An interview with OBEY GIANT's creator Shepard Fairey.

I appreciate advertising because it's really pure. It's pure in that it has no goal other than to get you to buy something. It's always, directly or indirectly, leading to something that makes money. It thrives on manipulation. I enjoy seeing all the psychological methods that advertising uses. I used to feel threatened by the people doing the advertising, but in more recent years I've shifted to the idea of "Don't be a victim." I encourage people to be aware of the devices that are being used to manipulate them. That actually frees me up to do advertising myself [laughs] without having as much of a guilty conscience. [via Alternet]

Extensions are a political plus for everyone, and they usually have wide bipartisan support on Capitol Hill. In theory, the current situation is no exception - a 13-week extension has already passed, unanimously in the Senate. But, in practice, the House Republican leadership continues to tie it to its economic stimulus package of tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy - something the Senate isn't likely to approve.

The House Republicans reason that without the stimulus package and a healthcare component, the extensions of individual benefits won't do much, says Christin Tinsworth, a spokesperson for the House Ways and Means Committee.

But the wrangling translates into desperate circumstances for the jobless.

"[GOP leaders] know that without holding these workers hostage to the tax cuts, they won't get them," says John Dodds, director of the Philadelphia Unemployment Project. "Everybody's for [the extension], but we can't get it passed."

Each week, 80,000 workers exhaust their UI, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. [link]

In some cases, elected school boards conspicuously mismanaged funds - overspending credit cards or bungling millions in funding for school construction. In others, petty squabbles and erratic behavior spilled out onto the front pages of local newspapers, undermining public confidence in the capacity of local boards.

More recently, pressure for change is coming down to the central issue of student achievement.

Most students in urban public schools aren't doing well. And with new state and federal testing regimes, such failures are becoming more and more conspicuous.

Moreover, states recently displaced local communities as the leading source of funds for public schools. Since 1978-79, revenues from state governments have slightly exceeded those from local governments, such as property taxes, according to the US Department of Education. Increasingly, state lawmakers see governance changes as a way to get more for their education dollars.

Chuck was an artist, a poet, a philosopher, and an American. All of his creations were extreme anti-authoritarians: yippie cross-dressers who delighted in out-talking, outwitting, and finally dropping anvils on the authorities (represented by such foils as Elmer Fudd and Porky Pig).

[...]

Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck as Chuck Jones drew and wrote them were freethinkers, radical individualists, and revolutionaries in the true American grain. They recalled the spirit of Tom Paine, Henry David Thoreau, Emma Goldman, and H.L. Mencken.

[...]

In a fairly typical example of our taste for self-congratulatory, nuance-free mythology, we regard the forties and fifties as eras of repression and our own era as liberated. But Chuck would have a tougher time selling now what was embraced so happily then.

Children's video in the seventies and eighties became an utter blank, a politically correct insipidity, a mindless parade of friendly tokens. The Care Bears, Sesame Street, and Barney taught moral lessons that no one could possibly disagree with, or else they muttered the numbers 1-10 thousands of time as if that were "educational." Even Bugs and Daffy mutated into harmless, cuddly non-entities and entered the world of mega-merchandising. [also from Undernews]

The log described seating arrangements at the stadium for Cheney, his wife and daughter and other dignitaries. It also detailed more than a dozen areas of the stadium where Cheney was to go, the newspaper said.

The document also reportedly contained the number of Secret Service agents who were to provide security, where they would be stationed, and their specific assignments.

The log also revealed the "sweep time" - when agents secured the stadium for Cheney - hours before his arrival, the newspaper said.

When Greenhalgh called to report the mistake, a Secret Service representative promised that an agent would pick up the log, the Tribune reported. After 45 minutes, no one had arrived, so he offered to take it to the agency's downtown office.

In exchange, Greenhalgh requested an autographed picture of Cheney, but was rebuffed and then decided to contact the newspaper, the Tribune said. [link]

No one knows how often fingerprint experts send the wrong person to prison. Ever since fingerprints were first entered as evidence in American courtrooms nearly a century ago, the methods used for matching them have been virtually unquestioned. But mounting evidence cited in a series of legal challenges raises questions about whether the techniques for matching prints may be flawed.

