Posts Tagged ‘1960s’
Return of the Son of Occasional Linkblogging
With new and unexpected obligations in the last few months it’s become very hard for me to keep up with the link-blogging. Sorry! It’s bad enough that I’m considering putting this function on the blog on (likely permanent) hiatus. But, for now at least, some links…
* Wordless, but one of the best things about parenting I’ve ever read: Dan Berry’s “Carry Me.” Made me cry each time I read it.
* For the night, which becomes more immense /and depressing and utter / and the voices in it which argue and argue. / For this conflict with the stars. / For ashes. For the wind. / For this emergency we call life. All-Purpose Elegy.
* This is really good too: “the best Spider-Man story of the last five years.”
* CFP: Utopia, now!
* Class, Academia, and Anxious Times. From Duke’s Own Sara Appel.
* Hugo nominations 2017! How well did the new rules do against the Sad Puppies? Meet the Hugo-Nominated Author of Alien Stripper Boned From Behind By the T-Rex.
* The African Speculative Fiction Society holds the Nommo Awards to celebrate the year’s greatest speculative fiction written by African authors.
* A list of contributors has been announced for Letters to Octavia, which has been renamed Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler (which I’m in, by the way — I’m the rascal writing about “whether we should respect Butler’s wishes about not reprinting certain works”). I’m also a small part of the Huntington’s current exhibit of the Butler archives, presenting at the associated research conference in June.
* I wrote a small encyclopedia article on “Science Fiction” for the Oxford Research Encyclopedia, which is live now…
* Desperation Time: Visions of the future from the left.
* ‘Doomsday Library’ Opens In Norway To Protect The World’s Books From Armageddon.
* The 43 senators who plan to filibuster Gorsuch represent 53 percent of the country.
* The history of all heretofore existing society is the history of archery dorks. Evidence that the human hand evolved so we could punch each there.
* Check out my friend David Higgins on NPR’s On Point, talking dystopias.
* War, forever and ever amen. What We Do Best. Trump’s bombing of Syria likely won’t be met with a wall of “resistance,” certainly not within the halls of power. That’s because for nearly all liberal and conservative pundits and politicians, foreign wars — particularly those launched in the name of “humanitarianism” — are an issue where no leader, even one as disliked as Trump, can ever go wrong. The Syrian Catastrophe. A Solution from Hell. Profiles in courage. There are no humanitarian wars. 7 Charities Helping Syrians That Need Your Support. The only answer is no.
"In that moment, I think, he became presidential" is one of those phrases that can be the caption to any New Yorker cartoon
— Tim Murphy (@timothypmurphy) April 7, 2017
Omfg. Bolivia, who called today's Syria meeting at the UN, holds up Colin Powell's 2003 picture, saying to remember that ISIS was the result pic.twitter.com/dRxKoSEYlH
— Hayes Brown (@HayesBrown) April 7, 2017
* Incredible story: Hired Goon Drags Man Off United Flight After He Refuses to Give Up Seat. More details here. It’s only going to get worse.
* Trump Conspiracy Tweetstorms Are The Infowars Of The Left. It is shocking how these things erupt through my timeline day after day, then evaporate utterly as if they’d never happened.
* This week in the richest country that has ever existed in human history.
* Being Wealthy in America Earns You 15 Extra Years of Life Span Over the Poor.
* New York will no longer prosecute 16 and 17 year olds as adult criminals.
* I loved this story about the connections that expose us: This Is Almost Certainly James Comey’s Twitter Account.
* We did it guys, we did it. But let’s not lose our heads yet.
* What Happens When Your Internet Provider Knows Your Porn Habits?
* Activism we can all believe in: Protesters raise more than $200,000 to buy Congress’s browsing histories.
* Democrats Against Single Payer.
* How to Survive the Next Catastrophic Pandemic.
* An epidemic of childhood trauma haunts Milwaukee. An intractable problem: For the last half-century, Milwaukee has been caught in a relentless social and economic spiral. Milwaukee celebrates groundbreaking of new Black Holocaust Museum site.
"why am i so sluggish today" he whispered to himself after spending every minute of the past decade staring at glowing rectangles of sorrow
— Matt Novak (@paleofuture) April 4, 2017
* Dolphins beat up octopuses before eating them, and the reason is kind of horrifying.
