Saw Mos Def at the Bowl last weekend, and reminded me of Brady's Biggie mention in his last post. Cops is trippin', everyone is trippin'. Mos opened up with a live band (some good cats), and a rambling, syncopated cover of "Stakes is High" that resonated up through the bowl like whispered prophecy. In the middle of the set he got on the piano and rocked a freestyle that culminated in him shouting "Who shot my mans, Suge?" repeating it over and over until the crowd was feelin' it.
So much going on. Just got back from Dallas where stakes is high and you just have to pretend that you're in a foreign country to get through it. However, I thought it would be only fitting to bring along the new Cormac McCarthy novel No Country for Old Men. It's a beautiful, dark little piece of work that polishes pieces of the author's subconscious with his sandpapery border ethos. It feels a bit like Blood Meridian on a noirish Ellroy vibe, but with a belief in some kind of humanity, some kind of hope--especially in its apparent absence--perhaps making you hungry to eat the kind of meals McCarthy describes. Nobody makes you want to eat a biscuit and drink coffee like McCarthy. Perhaps the line that rings in your ears throughout the whole book in various forms is: "I won't tell you you can save yourself because you can't". Ok, so there's alot more to discuss in this book...would love ot hear from anyone who is reading it.
Not to mention re-reading "Leaves of Grass" while I was in Maui...more to come.
Friday, July 29, 2005
Thursday, July 21, 2005
Greider on Fogel in the Nation
I def want to see us follow up on JC's post about the Roberts nomination. Problem is, I don't anything about the guy. And I don't think I'm the only one. The American Progress Report arrived in the inbox yesterday morning with the subject line "The Nominee You Know Nothing About."
But for now, I got a UofC reference for you. I've been working through a backlog of Nation issues, so just getting through the cover story of the 27 June '05 issue:
Riding Into the Sunset: It is time for a serious solution to the problem of retirement
security.
William Greider
The Nation (June 27, 2005 issue)
The 2nd half of it repeats the usual sort of progressive complaints about corporate/free-market approaches to these issues. But the interesting part is the first couple sections, which presents an alternative to the CW that aging population and ever-increasing life spans are a "monumental problem." Instead, Greider frames his article with the themes from a recent book by Robert Fogel, "a Nobel Prize-winning economist at the University of Chicago and a septuagenarian himself." Here's Greider's summary of Fogel's thesis:
America, he reminds us, is a very wealthy nation. The expanding longevity is not a financial burden but an enormous and underdeveloped asset. If US per capita income continues to grow at a rate of 1.5 percent a year, the country will have plenty of money to finance comfortable retirements and high-quality healthcare for all citizens, including those at the bottom of the wage ladder. When politicians talk about raising the Social Security retirement age to 70 in order to "save" the system, they are headed backward and against the tide of human aspirations. The average retirement age, Fogel observes, has been falling in recent decades by personal choice and is now around 63. Given proper financing arrangements, he expects the retirement age will eventually fall to as low as 55--allowing everyone to enjoy more leisure years and to explore the many dimensions of "spiritual development" or "self-realization," as John Dewey called it.
"What then is the virtue of increasing spending on retirement and health rather than goods?" Fogel asked in his latest book, The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism (2000). "It is the virtue of providing consumers in rich countries with what they want most." What people want is time--more time to enjoy life and learning, to focus on the virtuous aspects of one's nature, to pursue social projects free of economic necessity, to engage their curiosity and self-knowledge or their political values. The great inequity in modern life, as Fogel provocatively puts it, is the "maldistribution of spiritual resources," that is, the economic insecurity that prevents people from exploring life's larger questions. Everyone could attain a fair share of liberating security, he asserts, if government undertook strategic interventions in their behalf.
Fogel's strategic interventions are modelled on pension systems such as (specifically) TIAA-CREF, calling for compulsory saving, but would be adminstered by the federal government. And interestingly, Fogel also calls for a progressive redistribution of wealth. Not the kind of thinking one expects to be coming out of the UofC econ dept. Read the piece for more details.
Arun and I were saying a couple weeks ago that it was really silly and stupid of us not to have taken a single econ course at UofC. Intellectual snobbery induced by all those budding I-bankers.
Speaking of UofC economists, I'm hoping to make it to the Commonwealth Club next Thurs for the Levitt and Dubner event. After going back last week to hear one our city Supervisors speak, I decided to splurge on a membership to the CC. Here's one speaker I'm looking forward to: the RZA in a few weeks.
One last link for those of you that stuck with me this far: a live Moodymann mix I got through the 313 list. Moodymann's known as a deep Detroit house head, but this mix starts out with some funk (check out at least the first track, a twisted Prince-like track titled "Freaky Muthaf*cka") and then segues into some live vocal jazz.
