Posts from — August 2006

YouTube – Meet Alfred – The Belgian Penguin Man:
Meet Alfred – The Belgian Penguin Man
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well… you see… the thing is… that while this penguin man is perhaps a bit extreme…. his beliefs about ‘becoming’ and ‘enacting’ are the central beliefs of careerists in modernity. I have a ton of friends that have lived their lives in a way to ‘become’ something… something that usually isn’t too far removed from being a penguin.

Making Light: Terrorists:
he says “I am not saying that the politicians and press are terrorists”. Bruce may not be saying that, but I am.

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I have to agree, and I think it is morally wrong for our own president and political parties to encourage their populace to be afraid of each other and the rest of the world. They should be trying to build a trust in the people of the world, trying not to cause blood enemies in other countries, etc.

one thing that we have to realize is that all humans in all states of the world are equal in their moral worth. citizens gain extra worth to the state, but that is not extra ‘moral’ worth. once everyone starts to realize that ‘People are not different, not monsters, and they are thinking, caring, human beings that are trying to make a better world’ If we can get people to stop thinking ‘better world for me and my friends (or others sharing similar transcendental beliefs’ and start thinking ‘better world for everyone, here, now and immanently’, then we’ve made progress.

FDA Approves Over-the-Counter Access for Plan B for Women 18 and Older–Prescription Remains Required for Those 17 and Under:
FDA Approves Over-the-Counter Access
for Plan B for Women 18 and Older
Prescription Remains Required for Those 17 and Under

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It is about time that the FDA and our current administration started treating women as adult, contributing members of our society and nota s some form of paternalized subject to be protected for their fiction of the public good

Sometimes I Feel Like I’m The Only One Trying To Gentrify This Neighborhood | The Onion – America’s Finest News Source:
It’s getting to the point where I feel like I’m tilting at windmills. But I can’t give up—I know this neighborhood would benefit from the diversity of more people like me moving in. If you need a good place to live, come check out my ‘hood. It’s quirky, but it could use a few more creative types to get it jumping. But no developers—those guys just ruin it for the rest of us.

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the sad thing is…. some people think like this ….

WorldForge, 50K:

worldforge hits 50k… i worked on this a long long long time ago… it seems like. i don’t think any of my additions were added, but they are still going.

Library Smut – pictures for the library voyeur in us all:
http://thenonist.com/index.php/thenonist/permalink/hot_library_smut/

Thanks to my friend Kenneth Davis of Prosperos Books who sent me this link, I am happy to share news of a new book titled Libraries, by Candida Höfer. thenonist has done a great job of introducing the content and has some wonderful pictures scanned in. thenonist has this to say in Red-Hot and Filthy Library Smut:
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some of the best library smut i’ve seen… though i have a few pictures from the Kobenhavn U. and other places….

I went for a walk this afternoon and decided to try some new food. I went to this little cuban restaurant…, I’d say on 47th street and broadway in astoria/LIC. I wanted to try the cuban sandwich. Of course, they were out of cubano, so I ordered what the person before me had which was chicken and dirty rice. so it is baked chicken with a bit of spice and some vegetables over what seems to be a pound of rice… for six bucks. The rice and beans alone , though it could be spicier, is more than enough for a meal, the chicken is tasty. Perhaps later in the week I’ll try the fish market. it too had a bunch of people in it for lunch.

Geneva Conventions Now Universal:
via Opinio Juris:

This is a landmark month in the history of international law: with the accession of the Republic of Montenegro on August 2, the 1949 Geneva Conventions have become the first international treaty in modern history to achieve universal acceptance.

The irony, of course, is that the US has re-interpreted the Geneva Conventions, especially the reach of Common Article 3, in a way that makes our copy of the convention different (and much less meaningful) than the rest of the world’s….
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the geneva conventions are a necessity… they keep war from being overly monstrous, though it frequently pushes that boundary.

personally i think the convention should be expanded to include a ban on the use of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons whose purpose is to maim or kill.

Cyborg citizens and digital natives:
Patrik Hernwall discussed the notion of Educology, and how, within this framework, the learning subject can be defined. Building on theories of constructivist learning, he suggested that the learning subject should be viewed as an active, intentional, meaningmaking subject in context. An important part of the context is the tools available and what actions they afford, and this reasoning brought Hernwall to the conclusion that it is fruitful to view the (young) learner as a cyborg citizen.
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Here I take issue with the understanding of citizen. What it means to be a citizen is heavily contested, but qualitatively i think a citizen needs to: participate, be free to dissent(and really actually to dissent)… and that is about it. however, schools and technology have never been very good about encouraging participation and dissent. They are more in line with producing informed, agreeing subjects– subjects that are submissive to their informatic and mediated environments. Digital natives, in my mind, show no significant difference in the capacity to participate and dissent.