only because" by the inhabitants of Alphaville is the ultimate realization of such a system of thought control. Marcuse was writing about contemporary society in the 1960s, the same period in which Alphaville was released. While Marcuse tasked himself with describing the society he saw in front of him, Godard decided to imagine its logical consequence.
Signs of this mental indoctrination, of the subordination of critical thought and agency to rules, regulations, and ideology, are everywhere present in Caution's travels across Alphaville. When he first arrives at his hotel from the "Outlands," he is immediately hassled by staff offering to carry his luggage, direct him to the elevator, guide him to his room, all of which he bluntly refuses, thereby establishing an initial distinction for the viewer between the robotic behavior of the locals and Caution's brash individualism. He is escorted into his room by an attractive but lifeless woman who constantly asks him patronizingly if he is sleepy, if he needs to rest, and so on. Without even asking she begins to undress and offers to take a bath with him. Upon questioning, she reveals herself to be what is known in Alphaville as a "level three seductress," essentially a glamorized prostitute. The apotheosis of this type of mechanical conformism is the way that the locals say "I'm very well, thanks for asking" whenever they meet Caution, even though he never actually asks for such information. The traditional linguistic relationship between question and answer, where one waits until one is asked a question before responding, is replaced with preprogrammed utterances. What one observes here, in a form highly reminiscent of the brainless constant comfort of Huxley's Brave New World, is a society of total convenience and omnipresent guidance, where the strains of independent decision making are now relics of an unscientific past. As Caution himself aptly laments, "People have become slaves of probability."
The one-dimensionalization of thought in Alphaville is also implemented in a more direct fashion, in the control over language and concepts through ideology. As mentioned earlier, one of the main dogmas repeatedly uttered by the scientists and citizens of the city is that one must not ask why, only because. As one of the head scientists tells Caution, "All is linked, all is consequence." He describes the task of Alpha 60 as simply to calculate the consequences and chains of causality that Alphaville will then be bound to follow; in such a system of deterministic logic, there is no room for a "why" to emerge. When Caution responds that he is a "free man," the expression of utter confusion on the scientist's face is truly priceless. By forbidding the use of "why," the technocratic elite of Alphaville is able to insulate its self-contained ruling system from challenge or criticism. Along the same lines, one frequently hears, either from Alpha 60 or from equally robotized humans, the claim that "no one has lived in the past, and no one will live in the future. The present is the form of all life." It is instructive to return again to Marcuse, who in One Dimensional Thought describes the dehistoricization taking place in contemporary technological society, where an ahistorical attitude toward the past is slowly replacing a more holistic perspective that values and interprets the moral and intellectual contributions of historical individuals. Instead, an ideologically driven positivism suppresses the past in favor of a short-term, quantitatively driven measurement of neutral variables. Questions of where or how technological rationalism fits into a broader historical and political narrative are consequently ignored.
To Read the Entire Essay
by Maximilian Yoshioka
Bright Lights Film Journal
...
These two mechanisms of symbolic coercion, the arrow and the equation, refer to a broader phenomenon of mindlessness in Alphaville, or what Herbert Marcuse calls "one-dimensional thought," meaning basically an inability to think critically or "negatively" about the conditions of one's own existence. For the person who thinks one-dimensionally, affirmative statements about what already exists (i.e., political institutions, class/wealth relations, dominant ideologies) are all that is possible; consequently, any thought or desire that transcends those existing structures is inconceivable. For Marcuse, the existence of this type of thinking is not so much intrinsic to human beings as it is a socially constructed mechanism built by those in power to reinforce the forms of domination particular to their existence. The dogmatic repetition of the commandment "One should never say why; but only because" by the inhabitants of Alphaville is the ultimate realization of such a system of thought control. Marcuse was writing about contemporary society in the 1960s, the same period in which Alphaville was released. While Marcuse tasked himself with describing the society he saw in front of him, Godard decided to imagine its logical consequence.
Signs of this mental indoctrination, of the subordination of critical thought and agency to rules, regulations, and ideology, are everywhere present in Caution's travels across Alphaville. When he first arrives at his hotel from the "Outlands," he is immediately hassled by staff offering to carry his luggage, direct him to the elevator, guide him to his room, all of which he bluntly refuses, thereby establishing an initial distinction for the viewer between the robotic behavior of the locals and Caution's brash individualism. He is escorted into his room by an attractive but lifeless woman who constantly asks him patronizingly if he is sleepy, if he needs to rest, and so on. Without even asking she begins to undress and offers to take a bath with him. Upon questioning, she reveals herself to be what is known in Alphaville as a "level three seductress," essentially a glamorized prostitute. The apotheosis of this type of mechanical conformism is the way that the locals say "I'm very well, thanks for asking" whenever they meet Caution, even though he never actually asks for such information. The traditional linguistic relationship between question and answer, where one waits until one is asked a question before responding, is replaced with preprogrammed utterances. What one observes here, in a form highly reminiscent of the brainless constant comfort of Huxley's Brave New World, is a society of total convenience and omnipresent guidance, where the strains of independent decision making are now relics of an unscientific past. As Caution himself aptly laments, "People have become slaves of probability."
The one-dimensionalization of thought in Alphaville is also implemented in a more direct fashion, in the control over language and concepts through ideology. As mentioned earlier, one of the main dogmas repeatedly uttered by the scientists and citizens of the city is that one must not ask why, only because. As one of the head scientists tells Caution, "All is linked, all is consequence." He describes the task of Alpha 60 as simply to calculate the consequences and chains of causality that Alphaville will then be bound to follow; in such a system of deterministic logic, there is no room for a "why" to emerge. When Caution responds that he is a "free man," the expression of utter confusion on the scientist's face is truly priceless. By forbidding the use of "why," the technocratic elite of Alphaville is able to insulate its self-contained ruling system from challenge or criticism. Along the same lines, one frequently hears, either from Alpha 60 or from equally robotized humans, the claim that "no one has lived in the past, and no one will live in the future. The present is the form of all life." It is instructive to return again to Marcuse, who in One Dimensional Thought describes the dehistoricization taking place in contemporary technological society, where an ahistorical attitude toward the past is slowly replacing a more holistic perspective that values and interprets the moral and intellectual contributions of historical individuals. Instead, an ideologically driven positivism suppresses the past in favor of a short-term, quantitatively driven measurement of neutral variables. Questions of where or how technological rationalism fits into a broader historical and political narrative are consequently ignored.