Monday, July 18, 2005
London bombings: Richard Clarke, public transit, Ian McEwan
Some thoughts following the London bombings, in brief outline:
- How is it that this hasn't happened earlier, in the US, and to a much more destructive and deadly degree? Related to that, I've been meaning to post this fascinating but horrifying article by Richard Clarke that was the cover story of The Atlanic a few months ago:
Ten Years Later
"Then the second wave of al-Qaeda attacks hit America." A leading expert on counterterrorism imagines the future history of the war on terror. A frightening picture of a country still at war in 2011
by Richard A. Clarke
There's also an accompanying web-only interview with Clarke:Fatal Vision
Richard Clarke talks about his frightening scenario of an America hobbled by terrorism—and what we can do to avoid it
My bet is that most of the American public, if we've heard of Clarke at all, think of him as a disgruntled whisteblower. But Johnee was highly recommending Clarke's book last year, calling him an American hero, if I remember correctly. The article above of his impressed me greatly--essential reading, I'd say--and makes me want to pick up the book. (BTW, if you're wondering what Clarke is doing these days, beyond writing and speaking through the media: he's chairman of Good Harbor Consulting.) - To what degree are we (or should we be) willing to sacrifice our civil liberties in order to deter attacks like this? I'm thinking in particular systems of surveillance like Britain's CCTV--which makes the state closer to Big Brother, but in this case turned out to be essential to finding the perpetrators. There was a NYT Mag story about CCTV, published one month after 9/11 (not coincidentally, I imagine). Thanks to Google, I found the full text here--on the City Pages site, ironically (CP was my first alterna-weekly, as a teen back in the Twin Cities). That piece ever so briefly cites Bentham, Foucault and their concept of the panopticon.
I was independently obessessing about public transit in the week before the London incident--spurred by the near-BART strike we had up here on July 6. Got much I want to write out on this topic (anyone for a high-speed train between downtown LA to downtown SF, with a 2.5 hour travel time??) For now, I'll just post this Sarah Vowell column from Sat July 9's NYT op-ed page: Our Faith-Based Train Rides".
Well, I'll also put up the SFCityScape link, which I've been digging through in the past couple weeks--fascinating stuff. The plan for a high-speed train from SF to LA is mentioned in passing in an article
on there about the much-anticipated Transbay Terminal to be built downtown SF: "Now imagine this: Caltrain will keep going past its current southern terminus in Gilroy to Salinas in Monterey County, two hours south of the city. High-speed tracks will have been laid up the Peninsula, alongside Caltrain's, allowing passengers to board a train at downtown L.A.'s Union Station and arrive in the Financial District two-and-a-half hours later — or vice-versa." Got to cite Matt Smith of SFWeekly on this as well--my other main source for SF transit, planning, & development issues. Check this column of his from last summer about the political battle over the development of the Transbay Terminal. - Finally, anyone up for reading McEwan's Saturday? We got a copy that Anj's dad left with us last month. Here is McEwan's essay that ran on the NYT op-ed page on Friday July 8: "The Surprise We Expected".
- With any of the NYTimes links above, let me know if you want to read the full text. By now, they've disappeared into the paid archives. But I've been using Yahoo's new MyWeb feature to store local copies of the html pages on their servers.
Similarly for the Atlantic links--the full texts are restricted to subscribers. So if you want to read them, let me know and I'll e-mail the full text to you.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Why aren't we writing?
Can't sleep, so here I am doing a post. It's been quiet again up in here. What's the problem? I know the primary problem is that folks are busy--significant others, jobs, kids, etc. I got none of the latter, and am seriously unfocused on what I do have of the 2nd category, which perhaps explains why I find the time to get on here once in a while.
But I'm sure it's not just a lack of time--I know we're all finding time to read random sh*t on the web and watch random sh*t on TV. Maybe it's a lack of desire or ability or self-discipline, to sit down and write out some cogent thoughts. I'm finding that hard to do--to set aside some time and mental space to really write something out. Case in point: I've been wanting to write up something about our trip to Ukraine and Istanbul. Nothing serious or deep or insightful, but just something to communicate and record where we went, what we did, and what we thought of it. But here it is a month and a half later, and I got nothing.
Part of the obstacle is setting the bar too high. With my travel log, I feel like it should be deep and insightful, which stops me from getting started. It may be a similar case with the paucity of posts up here--we feel like we got to have something "official" before we show it to the world, or even to each other (b/c there's not anyone else getting over here, are they?)
But I feel free to put up these stream-of-consiousness rambling posts. Better than nothing--I tell myself.
