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-- Jorge Luis Borges, "The Library of Babel" |
sábado, diciembre 23, 2000
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linkydink Man, experimental filmmakers are soooooo insane. Confuse D&D for the real world much, Mr. Anger? From now on, my magical weapon is the cinematograph, too.
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linkydink JRandom: I don't know if I buy your figuring. The article says that the diesel vehichles being limited "produce one-fourth of the smog-producing pollution and one-half of the soot." (Lord only knows what the technical difference between "smog" and "soot" is.) Supposedly the bill requires that such vehichles "reduce their emissions of soot and smog-producing material by more than 90 percent" by 2010. So, ignoring other factors, in 2010 we'll have 22.5% less smog and 45% less soot going into the air. That sounds good to me! I mean, yes, it's obviously not enough and not ideal, but I still think it's pretty impressive. An oil corporation needs to value its profit over our environment to stay in business; If one didn't, it would be quickly replaced by one that did. Legislation like this is the only way we can make begin to make a dent in the self-perpetuating death machine that is capitalism. It may ultimately make no difference, it may kill us all anyway, and we'll probably deserve it if it does, but I'd hardly call Clinton's approval "bullshit." Am I wrong? Perhaps I need to be schooled. It's just my US$0.02 before I depart to our smogless (and sootless?) northern neighbor.
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linkydink Outbox- Cool to see you post! Now perhaps you can school me when I least expect it. Either way, I'll probably be out of comission for the next several days while I chill at Mont Tremblant. Have a funky christmas, all!
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linkydink Another unlikely siting of the ubiquitous Funky Drummer tonight at CMoore's house: The theme music to Bomberman for the Sega Saturn!
viernes, diciembre 22, 2000
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linkydink Clinton's approval, or at least the New York Times' coverage of it, is bullshit. Read between the lines and you'll see that cars account for 94% of highway traffic, produce three-fourths of the smog pollution, and he rather increase the cost of public transportation! The big picture, though, is that we're valuing the monetary cost of goods/services over the environmental costs to our health/well-being at every turn. We certainly don't deserve this planet, but we sure as hell deserve what we get.
jueves, diciembre 21, 2000
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linkydink thanks for posting, kate. and welcome back, dave. we missed you. from the NYTimes: "I don't go into this with undifferentiated glee. I go into it with a good deal of skepticism." and halleluja, clinton is actually doing something to protect the environment before The Executioner assumes the throne.
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linkydink hi, it's me, hiphop-on-the-internet-ignorant outbox. kidding. that's the beautiful thing about stuff like this. i can post something off the top of my head. someone can take it and run with it, granted, run it headlong into a brick wall, but never-the-less.... and the whole point of me bringing up a digital divide is so that people will think and talk about it anyway. i mean, it's not like i can get on Oprah and be like, "hey, we should fix this!" and she'll give me a bazillion dollars to do it. because there's no one way to fix it. except to make people aware of what's happening. because if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention. whether it has to do with the socio-economic backlash of highspeed technological change, or anything else. and i am not a vigilante altruist. i'm not even suggesting that i know anything about anything. but i will bring up the things that i notice. and if i get schooled in return so be it. consider my head taken out of the sand. thanks for letting me post.
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linkydink Sorry, Timmy, but my brother told me that a friend of his will be opening for Rahzel and I'm lead to believe that tickets are already sold out!
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linkydink 01.06.01: Rahzel, self-proclaimed biomechanoid and Godfather Of Noyze, and the only man ever to succesfully convince me that he has like 6 throats, will perform at Greenwich, CT's Arch Street Teen Center. Word on the street has it that the awesome DJ Jimmy Tones is hoping to open for him...
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linkydink For those of you not yet subscribed to 0xdeadbeef: "Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music."
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linkydink Ninja Tune Chart Action Mr. Scruff says: My special equestrian top 3 is as follows... 1 Donkey 2 Pony 3 Another Donkey Another good one: Skev of N-Tone lists "psychedelic electronic folk music" as his number one. Those crazy folkies are getting more and more innovative! Both Kurt Swinghammer's Vostok 6 and Andy Stochansky's Radio Fusebox have really made me happy in 2000 by pushing the boundaries of folk music, throwing synthesizers, theremins, turntables, and all manner of bizzare errata into the mix.