To Read the Entire Essay
On the Media: Peter Whoriskey - Private Funding, Medical Journals, and Bias
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Private Funding, Medical Journals, and Bias
On the Media
Private funding of medical studies has eclipsed public funding on the order of billions of dollars a year. Peter Whoriskey, writer for The Washington Post talks to Bob about the potential for bias and misleading information in drug studies funded by the drug companies.
To Listen to the Episode and access the original article
On the Media
Private funding of medical studies has eclipsed public funding on the order of billions of dollars a year. Peter Whoriskey, writer for The Washington Post talks to Bob about the potential for bias and misleading information in drug studies funded by the drug companies.
To Listen to the Episode and access the original article
Danny Mayer -- Let Them Eat Art!: The 21c Public/Private Partnership
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Let Them Eat Art!: The 21c Public/Private Partnership
By Danny Mayer
North of Center
In April, marital partners Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, founding owners of Louisville-based boutique hotel franchise 21c, held a press conference under the pavilion at Cheapside Park to announce their $36 million purchase and renovation plans for Lexington’s 15-story First National Building, the city’s first skyscraper. Along with a pair of smaller adjoining buildings, Wilson told a crowd of local leaders gathered for the occasion, the iconic downtown structure would become the fourth 21c Museum Hotels franchise location. “This is a combination hotel and a real art museum. It is not art for decoration,” Wilson said. “The 21c Museum is the only museum in the country dedicated to collecting and exhibiting contemporary art by living artists.”
Local talk of the renovation has tracked city leader and 21c talking points, which have focused on aesthetics and downtown revitalization. But whatever its aesthetic value or ability to inspire a new urban “confidence,” 21c’s economic foundation comes straight out of the past two decades: a public/private partnership in finance in which the public assumes collateral and risk and the private owners reap the returns. Of the $36.5 million needed to purchase, renovate and open 21c as a boutique hotel with an attached modern public art museum, over 60 percent of it ($22.5 million) will come from tapping public funds at the city, state and federal levels, much of it through programs geared toward low- and moderate-income citizens.
If you want to see the democratic/economic policies pillaging the nation and globe writ devastatingly small, look no further than 21c. Here’s three themes that should be familiar to you.
To Read the Rest of the Article
By Danny Mayer
North of Center
In April, marital partners Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson, founding owners of Louisville-based boutique hotel franchise 21c, held a press conference under the pavilion at Cheapside Park to announce their $36 million purchase and renovation plans for Lexington’s 15-story First National Building, the city’s first skyscraper. Along with a pair of smaller adjoining buildings, Wilson told a crowd of local leaders gathered for the occasion, the iconic downtown structure would become the fourth 21c Museum Hotels franchise location. “This is a combination hotel and a real art museum. It is not art for decoration,” Wilson said. “The 21c Museum is the only museum in the country dedicated to collecting and exhibiting contemporary art by living artists.”
Local talk of the renovation has tracked city leader and 21c talking points, which have focused on aesthetics and downtown revitalization. But whatever its aesthetic value or ability to inspire a new urban “confidence,” 21c’s economic foundation comes straight out of the past two decades: a public/private partnership in finance in which the public assumes collateral and risk and the private owners reap the returns. Of the $36.5 million needed to purchase, renovate and open 21c as a boutique hotel with an attached modern public art museum, over 60 percent of it ($22.5 million) will come from tapping public funds at the city, state and federal levels, much of it through programs geared toward low- and moderate-income citizens.
If you want to see the democratic/economic policies pillaging the nation and globe writ devastatingly small, look no further than 21c. Here’s three themes that should be familiar to you.
To Read the Rest of the Article
Against the Grain: Sarah Schulman - AIDs and Gentrification
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AIDS and Gentrification
Against the Grain
It's only been a decade and a half since the height of the AIDS epidemic. Yet there's profound amnesia about what happened during those years, in which hundreds of thousands of people died in this country, ignored by a government that only helped those with the disease after being forced through direct action. Writer Sarah Schulman argues that AIDS paved the way for massive gentrification in cities like New York and San Francisco. She describes the erasure of a liberatory queer culture and its replacement with a conservative one.
To Listen to the Episode
Against the Grain
It's only been a decade and a half since the height of the AIDS epidemic. Yet there's profound amnesia about what happened during those years, in which hundreds of thousands of people died in this country, ignored by a government that only helped those with the disease after being forced through direct action. Writer Sarah Schulman argues that AIDS paved the way for massive gentrification in cities like New York and San Francisco. She describes the erasure of a liberatory queer culture and its replacement with a conservative one.