Besides Jackson's case, several other wrongful accusations based on fingerprints have been uncovered in the last 25 years. Moreover, nearly half the examiners who take national certification tests flunk the part that requires them to correctly match fingerprints. Yet they still can testify in court.

Last month, a federal judge in Philadelphia barred a fingerprint examiner from testifying that crime scene prints belonged to the defendants. The judge ruled that fingerprint comparisons are not strictly scientific, and he limited the expert to identifying matching details.

The ruling bolstered the contention of defense lawyers and others that examiners do not adhere to a uniform standard when matching fingerprints, and hence such findings are inherently subjective. Nor has the profession devised a way for determining how often examiners make mistakes. [link, emphasis mine]

The makers of a Charley Pride CD, the first known copy-protected compact disc released in the United States, have agreed to inform consumers that the disc will not play in computer CD-ROM drives or DVD players.

[...]

As part of the settlement, reached Friday, the CD's makers will provide a more detailed disclosure in the packaging. They will also stop requiring consumers to enter their names and e-mail addresses as a condition of downloading the music from a Web site, which DeLise's attorney, Ira Rothken, contends was a way for the record labels to track listener habits.

"This sets an excellent example for the record industry to follow in adopting digital management schemes in the future while preserving consumer privacy," Rothken said. [link]

"We'll tell the American people the truth. And he was just as amazed as I was about reading some allegation that somehow our government would never tell the American people the truth." [link]

Investigators who visited the waste sites in Guiyu, China, in December witnessed men, women and children pulling wires from computers and burning them at night, fouling the air with carcinogenic smoke.

Other laborers, making $1.50 a day and working with little or no protection, burned plastics and circuit boards or poured acid on electronic parts to extract silver and gold. Many pried open printer cartridges - whose hazards are uncertain - and smashed lead-laden cathode ray tubes from computer monitors, the report said.

Consequently, the ground water is so polluted that drinking water has to be trucked in from a town 18 miles away, the report said. One river sample in the area had 190 times the pollution levels allowed under World Health Organization guidelines.

"I've seen a lot of dirty operations in Third World countries, but what was shocking was seeing all this post-consumer waste," said one of the report's authors, Jim Puckett of the Seattle-based Basel Action Network. "This is all stuff from you and me."

It is no secret that hazardous materials from the world's leading economies often end up as detritus in the world's desperate places. A 1989 treaty known as the Basel Convention restricts such transfers, but the United States has not ratified it. [link]

Just remembered these guys, which led me to AnotheR BytE. So I'd just have to ship it. And I'd be helping kids who wouldn't otherwise have had access.

So it's easier than you think. Just don't hold your breath waiting for shrub or Congress to get a clue.

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Blogging puff piece by Henry Jenkins.

Yet something more important may be afoot. At a time when many dot coms have failed, blogging is on the rise. We're in a lull between waves of commercialization in digital media, and bloggers are seizing the moment, potentially increasing cultural diversity and lowering barriers to cultural participation.

What will happen to democracy in the current media environment, where power is concentrated in the hands of a few publishers and networks? Media scholar Robert McChesney warns that the range of voices in policy debates will become constrained. The University of Chicago Law School's Cass Sunstein worries that fragmentation of the Web is apt to result in the loss of the shared values and common culture that democracy requires. As consumers, we experience these dual tensions: turn on the TV and it feels like the same programs are on all the channels; turn to the Web and it's impossible to distinguish the good stuff from the noise. Bloggers respond to both extremes, expanding the range of perspectives and, if they're clever, creating order from the informational chaos. [via boing boing]

We cannot justify a government which takes from the people our right to privacy and then assumes for its own operations a right to total secrecy. . .

[...]