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linkydink Okay, so I've been a bit busy lately with Real Life, but let's see how much ground I can cover... Did you know Tron has a deleted "love scene"? Concerned about crime in my town? Check out the current crime pattern(s). And for those of you still confused: Solid Gold Token was satrie, Al Gore's party was real, and the beat-down was a humorous fabrication intended to test the Cambridge Police Department. As a member of one such nuclear Western culture, I'd have to say that it comes a no suprise to me that sexual repression, in general, is a Bad Thing(tm). However, where does he get off (no pun intended ;) saying that parenting has no effect on sexual behavior? Yeah, most porn is boring. Just "me too"ing. As for the report on the whole, it's pretty plain that pre-concieved notions and not logic was at the wheel. I won't bother to hit all the questionable statements, but I think I've made my point of view clear. The Digital Divide is really just another facet of the class war(s). I could rant with more depth about this some other time, but for now I think that description should suffice. The trick is to promote the Internet as an effective organizing tool for the under-represented. That should help the divide both online and off. As for racial consciousness being a hinderance to progress, all I can say is "duh"; it's bad enough that other people will define you as a color, but even worse that you would do it to yourself. Speaking of top-ten lists, here's The Onion's Best Albums of 2000. Good read, really. I'm not an art historian, but this factoid smells funny. I'm confident that if one ran similar numbers against the New York Public Library, you'd find a severe disparity between male and female authors and especially black authors. Should we then conclude that the library is to blame? Topic for a philosophy paper - Would you like fries with that: Applied Philosophy in Contemporary America. Discuss ;) And finally, as for your economic prospects, cmoore, keep in mind that that article focused only on telecommunications hardware companies, which last I knew, you had not expressed an interest in. The dotcom market is certainly hurting, but any analyst could have seen from the beginning that they were overvalued to begin with. And important thing to keep in mind is that the Internet isn't really about making money, but cutting costs. Anyway, that should keep us busy for a while, I hope.
miércoles, diciembre 20, 2000
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linkydink with these economic prospects, i feel like it's an unfortunate time to be a compsci major with only 1.5 years left...
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linkydink "At a time when the world is growing so complex no single human being can understand it; when information, and not the lack of it, threatens our lives; when users can no longer master bloated software, swarm intelligence offers an alternative way of designing computing systems. In swarms, autonomy, emergence, and distributed functioning replace control, preprogramming, and centralization." (attrib matt)
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linkydink matt asked me this question: "Can you think of a good topic to write a 25-50 page philosophy paper on? I need to choose a topic for my "sufficiency" in philos. actually, it doesn't even really need to be a paper. could be a movie...documentary....epic poem....whatever. Paper is the most straight-forward and least pain in the ass. 99% of them are papers. But it needs to be related to philosophy and needs to be done by March." any input?
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linkydink the Seen and Heard quote i tore out of the newspaper (Boston Globe, possibly?) this morning: "Basically, someone like Ricky Martin was probably popular in high school. And then you have folks like me and Beck, who were losers in high school. But when we couldn't et a date, we just spent our time learning how to write and play music." i liked this because, well, despite having gotten over most of the social trauma caused by grade school, it tickles me when the "cool kids" get knocked. not like i need moby to tell me it's hip to be square (or triangular), but it's fun anyhow.
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linkydink just took my algorithms exam (whew!). i think i did okay, although i plumb forgot what a clique was, so that's 5 points off right there. but it's ooooooover. although if anyone can tell me a linear-time algorithm for finding the diameter of a tree, that'd be nice. i'm not convinced that mine is linear. hm.
martes, diciembre 19, 2000
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linkydink Rumor has it that both sequels to The Matrix are set to begin shooting March 2001... in Australia. Maybe I should borrow Margaret's PVC catsuit and if they need any good-looking extras. Seriously, I would like to do some theater at U-Melbourne when I get there, and I've never had an audition that I've been happy with. Anybody got any favorite auditionworthy monologues they could recommend?