To Listen to the Episode
Disasters/Catastrophes/Crisis: Peace and Conflict Studies Archive
To contact us Click HERE
Ayukawa, Yurika. "Japan Facing Biggest Catastrophe Since Dawn of Nuclear Age." Democracy Now (March 14, 2011)
"Chernobyl 25 Years On." Eurozine (April 22, 2011: Archive of Essays)
Edmondson, Jacqueline and Henry A. Giroux. "Losing Time or Doing Time: Drowning Public Education in the Wake of Hurricane Sandy." Truth Out (December 7, 2012)
Foster, John Bellamy. "Education and the Structural Crisis of Capital: The U.S. Case." Monthly Review (July 1, 2011)
Klein, Naomi. "Sandy’s Devastation Opens Space for Action on Climate Change and Progressive Reform." (November 15, 2012)
Lakhani, Nina. "Cuban medics in Haiti put the world to shame: Castro's doctors and nurses are the backbone of the fight against cholera." The Independent (December 26, 2010)
Landman, Anne. "What Happened to Media Coverage of Fukushima?" Common Dreams (June 24, 2011)
Schulman, Sarah. "AIDs and Gentrification." Against the Grain (November 20, 2012)
Stryker, Deena. "Iceland's On-going Revolution." Daily Kos (August 1, 2011)
Turner, Lane. "Is weather becoming more extreme?" The Big Picture (June 20, 2011)
"Chernobyl 25 Years On." Eurozine (April 22, 2011: Archive of Essays)
Edmondson, Jacqueline and Henry A. Giroux. "Losing Time or Doing Time: Drowning Public Education in the Wake of Hurricane Sandy." Truth Out (December 7, 2012)
Foster, John Bellamy. "Education and the Structural Crisis of Capital: The U.S. Case." Monthly Review (July 1, 2011)
Klein, Naomi. "Sandy’s Devastation Opens Space for Action on Climate Change and Progressive Reform." (November 15, 2012)
Lakhani, Nina. "Cuban medics in Haiti put the world to shame: Castro's doctors and nurses are the backbone of the fight against cholera." The Independent (December 26, 2010)
Landman, Anne. "What Happened to Media Coverage of Fukushima?" Common Dreams (June 24, 2011)
Schulman, Sarah. "AIDs and Gentrification." Against the Grain (November 20, 2012)
Stryker, Deena. "Iceland's On-going Revolution." Daily Kos (August 1, 2011)
Turner, Lane. "Is weather becoming more extreme?" The Big Picture (June 20, 2011)
16 Aralık 2012 Pazar
Blake Page: Why I Don’t Want to Be a West Point Graduate
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Why I Don’t Want to Be a West Point Graduate
by Blake Page
Huffington Post
The title West Point Graduate carries a great deal of weight in this world. Those who earn it are given a "golden ticket" and wear a "ring of power" which will certainly carry them to successful careers with doors flung open in the military, in business, even in personal relationships; as so many are seduced by the historic prestige of the United States Military Academy. All of these things seem enticing, but for me personally they are not worth it. As I write this, I am five months from graduation. After nearly three and a half years here, there is no reason to suspect that I would be in any way incapable of completing the final requirements and walking across the stage in Michie Stadium with diploma in hand in another 174 days. Choosing to resign at this point also carries significant risk. The Army may seek recoupment in the form of about $200-300k which I will personally owe, or an additional term of up to 5 years of enlisted service. What could possibly compel me to pass over this incredible opportunity in exchange for such harsh penalties?
While there are certainly numerous problems with the developmental program at West Point and all service academies, the tipping point of my decision to resign was the realization that countless officers here and throughout the military are guilty of blatantly violating the oaths they swore to defend the Constitution. These men and women are criminals, complicit in light of day defiance of the Uniform Code of Military Justice through unconstitutional proselytism, discrimination against the non-religious and establishing formal policies to reward, encourage and even at times require sectarian religious participation. These transgressions are nearly always committed in the name of fundamentalist evangelical Christianity. The sparse leaders who object to these egregious violations are relegated to the position of silent bystanders, because they understand all too well the potential ramifications of publically expressing their loyalty to the laws of our country. These are strong words that I do not use lightly, but after years of clear personal observation I am certain that they are true.
To Read the Rest of the Commentary and To Watch a Video
by Blake Page
Huffington Post
The title West Point Graduate carries a great deal of weight in this world. Those who earn it are given a "golden ticket" and wear a "ring of power" which will certainly carry them to successful careers with doors flung open in the military, in business, even in personal relationships; as so many are seduced by the historic prestige of the United States Military Academy. All of these things seem enticing, but for me personally they are not worth it. As I write this, I am five months from graduation. After nearly three and a half years here, there is no reason to suspect that I would be in any way incapable of completing the final requirements and walking across the stage in Michie Stadium with diploma in hand in another 174 days. Choosing to resign at this point also carries significant risk. The Army may seek recoupment in the form of about $200-300k which I will personally owe, or an additional term of up to 5 years of enlisted service. What could possibly compel me to pass over this incredible opportunity in exchange for such harsh penalties?
While there are certainly numerous problems with the developmental program at West Point and all service academies, the tipping point of my decision to resign was the realization that countless officers here and throughout the military are guilty of blatantly violating the oaths they swore to defend the Constitution. These men and women are criminals, complicit in light of day defiance of the Uniform Code of Military Justice through unconstitutional proselytism, discrimination against the non-religious and establishing formal policies to reward, encourage and even at times require sectarian religious participation. These transgressions are nearly always committed in the name of fundamentalist evangelical Christianity. The sparse leaders who object to these egregious violations are relegated to the position of silent bystanders, because they understand all too well the potential ramifications of publically expressing their loyalty to the laws of our country. These are strong words that I do not use lightly, but after years of clear personal observation I am certain that they are true.
To Read the Rest of the Commentary and To Watch a Video
Michel Foucault: The Boomerang Effect
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"It should never be forgotten that while colonization, with its techniques and its political and juridical weapons, obviously transported European models to other continents, it also had a considerable boomerang effect on the mechanisms ofpower in the West, and on the apparatuses, institutions, and techniques of power. A whole series of colonial models was brought back to the West, and the result was that the West could practice something resembling colonization, or an internal colonialism, on itself."
-- Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended
-- Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended
Dead Prez: No Way as the Way; Martin Mudd: Proper Propaganda - Information Age by Dead Prez
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Proper Propaganda: Information Age by Dead Prez
by Martin Mudd
North of Center
...
The album’s concept speaks to the technological reality in which we find ourselves today. The intro track opens with a female-sounding computerized voice saying, “Uploading: Information Age.” The suspense builds as the futuristic auditory progress bar bleeds into the album’s first song, “A New Beginning.” The same female voice will end the album with an announcement that you are “Downloading.” The theme of digital upload/download works, I think, on two levels. First, it is a winking acknowledgement to the reality of the recording industry today: many of the people listening will have obtained the music, as I did, by downloading it for free on the Internet. Second, it is a not-so-subtle reminder that dead prez are uploading this album, full of practical, political and spiritual knowledge, into your brain. After you are finished listening/uploading, the idea is to download the knowledge to friends and comrades. The act completes the cycle of participatory education mentioned so often in dead prez lyrics: “each one teach one.” dead prez don’t really care about the “illegal” download—they want the knowledge to spread.