Another piece of writing I'd been meaning to do and post up here is a "currently reading/recently read" account. Something that we floated over e-mail a couple years ago--if not actually a book club, at least a book bulletin board. I've been maintaining a recently-read list over at my old geocities site. When I'd started the list, I'd even included a few sentences recording my impressions of the book; but that soon puttered out, so all I had was a list of books and dates that I read them. Better than nothing.
Again, I'd been meaning to work in more about what I'm reading into this blog or my other one, but it hasn't happened. It's partly due to the reasons given above--reasons that are personal failings. But it may also be a failure of the format. A blog is what I want--a log that I'll keep on the web--but this linear format we're stuck in here may be holding us back.
With respect to our team effort, maybe what we need is some sort of forum software--an interface and format that allows the back-and-forth that we had, and still occasionally have, over e-mail.
With respect to the idea of a BookLog, I've got a new tool: TiddlyWiki.
Came across the URL a few weeks ago--via del.icio.us, actually, now that I think about it. But I didn't take the time to play with it until today. In fact, I actually worked with it--after playing with it, me and the grad student I'm working with on this model decided we're going to try to collaboratively draft a paper using it.
While putting our outline into a TiddlyWiki, it occured to me that non-linear personal notebook is what I need for a BookLog. So check it out a first draft here.
Just start clicking on the links, which open what are called "tiddlers"--small bits of (hyper)text. Figure out how to close them too, and that's all there is to reading a TiddlyWiki. There's no particular place to start or to end, no particular order--just jump in and around. Just like the web itself.
But I'm sure it's not just a lack of time--I know we're all finding time to read random sh*t on the web and watch random sh*t on TV. Maybe it's a lack of desire or ability or self-discipline, to sit down and write out some cogent thoughts. I'm finding that hard to do--to set aside some time and mental space to really write something out. Case in point: I've been wanting to write up something about our trip to Ukraine and Istanbul. Nothing serious or deep or insightful, but just something to communicate and record where we went, what we did, and what we thought of it. But here it is a month and a half later, and I got nothing.
Part of the obstacle is setting the bar too high. With my travel log, I feel like it should be deep and insightful, which stops me from getting started. It may be a similar case with the paucity of posts up here--we feel like we got to have something "official" before we show it to the world, or even to each other (b/c there's not anyone else getting over here, are they?)
But I feel free to put up these stream-of-consiousness rambling posts. Better than nothing--I tell myself.
Another piece of writing I'd been meaning to do and post up here is a "currently reading/recently read" account. Something that we floated over e-mail a couple years ago--if not actually a book club, at least a book bulletin board. I've been maintaining a recently-read list over at my old geocities site. When I'd started the list, I'd even included a few sentences recording my impressions of the book; but that soon puttered out, so all I had was a list of books and dates that I read them. Better than nothing.
Again, I'd been meaning to work in more about what I'm reading into this blog or my other one, but it hasn't happened. It's partly due to the reasons given above--reasons that are personal failings. But it may also be a failure of the format. A blog is what I want--a log that I'll keep on the web--but this linear format we're stuck in here may be holding us back.
With respect to our team effort, maybe what we need is some sort of forum software--an interface and format that allows the back-and-forth that we had, and still occasionally have, over e-mail.
With respect to the idea of a BookLog, I've got a new tool: TiddlyWiki.
Came across the URL a few weeks ago--via del.icio.us, actually, now that I think about it. But I didn't take the time to play with it until today. In fact, I actually worked with it--after playing with it, me and the grad student I'm working with on this model decided we're going to try to collaboratively draft a paper using it.
While putting our outline into a TiddlyWiki, it occured to me that non-linear personal notebook is what I need for a BookLog. So check it out a first draft here.
Just start clicking on the links, which open what are called "tiddlers"--small bits of (hyper)text. Figure out how to close them too, and that's all there is to reading a TiddlyWiki. There's no particular place to start or to end, no particular order--just jump in and around. Just like the web itself.
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Ego Trip's Race-o-Rama
Got off the phone with DMSB earlier this evening. Among other things, we talked about some possible topics to put up here, such as the passing of James Weinstein. I learned of him through the NYT obit. What caught my eye at first was that he had founded In These Times. But I was surprised to read that he'd also founded one of our neighborhood institutions, Modern Times. Google turned up this more extensive obit.
After DB had to sign off (Terra alert), I cracked open the laptop with the plan to do some work. But I also turned on the TV for some background noise, and found an episode of Ego Trip's Race-o-Rama playing on VH-1...and felt compelled to do a post on it. (Which brings to mind a phrase I caught in another Daniel Drezner post: "Maybe the Internet is not the nirvana of Habermasian discourse, but the academic version of crack." That's chimes in on two recent posts--in addition to linking to Drezner last week, I slipped in a reference to the idea of the web as a Habermasian public sphere here.)