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linkydink Well, I feel like a fool. Accordingly, here's a copy of the letter I sent to Outbox a few hours ago: Outbox- I want to apologize for going ballistic on you over at the cmoore blog. I wasn't trying to slam you personally, and I was perhaps taking your writing a little more seriously than I ought to take a diary-entry, as opposed to a research paper or something. I'm new to this whole public-weblog thing, and exams are making me cranky, and I forget that when I go off rambling to my friends about something I read on a webpage that I might actually publicly slandering someone who probably meant well. So I'm sorry for jumping to conclusions. I guess the folks at Dilated Peoples' website (http://www.okayplayer.com/) just did an awful job of getting their page in the appropriate search engines. The folks over there are usually pretty solid, so I made the assumption that you hadn't even bothered looking for it (or whatever), which was probably unfair. My rant came from a combination of that, my misunderstanding of the nature of a weblog (both yours and cmoore's), and my general unrelated stress and crankiness as of late. I'm kind of mortified that I've managed to cull an unfounded public insult out of this muddle, and hope there's no hard feelings. So I'm sorry. I'll post something to this effect on the blog later today. Thanks for reading. =timmy=
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linkydink this doesn't have to do with the digital divide per se, but rather to do with the unequal treatment of women vs. men. interesting fact: only 5% of the artists displayed in the Met are women, but 85% of the nudes are female.
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linkydink Even beyond using the internet to combat it, how do we get people to take advantage of the free terminals in libraries and universities, and how do we get people to not be afraid of making mistakes in the digital world. In an article I can no longer find online (otherwise I'd link to it), I read that children are more likely to succeed at computer gaming than adults because kids are less afraid of making mistakes. Doesn't it follow that if the color of your skin (or other random triviality that acrues hate) was a problem for others and for yourself sometimes, *and* you are (god forbid) poor, you'd be afraid of an awful lot, and making mistakes cheif among them?! So often I read or hear black people saying that the toughtest thing about being African American and succeeding is that you can't fuck up, or you'll set everything back for the entire race. That's what I call a learning disability.
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linkydink okay. let's forget outbox for a moment. i only posted that link because it's what made me start thinking about the digital divide. put aside thy bitterness about her treatment of the online hip-hop community. talk to me about the digital divide. obviously it exists, but since the internet has such potential as an equalizer and method of communication and distribution of information, how can we combat its dividedness? and, more broadly, how can we use the internet to combat the non-digital divide (the analog divide?)?
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linkydink re. the Digital Divide... It almost goes without saying that there's racial disparity in the internet. It's another thing altogether to say, as Outbox does, that "it is more difficult to find web sites on non-mainstream black artists. unless you visit the sites of their label or the biography page of cd-now or the like, you're somewhat at a loss for a community on the web." This is just wrong. I guess what bugs me is that it sounds like she's jumping to conclusions. The assertions she makes are so obviously wrong; non-mainstream hiphop sites and communities online are so ludicrously abundant that it doesn't seem like she actually bothered to look for any before asserting that they don't exist. It feels like she's thoughtlessly regurgitating a mangled version of something she heard on PBS. And you know what happens next, right?? EVILL!! SATANANN!!! RARARGHRAGHHAHRAARHARHHGHGHGH OOK OOK AGGH RAGH AGGGGHH AARGHH!
lunes, diciembre 18, 2000
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linkydink "i had a college professor once who was very committed to Mr. Rogers as the most evil man who has ever lived."
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linkydink first off, outbox is a she. secondly, i don't think her point is that there's no hiphop on the web (because, of course, there is), but rather that there's relatively little on the web that's created by people outside our racial and socioeconomic stratum. of course, saying there's a lack of hiphop community on the web was off-base. i'm not making excuses for that. but i didn't post it in order to throw her to the dogs... bear in mind that she's not a member of that community, and probably didn't put that much time or effort into trying to find it before writing about it. what i really wanted out of this was not A History of Hip Hop on the Web, but your thoughts on the racial disparity in computer and internet use.