Before it recites a laundry list of the systemic problems staring this society in the face, the album’s first song, “A New Beginning,” dead prez reveal who they know to be at least part of their audience. “Try to save the trees / but you can’t go green / without that black and red / if we gon get free / we got to change that light bulb in our head.” They are reaching out to speak to young middle-class people across the nation who acknowledge the global ecological collapse we face, but who also, perhaps seeing the failure of the bullshit “go green” consumerist approach, are frozen in fear of the impending “end of the world.” But as the dead prez lyrically emphasize, we can choose to see collapse, the decay of the American empire, not as “the end of the world,” but instead as a “new beginning,” a perspective that more easily resonates with oppressed people who have been surviving the system all along: “They dollar’s losing value/ but the hood knew that already.” It is a cutting but hopeful sentiment, echoed later in the cut “Take Me To The Future,” that another world is possible which we must fearlessly build together: “Change is so necessary / cuz they system is not workin.”
This is not to say that dead prez optimism overrides the problems of the present. “What If The Lights Go Out,” for example, is eerily prescient of the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. It begins with a scene of two men stranded (on a rooftop?) as a helicopter passes overhead and one yells in vain hope of being rescued. The other man says “don’t do that man / you gon get shot … they aint comin to help us man / we got to help our motherfuckin self.” In comes stic.man, telling us how to do just that—to be ready for whatever: storms, financial collapse, power outages, martial law. (As I write, there are some still without power in Red Hook, NY, more than a month after Superstorm Sandy.) He tells us what to truly value: “organization, communication / clarity family solidarity,” adding, “The dollar bill is just a piece of paper / when the lights go out it aint gon save you.” A jab, perhaps, not only at the petit bourgeois chasers of the “American Dream,” but also the bling-bling money-worshiping rappers DP have regularly called out in past songs like “Hip Hop” and “Malcolm Garvey Huey.” In this song and a few others, M-1 brings an old-school hip hop sound to his raps, reminiscent of Grandmaster Flash in “The Message,” that grounds the electronic sounds in a hip-hop tradition. “This organized humanity / is borderline insanity, but / don’t panic, be cool / no code to the streets and no rules.”
To Read the Entire Review
Proper Propaganda: Information Age by Dead Prez
by Martin Mudd
North of Center
...
The album’s concept speaks to the technological reality in which we find ourselves today. The intro track opens with a female-sounding computerized voice saying, “Uploading: Information Age.” The suspense builds as the futuristic auditory progress bar bleeds into the album’s first song, “A New Beginning.” The same female voice will end the album with an announcement that you are “Downloading.” The theme of digital upload/download works, I think, on two levels. First, it is a winking acknowledgement to the reality of the recording industry today: many of the people listening will have obtained the music, as I did, by downloading it for free on the Internet. Second, it is a not-so-subtle reminder that dead prez are uploading this album, full of practical, political and spiritual knowledge, into your brain. After you are finished listening/uploading, the idea is to download the knowledge to friends and comrades. The act completes the cycle of participatory education mentioned so often in dead prez lyrics: “each one teach one.” dead prez don’t really care about the “illegal” download—they want the knowledge to spread.
Before it recites a laundry list of the systemic problems staring this society in the face, the album’s first song, “A New Beginning,” dead prez reveal who they know to be at least part of their audience. “Try to save the trees / but you can’t go green / without that black and red / if we gon get free / we got to change that light bulb in our head.” They are reaching out to speak to young middle-class people across the nation who acknowledge the global ecological collapse we face, but who also, perhaps seeing the failure of the bullshit “go green” consumerist approach, are frozen in fear of the impending “end of the world.” But as the dead prez lyrically emphasize, we can choose to see collapse, the decay of the American empire, not as “the end of the world,” but instead as a “new beginning,” a perspective that more easily resonates with oppressed people who have been surviving the system all along: “They dollar’s losing value/ but the hood knew that already.” It is a cutting but hopeful sentiment, echoed later in the cut “Take Me To The Future,” that another world is possible which we must fearlessly build together: “Change is so necessary / cuz they system is not workin.”
This is not to say that dead prez optimism overrides the problems of the present. “What If The Lights Go Out,” for example, is eerily prescient of the devastation of Hurricane Sandy. It begins with a scene of two men stranded (on a rooftop?) as a helicopter passes overhead and one yells in vain hope of being rescued. The other man says “don’t do that man / you gon get shot … they aint comin to help us man / we got to help our motherfuckin self.” In comes stic.man, telling us how to do just that—to be ready for whatever: storms, financial collapse, power outages, martial law. (As I write, there are some still without power in Red Hook, NY, more than a month after Superstorm Sandy.) He tells us what to truly value: “organization, communication / clarity family solidarity,” adding, “The dollar bill is just a piece of paper / when the lights go out it aint gon save you.” A jab, perhaps, not only at the petit bourgeois chasers of the “American Dream,” but also the bling-bling money-worshiping rappers DP have regularly called out in past songs like “Hip Hop” and “Malcolm Garvey Huey.” In this song and a few others, M-1 brings an old-school hip hop sound to his raps, reminiscent of Grandmaster Flash in “The Message,” that grounds the electronic sounds in a hip-hop tradition. “This organized humanity / is borderline insanity, but / don’t panic, be cool / no code to the streets and no rules.”
To Read the Entire Review
Brett Easton Ellis: American Psycho (1991)
To contact us Click HERE
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Unfairly dismissed and condemned upon release. Yes, it is over-the-top, it is definitely offensive/disgusting (seriously), but this is a satirical book that is examining the greed and disdain of Wall St elites. In particular it demonstrates the distorted solipsistic reality of Bates who is cocooned in his narcissistic, incestuous world so deeply that the only thing he views as important is the consumer culture he is enamored with as a marker of his status -- and that is where things get literally fucked up! It is also a great meditation on truth/authenticity in a overly mediatized (mediated) world. It is all the more important now and should, perhaps, be viewed with the documentary Inside Job for some perspective.
View all my reviews
American Psycho by Bret Easton EllisMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Unfairly dismissed and condemned upon release. Yes, it is over-the-top, it is definitely offensive/disgusting (seriously), but this is a satirical book that is examining the greed and disdain of Wall St elites. In particular it demonstrates the distorted solipsistic reality of Bates who is cocooned in his narcissistic, incestuous world so deeply that the only thing he views as important is the consumer culture he is enamored with as a marker of his status -- and that is where things get literally fucked up! It is also a great meditation on truth/authenticity in a overly mediatized (mediated) world. It is all the more important now and should, perhaps, be viewed with the documentary Inside Job for some perspective.