But back to the topic at hand. Have you guys seen this Ego Trip show? I read something about it when it premiered--it may have been this Ta-Nehisi Coates piece from the Voice--but hadn't caught one until now. Seems to be worth seeking out--where else are you going to find folks talking about race in this manner on TV, now that Chappelle appears to be on extended hiatus. (In fact, I thought of characterizing the Ego Trip show as an extended and expanded version of Paul Mooney's Ask a Black Dude/Negrodamus segments on Chappelle.)
That VH-1 put something like this on shows they're not completely culturally bankrupt, as Johnee seemed to imply in his last post. Though it's an odd coincidence that the Ego Trip crew was previously best known (to me, at least) for their book of lists (thanks to DB for hooking me up with that one a few years ago). But they showed there that the list format needn't be intellectually bankrupt.
After DB had to sign off (Terra alert), I cracked open the laptop with the plan to do some work. But I also turned on the TV for some background noise, and found an episode of Ego Trip's Race-o-Rama playing on VH-1...and felt compelled to do a post on it. (Which brings to mind a phrase I caught in another Daniel Drezner post: "Maybe the Internet is not the nirvana of Habermasian discourse, but the academic version of crack." That's chimes in on two recent posts--in addition to linking to Drezner last week, I slipped in a reference to the idea of the web as a Habermasian public sphere here.)
But back to the topic at hand. Have you guys seen this Ego Trip show? I read something about it when it premiered--it may have been this Ta-Nehisi Coates piece from the Voice--but hadn't caught one until now. Seems to be worth seeking out--where else are you going to find folks talking about race in this manner on TV, now that Chappelle appears to be on extended hiatus. (In fact, I thought of characterizing the Ego Trip show as an extended and expanded version of Paul Mooney's Ask a Black Dude/Negrodamus segments on Chappelle.)
That VH-1 put something like this on shows they're not completely culturally bankrupt, as Johnee seemed to imply in his last post. Though it's an odd coincidence that the Ego Trip crew was previously best known (to me, at least) for their book of lists (thanks to DB for hooking me up with that one a few years ago). But they showed there that the list format needn't be intellectually bankrupt.
Monday, June 20, 2005
Spin Top 100 or Why You are the Son of Incestuous Union
Two words: fuck Spin. I've been meaning to say that for about the last 10 years, but never got around to it. Let me also say that the brief existence of the magazine Raygun should remind us all that music journalism, atleast the way I see it, has fallen way off. Raygun was the ultimate medium-as-message for an entire subculture. Spin sucks alot of corporate dick, has abysmal circulation and is perpetually trying to jerry-rig their editorial focus around a shapeshifting demographic that they lost touch with years ago (to understand this, see the part about sucking alot of corporate dick...). Not to mention that Spin has been reduced to a collection of "Top 100" lists, much like VH1--when you have nothing new to say, why not retread the pages with nostalgia and pictures of pretty boy bands (Killers, The Bravery blah blah et. al)? Ok, now that that small editorial conceit is finished, here's what I really think about the partial list released today...
Brilliant so far. OK Computer is the closest thing to a perfect album ever produced--while I detest some of the self-indulgence of subsequent Radiohead, this album is completely worth it. I think a case can be made for Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot as a very close #2 here, or even #1 (just saw Wilco live at the Greek, and it was lifted).
Everyone loves these lists, though, because it's like hoping your team will win, and at the end of it all we're all snobs who saw the Pixies when they were just doing college shows or the Germs or whoever--we all want to claim that sliver of authenticity that a rabid fandom can afford. There's always that moment when you hear something on KROQ or see the cover of Spin and you know that it's over, that now, your love affair with this group or artist has become without exception a "guilty pleasure". The subculture slips in to the mainstream as repackaged market-speak. But just like sports radio, this is all about "legacy" of an album, a musical marker of a moment in time.
So I will start the nominations here for other albums that should be added to some list, somewhere, even if it's just the one in my ipod...
My Bloody Valentine "Loveless"
Ice-T: "Power"
Neil Young "After the Goldrush"
Sonic Youth "Goo"
Smashing Pumpkins "Gish"
N.E.R.D. "In Search of..."
Oasis "What's The Story..."
TV on the Radio "Bloodthirsty youths..."