[Congress and the people] did not authorize the invasion of Iraq. We did not authorize the invasion of Iran. We did not authorize the invasion of North Korea. We did not authorize the bombing of civilians in Afghanistan. We did not authorize permanent detainees in Guantanamo Bay. We did not authorize the withdrawal from the Geneva Convention. We did not authorize military tribunals suspending due process and habeas corpus. We did not authorize assassination squads. We did not authorize the resurrection of COINTELPRO. We did not authorize the repeal of the Bill of Rights. We did not authorize the revocation of the Constitution. We did not authorize national identity cards. We did not authorize the eye of Big Brother to peer from cameras throughout our cities. We did not authorize an eye for an eye. Nor did we ask that the blood of innocent people, who perished on September 11, be avenged with the blood of innocent villagers in Afghanistan. We did not authorize the administration to wage war anytime, anywhere, anyhow it pleases. We did not authorize war without end. We did not authorize a permanent war economy. Yet we are upon the threshold of a permanent war economy.

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Howard Johnson's -- the much-visited and much-maligned but trail-blazing restaurant chain -- are disappearing rapidly. There are only 13 left. Here's an appreciation.

The trajectory of the elder Johnson is worth recounting because ever since disillusionment with the American way of life took root among intellectuals in the 1960s, cultural critics have insisted that mass merchants like Howard Johnson simply gave people what they expected--not much of an accomplishment. The fact is, Johnson elevated roadside dining from a chancy, often disagreeable experience to something that people eagerly anticipated. Travelers in the 1920s and '30s saw the broadening reach of Howard Johnson as a wonderful thing. He made things consistently good.

The down side was that as more and more companies followed his example, the landscape of travel became dully uniform. Whatever "sense of place" used to exist practically disappeared under a relentless onslaught of Johnson's orange roofs, Kentucky Fried Chicken's red-and-white-striped roofs, McDonald's golden arches, and other standardized corporate images. Because Americans wanted it to be easy to find a decent place to eat and easy to find a parking spot for the car--and because public planning wasn't able to set forth a more compelling vision--the travelscape was trashed. "God's Own Junkyard" was the phrase architecture critic Peter Blake coined for the commercial landscape.

Up to the 1960s, however, Johnson was a hero. He did not give people "what they were looking for." He gave customers more than they had expected. Consider the lowly hot dog. In Johnson's establishments it was upgraded to a "frankfort" (later "frankfurt") and was meticulously prepared--the twisted ends were snipped off, a half-dozen scores were made in the wiener so that it would soak up butter during grilling, and it was laid into a lightly toasted bun with a special relish.

Power is the author of two books on casket-building (plus one on gravestones). For the moderately skilled woodworker, a do-it-yourself approach can save even more money, deliver a nicer casket and generate a certain sense of control and comfort about death itself.

A plain pine box with no interior sells for $395 from directcasket.com and closer to $700 at a funeral home. A coffin similar to the one Power builds in Fancy Coffins -- made of furniture-grade, hardwood plywood, solid hardwoods and a bit of veneer -- would sell for between $3,000 and $4,000 in a funeral parlor; or $1,600 to $2,000 online.

The material to build it runs a few hundred dollars. If you've got (or can borrow) the tools -- a good table saw, 12-inch planer, biscuit cutter, jointer, chop saw, maybe a band saw for a few cuts, plus a drill press and other sundries -- and you know how to use them, a coffin project might make sense for you.

But as a group the[se] [science fiction] stories are full of nostalgia, regret, fear of aging and death, fear of the future in general, and the experience of change as disorienting and bad. These stories aren't about dystopias. They are about individuals trying to cope with what the present has inexorably and dislocatingly become. Not that this is a bad topic or that good and moving stories can't be written about it. And, in fairness, Willis and Robinson offer at least the notion of hope and adaptation to change. What gives me pause is how recurrent and pervasive the fears are, and the way they are presented within a frame of nostalgia for the Golden Age past of sf.

[...]

We can’t imagine the future if we can’t even look at the present. To connect with a wider, growing, more youthful audience, sf has to grapple with millennial horrors and alienation, with the rootlessness and ferment and absurdity, and, yes, with the millennial fear of the future, in ways other than to say, "I wish things weren’t like this. I liked it better in the past." Without a vital link to the ever-changing Zeitgeist, sf will become a closed system where recycling subject matter and theme is all that’s possible. And science fiction right now seems to be not only losing its connection to and its interest in the Zeitgeist, but becoming antagonistic to it. Of course that brings with it declining relevance to anyone outside the narrowing circle.