View all my reviews
Chris Hedges: The Unsilenced Voice of a "Long-Distance Revolutionary"
To contact us Click HERE
The Unsilenced Voice of a "Long-Distance Revolutionary"
by Chris Hedges
TruthDig
I am sitting in the visiting area of the SCI Mahanoy prison in Frackville, Pa., on a rainy, cold Friday morning with Mumia Abu-Jamal, America’s most famous political prisoner and one of its few authentic revolutionaries. He is hunched forward on the gray plastic table, his dreadlocks cascading down the sides of his face, in a room that looks like a high school cafeteria. He is talking intently about the nature of empire, which he is currently reading voraciously about, and effective forms of resistance to tyranny throughout history. Small children, visiting their fathers or brothers, race around the floor, wail or clamber on the plastic chairs. Abu-Jamal, like the other prisoners in the room, is wearing a brown jumpsuit bearing the letters DOC—for Department of Corrections.
Abu-Jamal was transferred in January to the general prison population after nearly 30 years in solitary confinement on death row and was permitted physical contact with his wife, children and other visitors for the first time in three decades. He had been sentenced to death in 1982 for the Dec. 9, 1981, killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. His sentence was recently amended to life without parole. The misconduct of the judge, flagrant irregularities in his trial and tainted evidence have been criticized by numerous human rights organizations, including Amnesty International.
Abu-Jamal, who was a young activist in the Black Panthers and later one of the most important radical journalists in Philadelphia, a city that a few decades earlier produced I.F. Stone, has long been the bête noire of the state. The FBI opened a file on him when he was 15, when he started working with the local chapter of the Black Panthers. He was suspended from his Philadelphia high school when he campaigned to rename the school for Malcolm X and distributed “black revolutionary student power” literature.
Stephen Vittoria’s new film documentary about Abu-Jamal, “Long Distance Revolutionary,” rather than revisit the case, chronicles his importance and life as an American journalist, radical and intellectual under the harsh realities of Pennsylvania’s death row. Abu-Jamal has published seven books in prison, including his searing and best-selling “Live From Death Row.” The film features the voices of Cornel West, James Cone, Dick Gregory, Angela Davis, Alice Walker and others. It opens in theaters Feb. 1, starting in New York City. In the film Gregory says that Abu-Jamal has single-handedly brought “dignity to the whole death row.”
The late historian Manning Marable says in the film: “The voice of black journalism in the struggle for the liberation of African-American people has always proved to be decisive throughout black history. When you listen to Mumia Abu-Jamal you hear the echoes of David Walker, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and the sisters and brothers who kept the faith with struggle, who kept the faith with resistance.”
The authorities, as they did before he was convicted, have attempted to silence him in prison. Pennsylvania banned all recorded interviews with Abu-Jamal after 1996. In response to protests over the singling out of one inmate in the Pennsylvania correction system, the state simply banned recorded access to all its inmates. The ban is nicknamed “the Mumia rule.”
“I was punished for communicating,” Abu-Jamal says.
Cornel West says in the film: “The state is very clever in terms of keeping track, especially [of] the courageous and visionary ones, the ones that are long-distance runners. You can keep track of them, absorb ’em, dilute ’em, or outright kill ’em—you don’t have to worry about opposition to ’em.”
To Read the Rest of the Essay
by Chris Hedges
TruthDig
I am sitting in the visiting area of the SCI Mahanoy prison in Frackville, Pa., on a rainy, cold Friday morning with Mumia Abu-Jamal, America’s most famous political prisoner and one of its few authentic revolutionaries. He is hunched forward on the gray plastic table, his dreadlocks cascading down the sides of his face, in a room that looks like a high school cafeteria. He is talking intently about the nature of empire, which he is currently reading voraciously about, and effective forms of resistance to tyranny throughout history. Small children, visiting their fathers or brothers, race around the floor, wail or clamber on the plastic chairs. Abu-Jamal, like the other prisoners in the room, is wearing a brown jumpsuit bearing the letters DOC—for Department of Corrections.
Abu-Jamal was transferred in January to the general prison population after nearly 30 years in solitary confinement on death row and was permitted physical contact with his wife, children and other visitors for the first time in three decades. He had been sentenced to death in 1982 for the Dec. 9, 1981, killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. His sentence was recently amended to life without parole. The misconduct of the judge, flagrant irregularities in his trial and tainted evidence have been criticized by numerous human rights organizations, including Amnesty International.
Abu-Jamal, who was a young activist in the Black Panthers and later one of the most important radical journalists in Philadelphia, a city that a few decades earlier produced I.F. Stone, has long been the bête noire of the state. The FBI opened a file on him when he was 15, when he started working with the local chapter of the Black Panthers. He was suspended from his Philadelphia high school when he campaigned to rename the school for Malcolm X and distributed “black revolutionary student power” literature.
Stephen Vittoria’s new film documentary about Abu-Jamal, “Long Distance Revolutionary,” rather than revisit the case, chronicles his importance and life as an American journalist, radical and intellectual under the harsh realities of Pennsylvania’s death row. Abu-Jamal has published seven books in prison, including his searing and best-selling “Live From Death Row.” The film features the voices of Cornel West, James Cone, Dick Gregory, Angela Davis, Alice Walker and others. It opens in theaters Feb. 1, starting in New York City. In the film Gregory says that Abu-Jamal has single-handedly brought “dignity to the whole death row.”
The late historian Manning Marable says in the film: “The voice of black journalism in the struggle for the liberation of African-American people has always proved to be decisive throughout black history. When you listen to Mumia Abu-Jamal you hear the echoes of David Walker, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Robeson, and the sisters and brothers who kept the faith with struggle, who kept the faith with resistance.”
The authorities, as they did before he was convicted, have attempted to silence him in prison. Pennsylvania banned all recorded interviews with Abu-Jamal after 1996. In response to protests over the singling out of one inmate in the Pennsylvania correction system, the state simply banned recorded access to all its inmates. The ban is nicknamed “the Mumia rule.”
“I was punished for communicating,” Abu-Jamal says.
