From “The Californian Ideology” by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron who ask the question “who would have suspected that as technology and freedom were worshipped more and more, it would become less and less possible to say anything sensible about the society in which they were applied?”: The Californian Ideology derives its popularity from the [...]
I seem to be quoting this all the time, so I may as well archive it here. From Malkia Cyril of the Center for Media Justice, authoring “Why GLAAD Doesn’t Represent Me”: a response to the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) coming out in support of an AT&T-T-Mobile merger: Worldview. Why does AT&T have [...]
From the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum: OPERATION HIGH HOPES Explanation and Instruction Sheet PURPOSE TO RAISE DOLLARS ($1s) for KENNEDY MATERIALS RECORDS of the Official Campaign Song HIGH HOPES and ALL THE WAY (sample enclosed) PT BOAT PINS — the Campaign Emblem in 3 different styles Lapel Pins for Men ) [...]
The following excerpts is from a paper Lenore T. Ealy and Steven D. Ealy entitled “Progressivism and Philanthropy”, published in The Good Society. Author Stephen D. Ealy is a senior fellow at the conservative Liberty Fund, so take this article’s purpose “to understand how we might best articulate a new rationale for philanthropic enterprises that are today working to return [...]
Chris Rabb’s Invisible Capital uses a quote from Robert Mangabeira Unger and Cornel West’s The Future of American Progressivism: “To understand your country, you must love it. To love it, you must, in a sense, accept it. To accept it as how it is, however is to betray it. To accept your country without betraying it, you must [...]
I’m still parsing through H.R.1363, the $38 billion appropriations bill passed late last night, but this is generally representative of the sausage trading to pay Paul approach: Sec. 8079. In addition to the amounts appropriated or otherwise made available elsewhere in this Act, $65,200,000 is hereby appropriated to the Department of Defense: Provided, That upon [...]
Writing about Survival News yesterday, it behooves me to quote from Francine Adkins-Alexander’s “Progressive media’s wrong turn: Adversaries vs. Advocates”: It would seem progressive media has missed a tremendous opportunity by taking up the adversarial format. Even though individual programs have enjoyed great success and have succeeded to a large extent in countering much of [...]
This is the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s primary run in West Virginia, where a large focus of his time was spent responding to fears over his Catholicism. This is from remarks titled “The Religion Issue in American Politics” that JFK made at the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington, DC, April 21, 1960: What, [...]
Apparently conservatives have a new statement named for Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home. The new Mount Vernon Statement is modeled on the 1960s conservative Sharon Statement (named for William F. Buckley’s home), though it’s slightly ironic considering the Sharon Statement was quite firm on state’s rights and Washington was a Federalist. From comparing the statements, [...]
Douglas Rushkoff wraps up Life, Inc. with the clearest conception of “act local, think global” I’ve read (and usually seems to be misinterpreted). Instead of fighting corporations with corporations of our own [like nonprofits–Ben], or working through corporations to reduce their negative impact on society, we’re better off reinventing ourselves as humans. We live on [...]
I am continuing to enjoy Douglas Rushkoff’s Life, Inc. Adding to my enjoyment is its parallelism with Fred Turner’s From Counterculture to Cyberculture from which I have quoted before. By the 1960s, the German philosopher Herbert Marcuse had revived much of the spirit of [Wilhelm] Reich—this time for an audience already dissatisfied with the spiritual [...]
I’ve been digging through the section on communications in Radical Technology, the 1976 anthology of the magazine Undercurrents. The global village is no such thing. It is a global castle, in which the barons may chat over their wine, while the serfs outside may overhear a few fragments of merriment. Our planet does boast some [...]
Visiting Western Massachussetts this weekend—Angelina sang at Tanglewood—we visited the Norman Rockwell Museum. It was beautiful in the Berkshires and while I can’t speak to the comprehensiveness of the collection, it was just what I wanted. Norman Rockwell is one of my favorite americana motifs to wallow in. At the museum’s center was the Four [...]
My friend Thomas posted a status message to Facebook “wonders why Republicans hate America?”. This is where I’m at: Define your terms! :-) By “America” do you mean? a pluralist society striving for a more representative government and greater civil liberties a consensus society seeking a return to a more stable civic life built upon firm social [...]
From a Wall Street Journal article on Congressional expense accounts: Summaries of such lawmaker expenses are available to the public in print, either by mail or in volumes that can be viewed in basement rooms on Capitol Hill. The House’s quarterly reports — which run over 3,000 pages apiece, across multiple volumes — are stored [...]
“They aren’t charities. They have shareholders to report to,” he [Robert Hammer, an industry consultant] said, referring to banks and credit card companies. “Whatever is left in the model to work from, they will start to maneuver.” This wonderful rhetoric is in regards to beginning to charge annual fees and remove grace periods from people [...]
Previously posting on writing authentically, I wanted to find some other criticisms/observations on the topic. The following is from Can’t You Get Along with Anyone by Allan C. Weisbecker, one of my favorite how-to books on writing that is not explicitly a how-to book on writing [Part 1, Ch. 12: p. 64]: Nonfiction writers, of which [...]