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linkydink Wowie- D'Angelo's ludicrously soulful album Voodoo made it to the year-end top-10 list of every New York Times reviewer! It might be on mine, as well. If there's a shortage of soul in your musical life, I heartily recommend it.
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linkydink The digital divide?? What!?? "i feel the absence (on the web) of a LARGE PORTION OF THE PEOPLE OUT THERE. people to whom throwing together a web site about a local hip-hop artist is as far fetched as boarding the next space shuttle to the moon." NO HIPHOP ON THE WEB?? What web is this loony talking about?? I learned half of what I know about hiphop on the internet! In 1996 when most people didn't know what a URL was, I was on the IRC having detailed discussions about DJ Premier and X-Clan, and exchanging favorite beats and samples. Hiphopsite.com and Sandbox Automatic were among the earliest purely internet-based record distribution companies. Surprisingly bitter MC feuds between respected rappers have been fought entirely online! The now-annoyingly-mainstream Support On-Line Hip-Hop.com has been around since 1995, and twice sponsored the "Annual Online Hiphop Awards". That's 1995!! Okayplayer.com, home of the biggest names in underground hiphop (The Roots, Common, Reflection Eternal, Dilated Peoples), is one of the most cohesive, well-organized, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic online communities I've ever seen. A lot of fantastic hiphop artists owe their popularity to the internet. Straight up, underground hiphop is (weirdly) one of the most cohesive organized vibrant communities of activists and artists in the world today, and it would not be where it is without the internet. Hiphop heads have taken advantage of the internet like very few others. So either this guy's had his head stuck in the sand for the past half-decade, or somebody owes me a boarding pass to the next moon-shuttle. I think I'ma email him and say so. More politely, of course.
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linkydink ahrr, sorry - forgot you'd linked to the question. ten lashes with a wet noodle. and, y'know, everyone's entitled to crankiness around exam/xmas-stress time. new question: what are yr thoughts on the digital divide?
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linkydink Sorry if those last couple posts came out kind of antagonistic! It was late and I was crabby. Certainly, it's an article worth reading, and I'm glad you posted it. I thought the bit about societal reactions to punishing extramarrital sex had some interesting implications for the question you asked some time back about the human nature and love, etc. Just follow the linkydink! Breakfast now...
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linkydink thanks, timmy. :) first, re the Cleaver article: i'm pretty sure it was a parody. if it wasn't, haaaaail eris and pass the tofu. second, the Prescott report: i certainly didn't post that in a "look, guys, this article changed my life!" manner. i thought the guy was a little... overzealous in his conclusion-jumping, but interesting taken with a grain of salt nonetheless. that said, i agree with all your points, timmy (in fact, they're pretty much exactly what i was thinking when i read the passages you quoted). but... what question of mine were you answering? all i was asking was what y'all thought of the article.
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linkydink From the Sex-And-Dope-Are-Good article: "Some nations which are most repressive of female sexuality have rich pornographic art forms." Is it just me, or is most American porn fairly boring? I like looking at pretty women as much as the next straight man, but my reaction to most porn magazines ranges from "Umm, whatever..." to "Eww!" It all seems so boring and predictable. Sorry, it's 4am and I'm rambling. But do you know what I mean? "I also examined the influence of extramarital sex taboos upon crime and violence. The data clearly indicates that punitive-repressive attitudes toward extramarital sex are also linked with physical violence, personal crime, and the practice of slavery. Societies which value monogamy emphasize military glory and worship aggressive gods." Aha. I see. Guess that answers your question, CMoore. "Another way of looking at the reciprocal relationship between violence and pleasure is to examine a society's choice of drugs. A society will support behaviors that are consistent with its values and social mores. U.S. society is a competitive, aggressive, and violent society. Consequently, it supports drugs that facilitate competitive, aggressive, and violent behaviors and opposes drugs that counteract such behaviors. Alcohol is well known to facilitate the expression of violent behaviors, and, although addicting and very harmful to chronic users, is acceptable to U.S. society. Marijuana, on the other hand, is an active pleasure-inducing drug which enhances the pleasure of touch and actively inhibits violent-aggressive behaviors. It is for these reasons, I believe that marijuana is rejected in U.S. society. For similar reasons heroin is rejected and methadone (an addicting drug minus the pleasure) is accepted." Right, Prescott. Mr. Police Officer is AOK with my cocaine habit, but he best not catch me with any of those nasty pleasure-inducing cigarettes or valium, or I'ma catch a beatdown. Don't get me wrong, the man has some excellent points. But the fact that the report's findings conveniently coincide with a certain radical/liberal sociopolitical 1970s free-love mindset lends me to believe that the man made up his mind about these things a long time before he actually went through the experiments and research. So the report's pretense of scientific objectivity kind of pisses me off.
