Sesame Street and Philip Glass

The New Political Correctness?

I've always thought that people complaining about 'political correctness' over the past 20 years or so was pretty lame, and mostly just reflected the fact that they wanted to continue to tell jokes about women, minorities, gay people, and handicapped people with impunity.

So now I see that we're starting to come full circle: in the right-wing version of 'P.C.', one is not allowed to reflect upon history or culture, except to point out that "we're all just individuals". I know that this idea has a long history, of course, but seeing the following just made it click in my brain:

Adding insult to injury, the Arizona legislature passed a bill yesterday outlawing ethnic studies programs:

HB 2281 would make it illegal for a school district to have any courses or classes that promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity “instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.”

It also would ban classes that “promote resentment toward a race or class of people.”

The measure is directed at the Tuscon Unified School District’s popular Mexican-American studies department, which school officials say provides only “historical information” — not “ethnic chauvanism” as the state school superintendent has alleged. One state lawmaker tried to show how ridiculous the legislation is by proposing that schools be barred from teaching about 9/11 because it would result in hatred toward Arab-Americans; the measure failed.

Happy Anniversary Youtube

Apparently, there was no youtube five years ago. Is this really true? Could we watch video online before youtube? Its hard to imagine.

Here is the first youtube video ever; its no Lumiere, but it has a similar spirit to what the Lumiere Brothers were up to over 100 years ago:

140 characters is just right sometimes

"Every asshole who ever chanted 'Drill baby drill' should have to report to the Gulf coast today for cleanup duty," - Bill Maher.

Culture as Information made Visual by Line Graphs

That may be the title of my next thesis. I have been pondering the intersections of history, perception, information, visual culture, and the recent explosions in the availability of not only contemporary data/information, but also historical imagery (a post about the recently-expanded/revamped Library of Congress Digital Collections shall be forthcoming; honestly, I was perusing their archives yesterday, and I am astounded by how much it had grown since the last time I looked at it, which was only a few weeks ago. Nice work, gubmint!).

That said, there are some really interesting possibilities for the study of contemporary history (I know, kind of an odd phrase) being opened up by tools like Google Insights. I suppose there are serious concerns about bias inherent in using such methods to make assumptions about cultural trends (your results are defined by those who use Google, for starters) but it still some nice fodder for provoking thought.

David McCandless over at informationisbeautiful.net was doing some investigations on this front, showing the possibility to make evident at least a sliver of the zeitgeist that would otherwise pass mostly unnoticed just below the surface of social discourse:

Every April and November the issue flares up. Why?

April 20th is the anniversary of the Columbine Massacre. Though dimishing, the echoes of that event still reverberate through the group mind.

Not sure about the November peak? Maybe because Christmas video games are announced?

The Relative Trustworthiness of Beards

Your guide to creeps. As one unable to grow a beard, I tend not to trust anyone with facial hair. But that's just because I am jealous of them. If I could, I would grow the "unkempt beard" (aka "homeless beard"), putting me somewhere between "unsavory" and "threatening" on the beardometer. And that would be the impression I wanted to convey. The more I think about it, the harder it is to project "unsavory" without facial hair. My brother tends to rock the "Colonel Sanders", thus rendering him neutral. My favorite though is the pencil-thin chinstrap. Gross.
designed by Matt McInerney (aka pixelspread.com), via informationisbeautiful.

If the CME don't get you, the volcanoes will

Photo via The Reykjavik Grapevine

People in the far northern reaches of the earth, look out! Not only must you brace for a big solar storm, but now you have have plumes of hot volcanic ash to worry about. From the NY Times:

The ash is coming from an eruption of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano, located near a glacier of the same name (which, for those not fluent in Icelandic, is pronounced, AYA-feeyapla-yurkul) in southern Iceland, which began erupting last month for the first time in nearly 200 years.

The European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites has some great satellite imagery of the cloud of ash drifting east and disrupting air travel in northern Europe:

Coronal Mass Ejection!

So yesterday the sun did this:
From SpaceWeather:

The eruption hurled a bright coronal mass ejection (CME, movie) into space. The expanding cloud could deliver a glancing blow to Earth's magnetic field around April 15th. NOAA forecasters estimate a 35% chance of polar geomagnetic activity when the CME arrives.

Forecast: Rain

He's a little awkward at first, trying to be polite and uttering platitudes about the tournament ("terrific excitement") and missing easy shots; but once he starts talking a little smack, then he takes over and starts draining deep threes: "Thwap!"

He has an unorthodox technique to say the least, but his release is nice. I think that youtube commenter rotensnatchmuffdiver put it best:

obama gots a nice ass jump shot

Star Wars Uncut

Who would've thought that there was all kinds of stuff about Star Wars on the internet? There are even whole websites devoted entirely to Star Wars stuff!