Helmet "Meantime"
NAS "Illmatic"
Black Moon "Enta Da' Stage"
RUN DMC "King Of Rock"
Notorious BIG "Ready to Die"
Superchunk "No Pocky for Kitty"
Bob Mould "Workbook"
U2 "The Unforgettable Fire"
Wilco "A Ghost is Born"
Dinosaur Jr. "Green Mind"
Hole "Pretty on the Inside"
Ministry "Land of Rape and Honey"
etc................
Brilliant so far. OK Computer is the closest thing to a perfect album ever produced--while I detest some of the self-indulgence of subsequent Radiohead, this album is completely worth it. I think a case can be made for Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot as a very close #2 here, or even #1 (just saw Wilco live at the Greek, and it was lifted).
Everyone loves these lists, though, because it's like hoping your team will win, and at the end of it all we're all snobs who saw the Pixies when they were just doing college shows or the Germs or whoever--we all want to claim that sliver of authenticity that a rabid fandom can afford. There's always that moment when you hear something on KROQ or see the cover of Spin and you know that it's over, that now, your love affair with this group or artist has become without exception a "guilty pleasure". The subculture slips in to the mainstream as repackaged market-speak. But just like sports radio, this is all about "legacy" of an album, a musical marker of a moment in time.
So I will start the nominations here for other albums that should be added to some list, somewhere, even if it's just the one in my ipod...
My Bloody Valentine "Loveless"
Ice-T: "Power"
Neil Young "After the Goldrush"
Sonic Youth "Goo"
Smashing Pumpkins "Gish"
N.E.R.D. "In Search of..."
Oasis "What's The Story..."
TV on the Radio "Bloodthirsty youths..."
Helmet "Meantime"
NAS "Illmatic"
Black Moon "Enta Da' Stage"
RUN DMC "King Of Rock"
Notorious BIG "Ready to Die"
Superchunk "No Pocky for Kitty"
Bob Mould "Workbook"
U2 "The Unforgettable Fire"
Wilco "A Ghost is Born"
Dinosaur Jr. "Green Mind"
Hole "Pretty on the Inside"
Ministry "Land of Rape and Honey"
etc................
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Drezner on White Sox & Moneyball
Since the fatmango seems to have become quite the White Sox fan, thought I'd post this link to a Daniel Drezner post. The post is mostly an excerpt from a front page WSJ article about how the ChiSox are having trouble filling the seats in Comiskey (er, the Cell??) even though they have the best record in baseball. (Though check the first comment, where a South Sider rips into Drezner.)
I made the Garfield+DanyRyanEl trip from Hyde Park to Comiskey only twice, I think. One of those was in Sept '91, before my first year had even actually started--I met a couple high school friends there since the Twins were in town (and come to think of it, it was only a few weeks before they would go on to win the World Series--I vaguely recall watching that famous Game 7 sitting in Woodward on a Sunday night, dreading a physics problem set that was due the next morning). That was new Comiskey's first year in existence--I also recall that I was a prospie on campus in April of that year, just as the first games were being played there.
For more on Drezner, who's a poli sci prof at the UofC, check this post I put up last month.
BTW, I'm still highly recommending Rojo if you're trying to keep up with any blogs--that's how I came across this.
I made the Garfield+DanyRyanEl trip from Hyde Park to Comiskey only twice, I think. One of those was in Sept '91, before my first year had even actually started--I met a couple high school friends there since the Twins were in town (and come to think of it, it was only a few weeks before they would go on to win the World Series--I vaguely recall watching that famous Game 7 sitting in Woodward on a Sunday night, dreading a physics problem set that was due the next morning). That was new Comiskey's first year in existence--I also recall that I was a prospie on campus in April of that year, just as the first games were being played there.
For more on Drezner, who's a poli sci prof at the UofC, check this post I put up last month.
BTW, I'm still highly recommending Rojo if you're trying to keep up with any blogs--that's how I came across this.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
del.icio.us, furl, Google
There's been little action up in here lately, so thought I'd share a few random links. I do have a couple ideas for more substantive posts--almost started one yesterday on C Hitchens, actually, after reading this in Slate; and got another one in mind on Sartre and existentialism, after reading this Norman Mailer piece in the Nation. And I got a way of bringing Brother West into the Sartre piece, thus following up on Johnee's post from a few weeks ago.
Speaking of which, it's dawning on me that the blog structure--or maybe it's just the Blogger structure?--isn't that well-suited for the kind of chime-in, threaded conversations that I'd like to see us having here. Stuff just gets buried in the comments. Any ideas for a better interface that facilitates that kind of thing?
Which brings to mind another link I was thinking of throwing up--the recently launched TPMCafe. In particular, some folks up there had been name-dropping Habermas and his concept of "the public sphere." Check here and here and here. Interesting stuff. In any case, TMPCafe is something to keep your eye on.
