What's the Frequency, Kenneth?

'This machine kills fascists' | openDemocracy

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 23:37:16 -0500

'This machine kills fascists' | openDemocracy:

Written in 2004, but still a good read and still very much the world in which we live.

The potentially alarming statement itself, “this machine kills fascists,” demonstrates a passion, a commitment, to speak loudly against the technologies of oppression and conformity that fascists use to maintain power, even without pointing guns at everyone. Eyes can be more effective constraints than weapons. I am sorry. I am not worthy of Woody Guthrie’s legacy. I wonder how many of us are.

ismh: Teens & Fake Christianity

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 12:27:00 -0500

ismh: Teens & Fake Christianity:

CNN:

Though three out of four American teenagers claim to be Christian, fewer than half practice their faith, only half deem it important, and most can’t talk coherently about their beliefs, the study found.

Many teenagers thought that God simply wanted them to feel good and do good — what…

Look, I think this is a problem, but I don’t think the author has it right in saying that the problem is that teens need to be exposed to more “real acts of faith.” Unquestionably, this is true, but I think that’s only part of the problem, and sort of an easy answer, because that’s approximately three billion times easier to say than it is to do.

I think the bigger problem is that teenagers have finely honed bullshit detectors. They can tell when they’re being lied to, and they can tell when what most people call “church” is really just a big shell game involving guilt trips for non-attendance and political posturing and an absolute refusal to discuss real problems that real people have. This is why teenagers are becoming “fake” Christians. Not because they’re not being taught the right Bible lessons, but because the people who are teaching these lessons, on the whole, tend not to give a shit about doing what they’re teaching.

Until that gets straightened out, there are going to be a lot more “fake” Christians, because it’s a lot easier to just get baptized at the appropriate age (which is twelve) and go to church camp when everybody else does and wait it out than it is to ask a grown up why they never seem to implement the things they’re teaching in their actual lives.

Not that I would know.

All that is to say this: it’s a learned behavior. The real reason teenagers are fake Christians is because their parents are fake Christians—and if their parents aren’t, then a lot of other people who are responsible for their youth program probably are.

Pull Over Before You Read This

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 12:16:50 -0500

Pull Over Before You Read This:

In case you want to feel more guilty about how much time you’ve given Facebook and Twitter (and Tumblr, really) that you can’t ever, ever have back:

I’m not arguing that pressing the stream’s pause button is an easy thing to do. The internet twitch is a powerful force. But it’s worth taking a hard look at our behavior now because the omnipresence of the realtime web will only increase. We should probably try to figure out how to best manage that reality now because there are plenty of cliffs up ahead.

Cyanide & Happiness #2155

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 11:28:39 -0500

Cyanide & Happiness #2155

merlin: Sonic Youth - “Schizophrenia” (Live, 1987)

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 19:23:40 -0500

merlin:

Sonic Youth - “Schizophrenia” (Live, 1987)

"I always thought the good thing about the guitar was that they didn’t teach it in school."

Sun, 29 Aug 2010 03:21:11 -0500

“I always thought the good thing about the guitar was that they didn’t teach it in school.”

- Jimmy Page

This. However much you may love the new Arcade Fire record, this...

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 12:44:02 -0500

This. However much you may love the new Arcade Fire record, this is better.

"Enough is ENOUGH, I have had it with these monkey-fighting snakes, on this Monday to Friday plane!"

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 23:26:09 -0500

“Enough is ENOUGH, I have had it with these monkey-fighting snakes, on this Monday to Friday plane!”

- The edited-for-TV version of the “money quote” from Snakes on a Plane.

From In Which This Is What Happens When You Find A Stranger In The Alps, over at This Recording. A list of the best TV dubs of all time.

Apple Blocks Jailbreakme.com From Stores, Pranksters Undeterred

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 13:00:27 -0500

Apple Blocks Jailbreakme.com From Stores, Pranksters Undeterred:

The hacker spirit at its most indomitable:

The best part of the easy, web-based jailbreak exploit for iOS devices was that pranksters have been hacking iPhones inside Apple Stores. They have been walking into stores, visiting Jailbreakme.com in mobile Safari and boom, Apple’s own demo devices are hacked. It’s that easy.

Of course, Apple didn’t like this, especially as restoring a single phone to its defaults and re-loading its media library can take an hour or more. So Apple did what any parent would do if the kids were causing trouble: it blocked Jailbreakme.com from the in-store Wi-Fi. A simple, effective fix, right? Actually, no. One ne’erdowell, who goes by the name IT Geek, worked around it by using the mobile hotspot feature on his Nexus One to get an in-store iPad connected to the big wide internet. Here’s the video.

The coolest of all the various Twitter “fail” pages....

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 16:33:27 -0500

The coolest of all the various Twitter “fail” pages. This robot always makes me laugh.

The Proposition 8 Ruling (in simple language)

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:50:00 -0500

squashed:

Was this judicial activism?

If “judicial activism” means that a judge did something conservatives didn’t like, then yes, it was judicial activism. Aside from that, this was a very well-reasoned opinion. Everybody got a fair trial. And one side won resoundingly.

This is a great explanation of what exactly was decided yesterday in California, what it means, and how the rest of this scenario will play out. It’s obvious to anyone who knows anything about the Mormons and other key groups funding the pro-Prop 8 campaign that this won’t be the end of the whole ordeal, not by a long shot.

I sure wish all the “family” groups (read: Evangelical Christian organizations) fighting tooth and nail against gay marriage would just devote their attention elsewhere. I find it incredibly hard to believe that Jesus would prefer using money to keep two dudes who love each other from getting married to using it to help someone.