Larry McCaffery: When you said a moment ago that you didn't know what the term "science fiction" meant anymore, I knew exactly what you meant. I'd say that just about any writer who is in touch with the world today is writing some version of what used to be called science fiction. One of the reasons for this is because of the ways technology has transformed our lives so much--which is something your books are very much in touch with.

Ted Mooney: If so, thank you. The term "science fiction" is not useful anymore. What I think about this is terribly simple (and I hope I can make this sound as simple as it really is): I'm going to be alive a certain number of years. This is where I live and this is how I live. I can be resistant to it, and hate it, or pretend I live somewhere else; or I can look at it and see what it is and be part of it. Since I find the second option more congenial than the first--it's a little more comradely--I'm inevitably going to have to deal with, among other things, the changes that technology has wrought on our lives. That's just the way it is. And that's also the extent of it. [link]

Isn't this British Intelligence shield creepy?

Mysterious flash persists east of Alamogordo NM.

Summary of government subpoenas for book purchases. Libraries and bookstores seems to be increasingly on the front lines of the Bush Broadside on privacy and dissent. Reminds me of the librarian who publicized Michael Moore's absurdist encounter with HarperCollins that I posted about a while back.

"Fifth disease" erupts in several states. This has been publicized, I guess. Could this be a spontaneous allergic reaction? Is it from food? Suddenly disease has a new spin because of the terrorist connection. So many things in our environment could be toxic.

Dead nuns try to drown out heavy metal in UK studio.

[via nwd]

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Iranian conservative cleric Rafsanjani says US starting to make sense.

In Asia, Bush said: "We want to resolve all issues peacefully, whether it be Iraq, Iran or North Korea, for that matter."

But Rafsanjani warned the situation was still tense and called for unity and harmony within Iran's leadership.

"We should regulate our affairs in a manner as not to give an excuse to the dinosaurs of the world," he said.

"In view of their psychological condition, their domestic problems and their feeling of isolation, the situation can be dangerous if they find an excuse."

Emily Carr -- Canada's most famous and popular female artist -- is finally being recognized in the US in a new show featuring her work alongside Georgia O'Keefe and Frida Kahlo.

Jiles is a poet, but she proves herself here a remarkably effective historian, too. Each of the brief chapters in this book begins with excerpts from Civil War letters, military reports, and newspaper articles that fill in the real-life context of Adair's experience with harrowing effect.

The brutality of the Union's program to quell rebellion was shocking to people on both sides of the war and devastating to the many dispossessed civilians who wanted nothing to do with the conflict or the South's "peculiar institution." Particularly appalling to mid-19th-century mores was the Union's policy of arresting women in an effort to deprive the rebels of their domestic labor. [link]

Alternate commuter transport in the Philippines: the Jeepney.

In the Philippines you can get virtually any place you need to go - from downtown Manila to the most remote rural barangay (village) - with little waiting and for very little money, without a car.

Not only that. The freedom of movement in the Philippines comes with a freedom of expression on the public roadways rarely experienced in the automobile-oriented US. This remarkable transportation system requires no high-tech gizmos, massive investment, or grandiose public or corporate schemes. To the contrary, it is based upon a home-grown vehicle that literally is made from spare parts. It is called a "Jeepney"; and with adaptation, it could be part of the answer to America's traffic congestion and bad air.

[...]

The system has answers for many deficiencies of mass transit in the US. For one thing, there's little waiting. In and around cities, the flow of vehicles is continuous. It's rare to wait more than a few minutes. If comfort is an issue, you generally can find an upscale version - an air conditioned van - that will carry you for a higher price. The system is totally flexible. Need groceries after work? No problem. There's a supplementary fleet of motorbikes with enclosed sidecars - called "tricycles" - that will pick you up at the market and take you right to your door.