Cornel West says in the film: “The state is very clever in terms of keeping track, especially [of] the courageous and visionary ones, the ones that are long-distance runners. You can keep track of them, absorb ’em, dilute ’em, or outright kill ’em—you don’t have to worry about opposition to ’em.”
To Read the Rest of the Essay
12 Aralık 2012 Çarşamba
My Most Listened to Albums of 2012
To contact us Click HERE
Father John Misty - Fear Fun: The Best Album of an Uneven Year
Here are the albums I thought about a bit this year. A lot of good-sounding stuff, but not much thrilling stuff. Father John Misty's Fear Fun was the only album that, for me, could compete with some of the best albums from the last few years. Looking to 2013, though, I’m excited about the new album from Thom Yorke (Atoms for Peace) and the new album from Junip ( I LOVED their first one), and hopeful about the new album from Eels . . .
TOP 10 (or top-whatever) lists are odd creatures. As I was trying to put a list together, I found that my list of top albums, albums I thought were “the best” was a different list than the list of albums I listened to the most. First, here are some of the albums that I listened to that are making a lot of top then lists:
Frank Ocean – Channel Orange
Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel…
Jack White – Blunderbuss
Cloud Nothings – Attack On Memory
Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan
Tame Impala – Lonerism
El-P – Cancer For Cure
And of course, there was an album from The Boss, too. But I didn’t like any of them, not even a little bit. Actually, I enjoyed Taylor Swift’s Red more than any of these albums. Taylor Swift came out with a pretty good album, for what it is. When I went to make a top ten list, I found that some of the albums I was trying to put there were albums I really didn’t listen to all that much, but instead were albums that I thought were good, even as I didn’t really like them all that much. So, instead, here’s a different kind of list. These were the ten albums from 2012 I listened to the most, and that I’m still listening to:
Father John Misty, Fear Fun
Angus Stone, Broken Brights
Amy Cook, Summer Skin
Hospitality, Hospitality
The Lumineers, The Lumineers
Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Psychedelic Pill
Ian Hunter, When I’m President
Aimee Mann, Charmer
Beach House, Bloom
David Byrne & St. Vincent, Love This Giant
Rounding out the top twenty or so of albums I listened to, here are some albums fro 2012 I liked, or even liked a lot, but didn’t go back to as much as I thought I was going to (though some of them, I’d say were “better” than some of the ones I went back to more often [for instance, I know intellectually that the Leonard Cohen album is better than the Neil Young & Crazy Horse album, but I don’t listen to it as often]). Anyway, these are some good albums, well worth checking out:
Bob Dylan, Tempest
Dinosaur Jr., I Bet On Sky
Elephant Micah, Louder Than Thou
Glen Hansard, Rhythm & Repose
Jason Lytle, Dept. of Disappearance
Jay Farrar, et al, New Multitudes
Kathleen Edwards, Voyageur
Kopecky Family Band, Kids Raising Kids
Lambchop, Mr. M
Leonard Cohen, Old Ideas
Moonface, With Siinai
Of Monsters and Men, My Head Is an Animal
Rounding out the recap of my listening habits of 2012, were some albums I thought at first I was going to like, I even thought I was liking them a lot, but that I never really could get myself all the way through without turning to something else.
Andrew Bird, Break It Yourself
Beth Orton, Sugaring Season
Calexico, Algiers
Cat Power, Sun
Damien Jurado, Maraqopa
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Here
First Aid Kit, The Lion’s Roar
Fort Atlantic, Fort Atlantic
Great Lake Swimmers, New Wild Everywhere
Lee Renaldo, Between the Times & the Tides
Memoryhouse, The Slideshow Effect
MV & EE, Space Homestead
Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Americana
Norah Jones, Little Broken Hearts
Perfume Genius, Put Your Back N 2 It
Porcelain Raft, Strange Weekend
Sarah Jaffe, The Body Wins
Sharon Van Etten, Tramp
Spiritualized, Sweet Heart Sweet Light
Trampled By Turtles, Stars and Satellites
Father John Misty - Fear Fun: The Best Album of an Uneven YearHere are the albums I thought about a bit this year. A lot of good-sounding stuff, but not much thrilling stuff. Father John Misty's Fear Fun was the only album that, for me, could compete with some of the best albums from the last few years. Looking to 2013, though, I’m excited about the new album from Thom Yorke (Atoms for Peace) and the new album from Junip ( I LOVED their first one), and hopeful about the new album from Eels . . .
TOP 10 (or top-whatever) lists are odd creatures. As I was trying to put a list together, I found that my list of top albums, albums I thought were “the best” was a different list than the list of albums I listened to the most. First, here are some of the albums that I listened to that are making a lot of top then lists:
Frank Ocean – Channel Orange
Fiona Apple – The Idler Wheel…
Jack White – Blunderbuss
Cloud Nothings – Attack On Memory
Dirty Projectors – Swing Lo Magellan
Tame Impala – Lonerism
El-P – Cancer For Cure
And of course, there was an album from The Boss, too. But I didn’t like any of them, not even a little bit. Actually, I enjoyed Taylor Swift’s Red more than any of these albums. Taylor Swift came out with a pretty good album, for what it is. When I went to make a top ten list, I found that some of the albums I was trying to put there were albums I really didn’t listen to all that much, but instead were albums that I thought were good, even as I didn’t really like them all that much. So, instead, here’s a different kind of list. These were the ten albums from 2012 I listened to the most, and that I’m still listening to:
Father John Misty, Fear Fun
Angus Stone, Broken Brights
Amy Cook, Summer Skin
Hospitality, Hospitality
The Lumineers, The Lumineers
Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Psychedelic Pill
Ian Hunter, When I’m President
Aimee Mann, Charmer
Beach House, Bloom
David Byrne & St. Vincent, Love This Giant
Rounding out the top twenty or so of albums I listened to, here are some albums fro 2012 I liked, or even liked a lot, but didn’t go back to as much as I thought I was going to (though some of them, I’d say were “better” than some of the ones I went back to more often [for instance, I know intellectually that the Leonard Cohen album is better than the Neil Young & Crazy Horse album, but I don’t listen to it as often]). Anyway, these are some good albums, well worth checking out:
Bob Dylan, Tempest
Dinosaur Jr., I Bet On Sky
Elephant Micah, Louder Than Thou
Glen Hansard, Rhythm & Repose
Jason Lytle, Dept. of Disappearance
Jay Farrar, et al, New Multitudes
Kathleen Edwards, Voyageur
Kopecky Family Band, Kids Raising Kids
Lambchop, Mr. M
Leonard Cohen, Old Ideas
Moonface, With Siinai
Of Monsters and Men, My Head Is an Animal
Rounding out the recap of my listening habits of 2012, were some albums I thought at first I was going to like, I even thought I was liking them a lot, but that I never really could get myself all the way through without turning to something else.