But back to the random--but hopefully useful--links I was going to offer up. Last month I e-mailed a few of you about del.icio.us and Furl--new and seemingly trendy takes on the idea of creating on-line bookmark managers. I recall that there were a couple such attempts to build such sites in the late '90s; I was particularly interested in them then, b/c I was always getting on the web on random machines around campus, and thought it would be useful to get at my bookmarks wherever I happened to be. And more generally I've got an archivist streak in me, which is why I started blogging in the first place--to save all the fantastic links one comes across. But the interesting links keep coming up faster than I can blog them; hence the need for a place to save them in the meantime.
Del.icio.us and Furl are interesting b/c they take advantage of tags--useful both for classifying/searching your own bookmarks, and for connecting with what other links user's have bookmarked and tagged (i.e., the "folksonomic" aspect of tag-based systems).
So I created accounts on both sites, and installed the "Post to del.icio.us" and "Furl it" buttons to my browser. I've been using the del.icio.us more regularly--you can see the links I've saved here--although Furl does have the advantage of saving a copy of any page you link on their servers. (Useful for grabbing NYTimes articles, say, before they go into the paid archives!)
However, I did randomly log in to Furl yesterday, and found that they display a list of popular links, which led me to these two useful Google-related links:
Another sign that Google is so much more than search. Actually, I think I read about the personalization experiment in an article that claimed that this is evidence that Google aspires to be a portal. But as I've read in a few places, they aspire to much more than even that. I was impressed by this piece that I came across last year, about how Google may be building an OS for the web. (It occurred to me after reading it that Google would be a good long-term investment--how I wish I'd acted upon that that thought and picked up a few shares of Google then.)
Then there is Google's much-hyped initiative to build a virtual library; see for example this MIT TechnReview piece, titled "The Infinite Library" (to bring it back around full circle, just last week I was wading through one of Hitchens' typically dense and cryptic literary essays in The Atlantic, this one about Borges). Finally, I came across this blog entry about another fascinating idea Google is working on. (Note that that's from the blog of the same writer who wrote the TechReview piece. He's got a piece in the works on "continous computing" for the TechReview, for which he's been conducting an experiment in "participatory journalism" on his blog.)
There is some interesting stuff happening out there...
Speaking of which, it's dawning on me that the blog structure--or maybe it's just the Blogger structure?--isn't that well-suited for the kind of chime-in, threaded conversations that I'd like to see us having here. Stuff just gets buried in the comments. Any ideas for a better interface that facilitates that kind of thing?
Which brings to mind another link I was thinking of throwing up--the recently launched TPMCafe. In particular, some folks up there had been name-dropping Habermas and his concept of "the public sphere." Check here and here and here. Interesting stuff. In any case, TMPCafe is something to keep your eye on.
But back to the random--but hopefully useful--links I was going to offer up. Last month I e-mailed a few of you about del.icio.us and Furl--new and seemingly trendy takes on the idea of creating on-line bookmark managers. I recall that there were a couple such attempts to build such sites in the late '90s; I was particularly interested in them then, b/c I was always getting on the web on random machines around campus, and thought it would be useful to get at my bookmarks wherever I happened to be. And more generally I've got an archivist streak in me, which is why I started blogging in the first place--to save all the fantastic links one comes across. But the interesting links keep coming up faster than I can blog them; hence the need for a place to save them in the meantime.
Del.icio.us and Furl are interesting b/c they take advantage of tags--useful both for classifying/searching your own bookmarks, and for connecting with what other links user's have bookmarked and tagged (i.e., the "folksonomic" aspect of tag-based systems).
So I created accounts on both sites, and installed the "Post to del.icio.us" and "Furl it" buttons to my browser. I've been using the del.icio.us more regularly--you can see the links I've saved here--although Furl does have the advantage of saving a copy of any page you link on their servers. (Useful for grabbing NYTimes articles, say, before they go into the paid archives!)
However, I did randomly log in to Furl yesterday, and found that they display a list of popular links, which led me to these two useful Google-related links:
- this OSX-style interface for a variety of Google tools
- this quick reference to Google's advanced operators for searching
Another sign that Google is so much more than search. Actually, I think I read about the personalization experiment in an article that claimed that this is evidence that Google aspires to be a portal. But as I've read in a few places, they aspire to much more than even that. I was impressed by this piece that I came across last year, about how Google may be building an OS for the web. (It occurred to me after reading it that Google would be a good long-term investment--how I wish I'd acted upon that that thought and picked up a few shares of Google then.)