The versatility of the system is extraordinary. In rural areas, farmers toss sacks of rice on top of Jeepneys - or even inside - and take them to market. I saw tricycles loaded with rugs, cola, a heavy farm implement, and even, on a rural road, a couple of pigs (which I suspect were having their last tricycle experiences). Since Jeepneys and tricycles are made locally, they provide local jobs, and can be adapted to local conditions. They are built simply, so they are easy to repair.

[...]

Jeepneys, by contrast, are exemplars of home-grown design. They range from sleek, streamlined models to "funkmobiles" with loud paint jobs and riotous hood ornamentation. Some appear to have been in service since General MacArthur left the island in 1945. Newer van-type models also are creeping in. But together they constitute a kind of folk art - and street poetry as well. [pic from Gerard's Jeepney Collection]

Wanted: Someone who can move undetected through jungle brush. Prefer a person who can strike with the force of a "lightning bolt." Must be able to swim long distances in boots and heavy clothing. Ability to order food in Arabic optional.

This is the gist of a recruiting pitch the Pentagon is putting out as it looks for the next generation of its elite soldiers, the Green Berets, to fight the terrorist wars of tomorrow.

[...]

The move also comes at a time when the Army is vying to revamp its soldier schools to appeal to today's tech-savvy teens. At the JFK Special Warfare Center and School here at Ft. Bragg, for instance, top brass are now jazzing up their linguistics curriculum to incorporate state-of-the-art language software.

[...]

"The president has said that now is the time to step forward and do your time," says Army Lt. Col Ryan Yantis. "A lot of people who come to the Army come for the adventure, but, today, what's overriding that is the sense of service to country."

heh

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R.I.P. Chuck Jones. He was one of my teachers. An American treasure. So long, bub.

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Friday, February 22, 2002


Monsanto guilty in Alabama PCB case.

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Journalist who published cautionary story about Enron in March '01 to get $1.4 mil for book.

'Not sceptical enough'

"I obviously wrote a sceptical story," McLean says of her initial article nearly a year ago, "but the truth is I didn't know the half of it. I didn't know the company was going to go bankrupt. It's hard not to look back and wish I had been more critical." [link]

* While some college graduates are achieving higher wage growth in the new economy, surprisingly most are actually seeing lower wage gains now than in the past. Only those in the small finance, insurance and real estate sector are consistently posting higher wage growth.

* Men with some college education, such as an associate of arts degree or technical training, have lost even more ground. Few now see any payoff to their investment in a two-year degree, and the typical person in this group can now expect his wage growth to look much like that of a high school graduate.

* More workers are now being funneled into low-end, low-paying jobs in sectors such as retail trade and business services. These types of jobs tend to trap workers in low-wage careers.

* The net result is a 40-percent decline in the fraction of men who can expect to achieve the kind of economic standing that defined America's middle class in the 1970s.

* Growing job instability seems to be one of the main factors driving these changes. The rewards for changing jobs in the early part of the career, a traditional route for wage growth for workers, have evaporated. And the rewards to building tenure with an employer in later years are being lost as job instability has nearly doubled among those in their mid-30s. [Undernews again]

The program promises to take the genre of non-scripted TV to a new level, combining the talents of one of Hollywood's biggest producers with a pioneer of the "reality" genre. Bruckheimer produced such military movie hits as "Top Gun," "Pearl Harbor" and "Black Hawk Down." Van Munster was a producer and cameraman for eight years on the Fox series "Cops."

HOLLYWOOD AT WAR

Announcement of the show comes amid a new spirit of partnership between Hollywood and Washington after the Sept. 11 attacks by suicide hijackers and the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan.

Studio and network executives have met with White House officials and formed a special panel to plan ways of improving America's image abroad and help the government craft its message about its war on terrorism. [Undernews]

Twenty years ago, writing about antitrust crimes in the Michigan Law Review, Easterbrook and Fischel, then both professors at the University of Chicago, wrote that managers not only may, but should, violate the rules when it is profitable to do so. And it is clear that they believed that this rule should apply beyond just antitrust.