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linkydink re.Dreadlocked rascals: "Don't fuck with the Dalai Lama!"?? Perhaps I'm just overly-cynical, but in the same vein as Solid Gold Token and Al Gore's crazy dance party, I have to say: Huh? Did this actually happen to Mr. Cleaver, who just happens to be a columnist for Salon? Or is this another weird Onion-wannaba parody thingy? Somehow I'm more inclined to suspect the latter from the man who gets off on harassing Friendly's and Sundance. Do others find this guy kind of self-indulgent and trite, or am I just being snobby again?
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linkydink more from the Sexuality/Violence article: "We should recognize that sexuality in teenagers is not only natural, but desirable, and accept premarital sexuality as a positive moral good. Parents should help teenagers realize their own sexual selfhood by allowing them to use the family home for sexual fulfillment. Such honesty would encourage a more mature attitude toward sexual relationships and provide a private supportive environment that is far better for their development than the back seat of a car or other undesirable locations outside the home. Early sexual experiences are too often an attempt to prove one's adulthood and maleness or femaleness rather than a joyful sharing of affection and pleasure."
domingo, diciembre 17, 2000
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linkydink "We think we're occupying reality, but of course it's only our brain that tells us this."
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linkydink The Origins of Peace and Violence: Deprivation of Physical Affection as a Main Cause of Depression, Aggression and Drug Abuse interestingly: "Child rearing practices do not predict patterns of later sexual behavior." and: "The relationship between small extended families and punitive premarital sex attitudes deserves emphasis, for it suggests that the nuclear Western cultures may be a contributing factor to our repressive attitudes toward sexual expression." and: "These figures again raise the question of the special relationship between sexuality and violence. In addition to our rape statistics, there is other evidence that points to preference for sexual violence over sexual pleasure in the United States. This is reflected in our acceptance of sexually explicit films that involve violence and rape, and our rejection of sexually explicit films for pleasure only (pornography)." all of us being from one such nuclear Western culture, what say ye?
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linkydink Arrest those dread-locked rascals! Cambridge's wayward youths threatened to "get vegan on my ass."
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linkydink More Movie Fun! Last night was my own "Phonetically Similar" Film fest, featuring "Ran" and "Tron." While playing at two different venues, "Ran" was much longer, and so the two ended up dovetailing together nicely, timewise. I want to focus on "Tron" for a moment, though. This movie dates itself in the eighties, certainly with its animation, but more interestingly, with its anti-communist feel. All of the bad programs are red. Everything bad is bad because it is part of a centralized, KGB-type, over-organized and kind of scary Master Control Program. Free-thought and programming are not allowed. My favorite instance though, is that there is a religious angle to the film, giving us a christianity-like religion v. the "religion is the opiate of the masses" standpoint of communism. Check it out: Flynn is totally Jesus - a "user" who has been changed into a program in order to save them. He does save them by sacrificing himself in a way that will send him back to the land of the "user." Go rent it and see for yourselves.
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linkydink The weather outside right now is god-awful, which actually makes it cozier to be inside. The wind and rain are making really bizzare noises. It's kind of fun, especially with coffee and cheerios.
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