Then there is Google's much-hyped initiative to build a virtual library; see for example this MIT TechnReview piece, titled "The Infinite Library" (to bring it back around full circle, just last week I was wading through one of Hitchens' typically dense and cryptic literary essays in The Atlantic, this one about Borges). Finally, I came across this blog entry about another fascinating idea Google is working on. (Note that that's from the blog of the same writer who wrote the TechReview piece. He's got a piece in the works on "continous computing" for the TechReview, for which he's been conducting an experiment in "participatory journalism" on his blog.)
There is some interesting stuff happening out there...
Saturday, June 04, 2005
Motown Remixed
I was thinking of doing a post about this new Motown Remixed comp that just came out anyways, but in a nice coincidence, Soul Sides has a few audio snippets, plus the usual insightful commentary (here specifically).
Go the official site to listen to all the tracks, seemingly in their entirety.
I was skeptical when I heard a few weeks ago that Motown was jumping on the remix compilation bandwagon. (Following Verve, with their Remix series, now up to 3 volumes; and Blue Note, with both their Blue Note Revisited and Madlib's Shades of Blue. A lesser-known precursor to these is the Blue Note Remix Project.) So I'm pleasantly surprised to read Soul Sides opine that this may the most consistent of these compilations.
The tracklisting does look tasty: ?Love redoing "Grapevine", Jazzy Jeff taking on the Tempts (sounds great), Spinna doing an Eddie Kendricks track...
I first heard about this disc via an e-mail that came a couple of weeks ago, promoting a release party that took place in the D last weekend (with the flyer above attached).
The party was just one of hundreds of afterhours in the city last weekend, in what's become a Detroit Memorial Day tradition, what with the 5th installment of an electronic music festival taking place on Hart Plaza (oddly called Fuse-in this year, after originally being DEMF and subsequently Movement.) The Free Press had this article about this year's turnout and this review; check also this link that I've been saving since last June.
Just noticed that the Motown party was at the Johansen in Eastern Market actually--the site of the first of the few Detroit afterhours that Anj and I made it out to. On a frigid night in Feb 2001, we rolled in around 2am, with--unforgetabbly--"Sharevari" booming over the system. We were at the Johansen one other time, the following summer--our first time seeing Theo Parrish spin. That night was also memorable b/c we got to Eastern Market too early (midnight), so we got a bite to eat and listened to some seasoned jazz cats blow next door (what's the name of that joint?).
Update (June 9): Just came across this City Pages review of the Motown disc, plus a couple more remix joints (Curtis Mayfield and Atlantic).
Monday, May 23, 2005
Shock and Awe
Yeah. Hello world. Now we are up on some shit, "like they bringing' '88 back, listening to the new track "Shock and Awe" with Z-Trip and Chuck D. Tingle down the spine when Chuck steps in to the ring, when I hear the basso profundity. Now we got Chuck on our side, no irony that the apotheosis of PE occurred during the last "morning in America" administration. Something clicked, like, ok, it's time to listen again. Chuck, we welcome you. Cornel West makes this great point in Democracy Matters that basically you can understand the Patriot Act and 9/11 through the long lens of racism...bear with me here:
The ugly terrorist attacks on innocent civilians on 9/11 plunged the whole country in to the blues. Never before have Americans of all classes, colors, regions, religions, genders, and sexual orientations felt unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence, and hated. Yet to have been designated and treated as a nigger in America for over 350 years has been to feel unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence, and hated.
Getting searched a the airport, having your phone conversations taped, being kicked in the thigh so many times that a blood clot reaches your heart and kills you, getting flown to Nigeria for torture... just a messy sidebar in the great American experiment.
And what of this experiment we have here, on the page? I say, bring em' on.
The ugly terrorist attacks on innocent civilians on 9/11 plunged the whole country in to the blues. Never before have Americans of all classes, colors, regions, religions, genders, and sexual orientations felt unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence, and hated. Yet to have been designated and treated as a nigger in America for over 350 years has been to feel unsafe, unprotected, subject to random violence, and hated.
Getting searched a the airport, having your phone conversations taped, being kicked in the thigh so many times that a blood clot reaches your heart and kills you, getting flown to Nigeria for torture... just a messy sidebar in the great American experiment.
And what of this experiment we have here, on the page? I say, bring em' on.
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Blogging from Kyiv
hey y'all, I'll be trying to do some (more or less) steady blogging while we're travelling--we arrived in Kyiv just a couple hours ago, late Sunday night (it's 1:50am now). Check over there for updates: steadyblogging.blogspot.com (for some reason the blogger buttons don't show up on my sister's computer, so I can't create links).