I also find it fascinating that the key Christian group fighting for “one man, one woman” legislation is one that originally specifically included polygamy as part of its doctrine. That may be a low blow, but it’s baffled me since I first heard about the massive LDS campaign to push through Prop 8. I mean, you know, that’s kind of like Mississippi mounting a campaign to end racism in Alabama.

imremembering: Clarissa Explains It All (via...

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 12:37:14 -0500

imremembering:

Clarissa Explains It All

(via jessijaejoplin)

Those look like my glasses. Mine and every hipster I know. I guess we now know who started that trend.

Update on Google Wave

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:14:00 -0500

Update on Google Wave:

Looks like Google is finally killing off Wave:

But despite these wins, and numerous loyal fans, Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects.

I always liked the way Wave looked, but I’ve spent the last year trying to figure out how in the hell to use it to get actual work done in any sense. I guess my brain just isn’t advanced enough—maybe if I’d been born in the ’90s or something.

That said, they (Google) definitely took a big chance on Wave, launching it without having any idea how it would work or how people would use it—if they could use it at all. It’s telling that there are a whole lot of web pages with the title “WTF is Google Wave?”.

I think the lack of popularity was at least partly due to the fact that you had to watch a YouTube video to have any idea what was going on. People stick with tools they can learn organically: I’ve been using TextMate for years and it still surprises me, but even before I knew anything other than Cmd-S, it was instantly usable. Wave? Not so much.

[Link via ForkBombr (which I still try to type with a space in the middle).]

Solar blast heads for Earth

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 12:56:46 -0500

Solar blast heads for Earth:

The Sun appears to have jolted from its deep slumber, blasting tonnes of plasma into interplanetary space on Sunday, which is expected to collide with the Earth within the next 24 hours.

“This eruption is directed right at us, and is expected to get here early in the day on 4 August,” says astronomer Leon Golub of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “It’s the first major Earth-directed eruption in quite some time.”

There’s a really cool QuickTime video of the actual stuff exploding away from the Sun over on the article page.

With any luck, this will knock out the power at work, at I won’t have to go today. C’mon, Sun.

"The stock answer to this quandary is that we must invent new industries and re-train workers in the..."

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 12:51:52 -0500

“The stock answer to this quandary is that we must invent new industries and re-train workers in the skills required to drive them; but, frankly, that’s bullshit and I think we secretly all know it. The truth is, there is no good answer to this quandary.”

- Carl Hegelman (which is a pseudonym) in The Economy: Why It Sucks - The Awl

Upon This Rock: Music: GQ

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 22:58:32 -0500

Upon This Rock: Music: GQ:

The tagline of this old (2004) GQ article is “Rock music used to be a safe haven for degenerates and rebels. Until it found Jesus.”

That’s selling this essay short. It’s a powerful meditation on Evangelicals, “rock” music, faith, and the dissolution thereof, and it brought tears to my eyes a couple of times, so clearly did I see myself in the narrator’s voice.

I don’t care if you have to print this thing out. Read it.

merlin: glass: Photos from Graceland Ladies and Gentlemen,...

Mon, 02 Aug 2010 14:41:00 -0500

merlin:

glass:

Photos from Graceland

Ladies and Gentlemen, please put your hands together, and give a very warm Tumblr welcome to Chris Glass vs. Graceland.

You know, I’ve lived in Memphis my whole life, and I’ve never been past the gates of Graceland. I don’t really even like Elvis that much, except for his Sun stuff and “Suspicious Minds” (which is one of the top 25 singles of all time, and if you disagree, you’re a moron). I guess I don’t get the appeal—but then, nobody in Memphis seems to. It’s like the rest of the world realizes something that we don’t.

I think the opposite is true: I think the people of Memphis love Elvis, but they love him the same way they love every other musician from Memphis (or, anyway, who lived here and/or made it big here): as humans. As talented, creative, awesome humans, but, hey, Elvis was just a guy. A guy from Tupelo. There are still people in this town (lots of them) who remember just running into Elvis one day while they were out and about. That makes it kind of hard to worship the guy.

My high school cross country team used to run past his first house several times a week. I never even realized it was Elvis’s house until I read about in Memphis magazine. That’s the typical Memphis mindset, I guess.

As Elvis week approaches, and the annual deluge of Japanese and British Elvis fanatics descends on us like pompadoured locusts, I’m struck by that fact. Elvis was “one of us.” It’s what makes the new show Memphis Beat so inaccurate: the real Elvis-worshippers aren’t from Memphis. We love the guy, yeah, in Memphis, he’s one of us rather than some abstract rock ‘n roll deity.

Diary of an Unemployed Class of '10 Philosophy Major in New York City, Part 4

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 18:16:24 -0500

Diary of an Unemployed Class of '10 Philosophy Major in New York City, Part 4:

Sometimes my employed friends remark, charitably, how nice it must be to be without a job and free during the day, and walk wherever and whenever I want. To be free! A comment analogous to saying how nice it must be to have no hands, what with saving so much on the cost of mittens and all.

"You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don’t think..."

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 01:54:00 -0500

“You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don’t think you’re weird, you’re living badly.”

- Paul Graham, The Acceleration of Addictiveness.

Everything is addictive. The basic premise of Graham’s piece is that technological progress turns everything into a more concentrated, addictive form of itself over time. Hard to argue with, and something I fight against every day. I know I’m not the only one.

garfieldminusgarfield.

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 13:29:01 -0500

garfieldminusgarfield.