Anyway, the Star Wars Uncut project is nearing completion. Here is a piece of the finished product: the scene in which Obi Wan is killed, Luke, Han, etc., escape from the Death Star, and then Luke and Han shoot some tie fighters! Awesome:

Star Wars Uncut "The Escape" from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.

They say the entire movie will be shown at the CPH:PIX Festival April 19 in Copenhagen, and its true.

Will Admiral Ackbar lead the Rebels?

Since Colonel Reb was "discontinued from official participation in athletic events by the school" in 2003, Ole Miss has been mascot-less. An internet campaign sprouted in an attempt to draft Admiral Ackbar (highest ranking officer in the Rebel Alliance) as a candidate for the Colonel's replacement. Apparently, it was all a big joke, sorta:

However the students that began the campaign insist that Admiral Ackbar is not their ideal choice for the school's mascot. Instead they intend the character as "the face of a push to start a fresh mascot search at Ole Miss." However, the student-led committee that will start the process of choosing a new mascot has not yet formed.

I cant imagine why anyone would think that was a very funny joke. On a related note, I suspect that race may have played a factor in the Colonel's retirement: apparently, his character may have been based on a black man.

Infrastructure! In 1930s Tokyo!

From the Visualizing Cultures Department at MIT:

The VC mission is to use new technology and hitherto largely inaccessible visual materials to reconstruct the past as people of the time visualized the world (or imagined it to be).

Among other amazing imagery, the site has 100 woodblock prints by Koizumi Kishio depicting Tokyo's transition to modernity:

“100 Views of Great Tokyo in the Shōwa Era,” a series of woodblock prints produced between 1928 and 1940 by Koizumi Kishio, explore the rebirth of Tokyo in the years following the Great Kantō earthquake of 1923. Koizumi’s prints depict the transformation of an important Asian city as it embraced modernity, maintained traditions, and became the site of ultimately disastrous political policies. In addition, Koizumi was a member of a new, modern printmaking movement in Japan known as sōsaku-hanga or “creative printmaking.”

...and you think I'm in control...

I'm hoping this track (and sweet video, to boot) would get me back on track.



[thanks Jimmy Guterman via boing boing]

Chatroulette!

Damn! So I had about three days to enjoy chatroulette before the new york times caught on. Still though, I recommend trying it out. And apparently the guy who created it is a 17 year-old high school kid from Moscow. There you have it. Thanks, DM!

"man, this turkey found out where I'm playin' tennis, you got any wack?"

The tennis court scene pretty much sums up the story of my life:



You always heard those stories in high school about kids getting joints with angel dust on them and subsequently freaking out/thinking they were dying, but this makes it look so much better.

"to be continued"

My roommate finally finished watching 'The Wire' last night, so now I am putting up this nice compilation of the 100 best lines from that show.




Also, the 100 greatest OTHER lines from the show:

Supreme court transparency via twitter

A fascinating glimpse into the world of constitutional legal scholarship in particular, and critical thinking in general.

He's no Calvin Murphy, but pretty good for a President

This is great; Barack Obama doing a little color-commentary/analysis during the Georgetown/Duke game over the weekend. I like his line to Clark Kellogg after being complimented on his efforts: "i'm coming for your job; you've either got 3 years or 7 years left...." Also, his answer about having a 'stronger left' is amusing.

Chess and then Advanced Chess

Garry Kasparov reviews the book, Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind, by Diego Rasskin-Gutman, about the complexities of chess and the history of designing and building computers with the aim of defeating humans. He spends less time on the book than he does reminiscing about the various matches he, himself, has played both alongside and against computers. However, I could read Kasparov writing about that kind of stuff for a long time, I think. After reminding us that there are 10 to the power of 120 possible chess matches (more than the number of atoms in the universe) and revealing that, in the end, raw computing power was able to triumph over humans, he moves into some interesting territory:

With the supremacy of the chess machines now apparent and the contest of "Man vs. Machine" a thing of the past, perhaps it is time to return to the goals that made computer chess so attractive to many of the finest minds of the twentieth century. Playing better chess was a problem they wanted to solve, yes, and it has been solved. But there were other goals as well: to develop a program that played chess by thinking like a human, perhaps even by learning the game as a human does. Surely this would be a far more fruitful avenue of investigation than creating, as we are doing, ever-faster algorithms to run on ever-faster hardware.

Howard Zinn, too

Its amazing what they don't tell you in high school history class.

To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory,"

- Howard Zinn, "The Optimism of Uncertainty," The Nation, 2004.