Friday, May 20, 2005
NYTimes series on social class
I haven't had a chance to read any of the three massive articles from this past week that have kicked off this series the Times is doing on class in America. I plan to read them on the plane to Kyiv tomorrow night.
Hopefully they won't disappear into the pay-to-play archives starting Sunday. Speaking of which, did you catch the news that the Times is going to start asking for a subscription fee to read their Op-ed columnists online. The nice thing is that subscribers to the print edition will get not have to pay the additional online subscription fee--and it seems that the online subscription will include access to the archives! So even though I think it's a bad move for the Times to limit online access (read Salon on the move here, and Kos on it here), it works out well for Anj and I.
Finally, on the topic of class in America, I borrowed a book titled Class (I think it's this one) from my man Jon Groat when I was in Ann Arbor last summer (see this SteadyBlogging post for some of the backstory). He highly recommended it, but I haven't read it yet (same with the other UofC classics he lent me).
Hopefully they won't disappear into the pay-to-play archives starting Sunday. Speaking of which, did you catch the news that the Times is going to start asking for a subscription fee to read their Op-ed columnists online. The nice thing is that subscribers to the print edition will get not have to pay the additional online subscription fee--and it seems that the online subscription will include access to the archives! So even though I think it's a bad move for the Times to limit online access (read Salon on the move here, and Kos on it here), it works out well for Anj and I.
Finally, on the topic of class in America, I borrowed a book titled Class (I think it's this one) from my man Jon Groat when I was in Ann Arbor last summer (see this SteadyBlogging post for some of the backstory). He highly recommended it, but I haven't read it yet (same with the other UofC classics he lent me).
Thursday, May 19, 2005
Common Knowledge
I'm going to defer to Arun to post a grand mission statement for DillyTaunt (or at least an explanation what he has in mind with the name).
In the meantime, here's some Common info I was going to e-mail out anyways:
Seems like Common's got the promo push behind him for the new album. I was pleasantly surprised to see the street team had got some BE posters up on Mission last week. (I was going to snap a photo, but they got papered over by a new set of promo posters this week--I've got to start packing the camera on the regular, taking some photos around town.)
Also, Gilles had Com live in session this week. Tracklisting here. (But instead of messing with BBC's wack audio player, load this link into RealPlayer to listen to Worldwide as a Real Audio stream!)
Got an e-mail earlier this week from Common's website, in advance of next week's release of BE. Click here to get to a nice little pop-up player that plays snippets of each of the tracks on BE. You can also find the player here, along with the videos for "Go" and "The Corner."
Brady sent this story from the Chicago Trib a few weeks ago, which verifies and fleshes out Brady's reaction to "The Corner" video--that this album represents a homecoming to the Chi. (My e-mail reply to Brady's forward was that I came across a funny account of "The Corner" video shoot written by one of the okayplayer guys, in which he mentioned filming at 79th & Cottage Grove and in Washington Park...where "We could smell Harold's Chicken from up the block"! Go here and click on the Feb 2005 link in the navigation sidebar.)
It'll be interesting to see if Com can finally go platinum on this one. Having Kanye behind the decks (and his name featured prominently in the promos) can't hurt.
Finally, I'm sure Brady won't mind if I post this (Flickr is lovely; click through to see what little I got in my photostream):
In the meantime, here's some Common info I was going to e-mail out anyways:
Seems like Common's got the promo push behind him for the new album. I was pleasantly surprised to see the street team had got some BE posters up on Mission last week. (I was going to snap a photo, but they got papered over by a new set of promo posters this week--I've got to start packing the camera on the regular, taking some photos around town.)
Also, Gilles had Com live in session this week. Tracklisting here. (But instead of messing with BBC's wack audio player, load this link into RealPlayer to listen to Worldwide as a Real Audio stream!)
Got an e-mail earlier this week from Common's website, in advance of next week's release of BE. Click here to get to a nice little pop-up player that plays snippets of each of the tracks on BE. You can also find the player here, along with the videos for "Go" and "The Corner."
Brady sent this story from the Chicago Trib a few weeks ago, which verifies and fleshes out Brady's reaction to "The Corner" video--that this album represents a homecoming to the Chi. (My e-mail reply to Brady's forward was that I came across a funny account of "The Corner" video shoot written by one of the okayplayer guys, in which he mentioned filming at 79th & Cottage Grove and in Washington Park...where "We could smell Harold's Chicken from up the block"! Go here and click on the Feb 2005 link in the navigation sidebar.)
It'll be interesting to see if Com can finally go platinum on this one. Having Kanye behind the decks (and his name featured prominently in the promos) can't hurt.
Finally, I'm sure Brady won't mind if I post this (Flickr is lovely; click through to see what little I got in my photostream):
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