I just finished reading a New York Times editorial “Is the Supreme Court About to Kill Off the Exclusionary Rule?” that ended with this line: “Nothing can destroy a government more quickly,” the [Federal Supreme Court noted in Mapp v. Ohio], “than its failure to observe its own laws, or worse, its disregard of the charter [...]
The story of the slightly smaller Government-Letter sized paper (from Wikipedia): There is an additional paper size, to which the name “government-letter” was given by the IEEE Printer Working Group: the 8 in × 10½ in (203.2 mm × 266.7 mm) paper that is used in the United States for children’s writing. It was prescribed [...]
Today, according to NPR (and many other outlets), “more than 30 pastors across the country are expected to preach a sermon that endorses or opposes a political candidate by name. This would be a flagrant violation of a law that bans tax-exempt organizations from involvement in political campaigns.” I’ve previously discussed two pillars of nonprofit [...]
In my last post exploring poverty, I defined poverty as “the inability to fully participate in or benefit from society”. This definition sought to move beyond a simple definition of poverty as an economic floor, and towards a broader conception of poverty and a goal for society in general. To begin this post, I’d like [...]
Tropic Thunder move Boogeyman dvd I’ve been thoroughly amused by the vetting process for political (and supposedly un-political) government positions. Recently there was the vetting for Sarah Palin, VP for McCain’s Republican ticket: Defending his choice and the team that helped pick her, McCain said Tuesday that “the vetting process was completely thorough.” Advisers said [...]
Diebold (now Premier Election Systems), admits voting machines have had critical software bug for the last 10 years that can result in votes being lost. Nonsensical comments from election officials: DuPage County election officials were upset to learn their election equipment vendor has acknowledged a programming error that could cause votes not to be tallied, but [...]
We just had our AmeriCorps*VISTA orientation last week—which to our delight and hard work turned out great—and one of the things I’ve been ruminating on since then was one of the powerful dialogue we had around poverty. AmeriCorps*VISTA’s mission is to help individuals and communities out of poverty rather than focus on making poverty more [...]
Looks like the FCC has “demonstrate[d], once again, that at present it is difficult, if not impossible to apply public interest pressure to TV stations via the Commission’s license renewal process.” A Chicago/Milwaukee appeal was made to the FCC over a lack of local and regional political coverage from area broadcasters: less than 1% went [...]
It’s another election year which means that politics are flying. From a story on NASA forcibly downplaying global warming: The report did not directly accuse them of lying, but used more nuanced terms such as “mendacity Abandoned ” and “dissembling.” The space agency complained those terms were unjust. And I enjoy how the New York [...]
“Limiting the CIA’s interrogation methods to those in the Army Field Manual would be dangerous because the manual is publicly available and easily accessible on the Internet…“ President W. Bush on his veto of a CIA waterboarding ban. Of course, the Operating Manual for Guantanamo Bay Prison is on the internet too. But then again, [...]
I got one of those “write your congress-critter right now!” emails and tried to do so. But apparently Free Press’s anti-telecom immunity form didn’t like me: We’re sorry, but based on your address, you are not eligible to take this alert. This may be because the alert is restricted to particular states or to constituents [...]
.!. As so often happens in politics, the quarrel between Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton came down to a matter of direct objects. Both “reject” and “denounce” are transitive verbs — they act upon a direct object — but the candidates weren’t talking about the same objects. The object of Mr. Obama’s denunciation was Mr. [...]
In September 1963 [George] McGovern became the only senator who opposed U.S. involvement in Vietnam during the Kennedy administration. He came by his horror of war honorably in 35 B-23 missions over Germany, where half the B-24 crews did not survive—they suffered a higher rate of fatalities than did Marines storming Pacific islands. McGovern was [...]
I Love Trouble film I saw the movie King Corn last night at Harvard. It was ok. The best part I thought was when they interviewed Earl Butz, a Secretary of Agriculture in the 1970s that instigated a major food production policy shift. Earl said that his change in policy led to a decrease in [...]
Deregulation in the utilities industry results in higher costs whenever those costs are not expected to greatly affect consumption (also in the oil industry), contrary to the consequentialist arguments of deregulation proponents. The same thing is happening in the communications sector. From a BoingBoing comment on a broadband penetration related post. I have no clue [...]
There are so many overlapping assumptions and statements in this congressman’s statement it’s amazing. It’s also amazing how 40 years of history inures you to something viciously contested by minds great and small. On September 21st [1964], Congressman Donald C. Bruce of Indiana lashed out at the Daisy and Ice Cream ads at a Republican Ward [...]
My friend Danielle took this ridiculous photo of me aboard the Thomas Leighton (known locally as the “Tippy Tommy”) operating out of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We were at the wedding of a friend taking place on the Piscataqua River, the third fastest-flowing navigable river in the world. I feel I look very political-worthy in this picture; [...]