Andrew Bird, Break It Yourself
Beth Orton, Sugaring Season
Calexico, Algiers
Cat Power, Sun
Damien Jurado, Maraqopa
Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Here
First Aid Kit, The Lion’s Roar
Fort Atlantic, Fort Atlantic
Great Lake Swimmers, New Wild Everywhere
Lee Renaldo, Between the Times & the Tides
Memoryhouse, The Slideshow Effect
MV & EE, Space Homestead
Neil Young & Crazy Horse, Americana
Norah Jones, Little Broken Hearts
Perfume Genius, Put Your Back N 2 It
Porcelain Raft, Strange Weekend
Sarah Jaffe, The Body Wins
Sharon Van Etten, Tramp
Spiritualized, Sweet Heart Sweet Light
Trampled By Turtles, Stars and Satellites
What I've Learned at SXSW So Far
To contact us Click HERE
The first thing I learned was that when people remind you all day to set your clocks ahead an hour on Sunday night, you should probably do that. Instead, I woke up the next morning thinking I had plenty of time to make it to Paul Lamere's panel "Finding Music With Pictures: Data Visualization for Discovery" only to discover that it was, in fact, happening at that very moment, thanks to the ridiculous scam that is Daylight Savings Time. Fortunately, Paul has posted his slides over at Music Machinery (linked from his name, above) and so when I have some more time I am going to try to piece together what he talked about based on a smattering of pictures and text.
I also learned that the SXSW Animated Shorts are not as good as the ones at Sundance that I was lucky enough to see a few years back, and in retrospect I should have skipped them entirely to attend the "Bloggers Fight Back: Legal Workshop for Music Bloggers" panel. But since I didn't, don't be surprised when I start writing this blog from jail.
When I finally got into some panels, I learned even more. Mainly, I learned that metadata is the magic word of the day. First up was the "Love, Music & APIs" panel featuring speakers from Echo Nest and SoundCloud. Their main point was that APIs are the new currency in music apps, and if you don't have one, you're not really playing in the same game as everyone else. They had a slide listing all sorts of cool music companies with APIs - interestingly enough, Pandora wasn't listed. I wondered why not, as they seemed to be in the heart of the music recommendation space, and my friend Lori quickly realized "they must not have an API." I felt so sad for them. The panelists talked a lot about Music Hack Days, finally answering the question of what actually happens at those things. The answer: a lot of smart people make a lot of really interesting and cool music apps in a very short amount of time, nearly all of them based around APIs. And what do those APIs revolve around? Metadata. That was also the topic of the second music-related panel I attended that day, "Music & Metadata: Do Songs Remain The Same?" The panelists here used a pretty broad definition of "metadata," using it to cover everything from the spelling of a song's title (apparently when users submit their own titles to most metadata repositories like MusicBrainz or the old CDDB, you can end up with 176 spellings of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door") to things like a song's cultural impact or a singer's unique and recognizable turns of phrase. The main takeaway is that metadata may start out in the hands of the artist, but quickly becomes "owned" by listeners, users, remixers, etc. Metadata is cultural currency in much the same way that APIs are technical currency. Combined, they are helping make this a fascinating and wonderful time to be a music nerd.
The last thing I learned is that the line to see Surfer Blood was too long last night, so I will be trying again tonight. Of course, there are about 50 bands (and a movie) that I want to see all playing at the same time tonight, so I have no idea what I'll end up seeing, but I'll tell you all about it here!
Web Developer's Lament
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This one's for all the web developers out there...
I'm on a "working vacation" for a couple weeks up in Belfast, ME, staying in a house on the bay. Somehow working from here doesn't feel quite as much like work as it does when I work from my usual office location. However, events have conspired to make it feel as much like work as it possibly could - namely, a client has been doing their best to make sure that no piece of code I write this week is ever actually done, due to the specifications changing daily, not unlike clouds shifting in a summer breeze.
So I wrote this song to explain how I feel. [This isn't all about this particular project, but that was a good starting point.]
This is a live recording made down by the water.
Lyrics:
They changed the specs again
Just when I was nearly finished
Said the client changed their mind
I don't know if I can take this
They changed the specs again
I've already written so much code
And the thought of starting over
Makes my sanity erode
Chorus:
Why won't they just let me finish?
Why can't I just be done?
Why won't they just let me finish?
Is this their idea of fun?
They changed the specs again
Pushed the launch up by 2 weeks
They've added a shopping cart
God, my knees are feeling weak
They changed the specs again
To match the new designs
They want it to just "work like Google"
Lord, I'm losing my mind
[Chorus]
I give up, I give up.
I give up, I give up.
Let's add some features, I give up.
Let's build a CMS from scratch, I give up.
Let's refactor every function, I give up.
Let's start calling ourselves agile, I give up.
Let's have a status meeting, I give up.
Let's adopt a framework, I give up.
Let's add members' only area, I give up.
Let's change databases, I give up.
Let's review my timesheet, I give up.
Let's never document anything, I give up.
Let's outsource to India
Still More Holiday Music That Doesn't Suck
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"Christmas music." "Holiday tunes." "Mind-numbing winter-themed muzak pabulum." Call it what you will, our ears are subjected to a lot of crap every winter. Well, Wired For Music is here to help, with yet another edition of our patented "Holiday Music That Doesn't Suck" playlist.
This year's playlist has some songs that a lot of you will probably already know, but I've had enough people ask me about them in the past that I finally decided to put them on. Hopefully there'll be some surprises on here too for more "advanced" listeners, whatever that means. And it even features one song I swore I would never, ever include (it grew on me).