In a nutshell, this is the Chicago School view of corporate law that has taken hold over the past 20 years.

Under this view, if a Fed Ex truck needs to double park to make a delivery -- double park. No problem. Pay the $20 fine. Just as long as you are still making money, violate the law.

Or course, when it comes to corporate crime and violence, we aren't talking about just double parking. [via Undernews]

[The Marines] will practice reconnaissance against enemy positions in the middle of the city of 65,000, across the Arkansas River from Little Rock.

Marine reserves from North Little Rock will use their home advantage to play the enemy, while most of the troops will come from bases in Quantico, Virginia, Camp Lejeune, North Carolina and San Antonio, Texas.

Local police will accompany the troops as they move about, and city workers and officials will join in the role playing, including Mayor Pat Hays.

"He wants to play a warlord," Holbert said.

"Once upon a time in Russia there really was a carefree, youthful generation that smiled in joy at the summer, the sea and the sun, and chose Pepsi." So opens Victor Pelevin's latest and best novel, "Homo Zapiens," the Homeric odyssey of a young poet trying to make his way through the brave new world of post-glasnost advertising. In the fairy tale past of the USSR, there was only one truth, and it had little to do with either Madison Avenue or Britney Spears: "Generation 'P' had no choice in the matter and children of the Soviet seventies chose Pepsi in precisely the same way as their parents chose Brezhnev."

With this appropriately satirical introduction, Babylen Tatarsky (named, in a fit of Communist Party spirit, after the Hero of the Revolution) arrives on the scene. Slaving away behind the barricaded plexiglass of a cigarette kiosk run by Chechens, Tatarsky is rescued into advertising by a friend who has discovered how many thousands can be made in this new propaganda. [link]

The last three months were the warmest on U.S. record books, and January was the balmiest in the 123 years temperatures for the month have been recorded globally, government scientists said on Thursday.

[...]

The warmth stretched from western states like Montana and Oklahoma to the East Coast. Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Massachusetts and Vermont saw the warmest November-January period on record, NOAA said.

Abnormal warmth sent global temperatures in January seven degrees Fahrenheit above average in large parts of North America and central Asia, it said. [ link]Here in AZ December and most of January were colder than usual. February was cool then mild, 70s now.

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New referrals of note:

giggles doll for sale ideal
"penis enlargement" +study +university +skeptic
Why sky burials are not permitted in New York State
patent foveon agilent
dmv covert monitoring traffic school california
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ari fleischer,valentine's day
squarewave iraq
haarp +turkey
women foot stomping pictures
salt lake 2002 plushies
wedding officiate budget nj
thesis on building construction , 3 story apartment , in Philippines

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Thursday, February 21, 2002


California pension fund pulls out of 4 Asian countries partly because of *gasp* ethical reasons. If true, good for them.

Calpers' exit from Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia came as a shock - especially because it revealed that it wasn't just for financial reasons.

The criteria used were similar to those used by so-called ethical investment funds, taking into account the independence of a country's judiciary and how well its legal system protects the rights of workers.

But it also based its new criteria on issues of corporate governance: assessing the openness of a capital market, the sorts of protection offered to investors, and how effectively a market is regulated.

Calpers said its rewritten investment criteria make it the first public pension fund to look beyond traditional economic factors.

"protection offered to investors" -- whoops, I guess the US is out too. ;)

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Had to bag Moby Dick. Melville is a bigger blowhard than his whale. I'd finally decided to read it because of all the references in Laurie Anderson's material, but. . .

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I went to lecture by Kathryn McCamant in Boulder in '93 and liked her. The Co-Housing movement is intriguing to me and I own the book . Don't have anywhere near the money to look into it, and I don't know if I'm ready for community in this more close-knit sense. But I see experiments like this pointing to the next phase of living in the post-industrial world. Here's a snapshot of one Co-Housing community in Massachusetts. There are links at the bottom of the page if you want more info.

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Worst storm in at least 50 years hits La Paz, Bolivia. At least 52 dead. In a thunderstorm.

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