Enjoy, and be sure to check out the playlists from previous years!
Hungry for more? Check out some of these awesome holiday playlists:
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| SK Holiday Open House by flickr user vastateparksstaff |
This year's playlist has some songs that a lot of you will probably already know, but I've had enough people ask me about them in the past that I finally decided to put them on. Hopefully there'll be some surprises on here too for more "advanced" listeners, whatever that means. And it even features one song I swore I would never, ever include (it grew on me).
Enjoy, and be sure to check out the playlists from previous years!
- Dean Martin - A Marshmallow World
"The King of Cool" gives us his take on this sugary classic. Dean's version was never as popular as Bing Crosby's, but it does feature some of his trademark near-drunken slurring, particularly on the last verse's "take a walk-with-yourfav-or-itegirl." This song makes me wish it was snowing right now. - Gruff Rhys - Slashed Wrists This Christmas
This is the first track of the Super Furry Animals' frontman's brilliantly titled "Atheist Xmas EP." It's a bit repetitive, but then, so this this whole season, isn't it? - The Futureheads - Christmas Was Better In The 80s
Not entirely sure why these guys are so nostalgic given that I think they're younger than I am, but it's still a great song. Apparently it's a big deal in the UK to release a single at Christmas time, which explains the existence of a few tracks on this playlist. Some of them work out great, and others...don't make it to this playlist. - The Gasoline Brothers - Hungover Boxing Day
This Dutch band really nails that feeling of waking up on Boxing Day and realizing - wait, what the hell is Boxing Day? Europe is weird. - Badly Drawn Boy - Donna and Blitzen
This song definitely sounds like it was written a few days before the deadline for getting on the Xmas single charts or something like that. The lyrics read like he was doing a holiday-themed Mad Libs and just plugged in words like "sleigh ride" and "reindeer" here and there. But the music saves it, especially those massive timpanis. - Marvin Gaye - Purple Snowflakes
Nothing says Christmas like (a presumably high) Marvin Gaye singing about "purple snowflakes" while his backup singers sprinkle phrases like "chestnuts roasting" and "tootsies toasting" all over the place. This song is ridiculously good, and his voice is just angelic. - Okkervil River - Listening To Otis Redding At Home During Christmas
I can't decide if this is more depressing than Tom Waits's "Christmas Card From A Hooker In Minneapolis" (featured on 2008's playlist), but it's damn depressing regardless. Seriously, go read the lyrics, I'll wait. Can you imagine if Jeff Tweedy still wrote songs like this? Wow, that would be awesome. - Morphine - Sexy Christmas Baby Mine
Still not depressed? Listen to a dead man croon "Merry for you. Not too merry for me./I want you here with me. Misery loves company." You're welcome. - The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl - Fairytale of New York
I resisted this song for the past 5 years - in fact, I really hated it until late last year when it suddenly just clicked for me. I don't know if it's living in New York or what, but one of my most-hated Christmas songs ever has finally wormed its way into my heart. This one's a classic that I'm sure you've heard a million times, but it still belongs on this playlist. - Barenaked Ladies - I Saw Three Ships
Just a pretty little palate cleanser. They really should have let Steven sing first, but that's being nitpicky. - Lord Nelson - A Party For Santa Claus
Feeling chilly? Let the hot island rhythms of Tobago (by way of Brooklyn) of this little ditty warm you up (or go drink some cocoa, I don't care). I like the message of this song - how come no one ever gets presents for Santa? - The Beach Boys - Little Saint Nick
Of course The Beach Boys would write a song about Santa's sled. This song is stupid, but I love it. And it features the brilliant line: "Christmas comes this time each year." Deep. - Aimee Mann - I Was Thinking I Could Clean Up For Christmas
A happy little song about getting off the ol' drugs for Christmastime. Isn't that sweet? - Ella Fitzgerald - Good Morning Blues
Leave it to Ella to have a bad time at Christmas. "Don't send me nothing for Christmas but my baby back to me" - it's a great time of the year to be alone, isn't it? - dj BC - Waltz Of The Flowers (reflower)
An interesting mix of a classic, from dj BC's "A Very Re:Composition Christmas." Lots of interesting stuff on that album, it's really worth checking out if you like classical music, remixes, or both. - The Ramones - Merry Christmas (I Don't Want to Fight)
A message of love and peace for the holidays from Joey Ramone. [Presumably he and the person to whom he was singing were allowed to resume fighting on Boxing Day.] - Kanye West ft. CyHi Da Prynce & Teyana Taylor - Christmas In Harlem
Despite famously being from Chicago, which does not include Harlem, Kanye does a serviceable job with this sequel to Louis Armstrong's "Christmas Night in Harlem" (featured in 2008's playlist). I think the best verse here belongs to CyHi Da Prynce, who raps in character as Santa Claus. This song gets extra credit for the part at the end when Teyana Taylor starts singing the melody of "Strawberry Letter 23." - Milly & Silly - Getting Down For Xmas
Looking at Santa's outfit, I'd say that playing funk music at this time of year is pretty much a no-brainer. - Frightened Rabbit - It's Christmas So We'll Stop
These guys really do a great job with the whole "suicidal but catchy" thing. Sample lyric: "Oh it's Christmas so we'll stop/'Cause the wine on our breath puts the love in our tongues/So forget the names/I called you on Christmas Eve/In fact forget the entire year/Don't reflect just pretend and you won't feel scared." Yikes. - David Bowie & Bing Crosby - Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy
For a song that was conceived of, written, rehearsed, and performed in a little over an hour, this is pretty amazing. If you haven't heard this before, you're probably going to like it. I think it's all the more incredible considering the backstory (see link above). - Lovebyte - Auld Lang Syne
I actually cut another electronic instrumental song off this list, but I just had to give a nod to the robot inside me with this overly upbeat, bizarre version of the New Year's classic. - Sarah McLachlan - Song For A Winter's Night
Sarah McLachlan's take on Gordon Lightfoot's beautiful little song is spare and beautiful, and I find it really evokes the feeling of a cold winter's night effectively. Great harmonies, too.
Hungry for more? Check out some of these awesome holiday playlists:
- Annals of Spacetime
- Fuel/Friends
- ilovethis
- Wired For Music
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