* Wild situation in X-Men Gold #1. The artist’s statement.
* If nothing else, Operation Blue Milk had me at “Nnedi Okorafor.” Everything Cut from Rogue One. The Final Star Wars Movie Will Include The Late Carrie Fisher.
crazy shot on air force one from reuters pic.twitter.com/ZyMAKBQKPy
— Gideon Resnick (@GideonResnick) April 6, 2017
* The Minnesota Eight Don’t Want to Be Deported to a Country They’ve Never Lived In. Abolish ICE. Abolish ICE Yesterday.
* 7 Tips for Writing a Bestselling Science Fiction Novel.
* Can the Great Lakes Be Saved?
* Does This Band Name Start With The? A Quiz.
* America’s first female mayor was elected 130 years ago. Men nominated her as a cruel joke.
* Diabetes is even deadlier than we thought, study suggests.
* The Biggest Employer in Each US State. Look at all those universities we don’t need!
WARNING: This film contains ADULT THEMES. All the characters are really tired and in debt.
— TechnicallyRon (@TechnicallyRon) March 30, 2017
* Already old news, but worth noting: whether out of general interest or revenge Joss will be doing Batgirl. If I had Joss’s ear I’d pitch about 20-30 minutes of kung-fu action girl Batgirl and then have her paralyzed and do the Oracle plot instead. It’d be something different in this genre and something different for Whedon too, as opposed to something we’ve frankly seen from him a few too many times by now.
* Pedagogy watch: Why won’t students ask for help?
* More on the history of sleep: Why Do We Make Children Sleep Alone?
* When Every Day Is Groundhog Day: The Danny Rubin Story.
* No thanks: Disney Could Go Westworld With New Patent Filing for Soft ‘Humanoid’ Robots.
* There are dozens of us! Dozens! The Life Aquatic might not be Wes Anderson’s best film. But it is his greatest: The director’s misunderstood classic knows that sadness can’t be defeated, only lived with.
* Star Trek: Discovery ZZzzzzzzZZzzzzzZzzzz.
* Joe Hill (son of Stephen King): In the late 1990s I asked my Dad how to write a cover letter for my short fiction submissions. He was glad to help out.
* I always call Chuck Schumer the worst possible Democrat at the worst possible time, but Rahm Emanuel really gives him a run for his money.
* Margaret Atwood is dropping hints about a Handmaid’s Tale sequel. She even wrote a little bit extra, just in time for me to teach it this summer!
And so, Dr. Baloo finds himself leaping from life to life, hoping each time that his next leap… will be the leap home. pic.twitter.com/YBBhTnwx1t
— Matt Moylan (@LilFormers) March 12, 2017
* KSR talks NY2140. KSR talks world building. KSR in conversation with Adam Roberts and Francis Spufford.
* Geoengineering watch. Sadly, this is probably our civilization’s only hope.
* These Are the Wildly Advanced Space Exploration Concepts Being Considered by NASA.
* If you want a vision of the future.
* Tyrannosaurus rex was a sensitive lover, new dinosaur discovery suggests.
* PS: Conservatives and liberals united only by interest in dinosaurs, study shows.
* The proliferation of charter schools, particularly in areas of declining enrollment and in proximity to schools that have closed, is adding financial stress to Chicago’s financially strapped public school system, a new report co-authored by a Roosevelt University professor shows.
* How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons.
* Great Barrier Reef at ‘terminal stage’: scientists despair at latest coral bleaching data.
* The Original Ending of Alien Was Both Terrifying and a Huge Bummer.
* Fuck You and Die: An Oral History of Something Awful.
* The arc of history is long, but New York now has more Mets fans than Yankees fans.
* Congratulations to North Carolina.
Salaries left to right: $0, $0, $0, $0, $3,000,000, $0, $2,088,577, $0, $0#nationalchampionship pic.twitter.com/OUJT13pmLE
— Jack M Silverstein (@readjack) April 4, 2017
* OK. OK. But I’m watching both of you.
* Teach-Ins Helped Galvanize Student Activism in the 1960s. They Can Do So Again Today.
* The Uses of Bureaucracy. Browser Plug-In Idea. A Brief History of Theology. To thine own self be true. Stop me if you’ve heard it.
* Politics. Democracy. Art. #2017. Submitted for Your Approval. We lived happily during the war. Five years later. Pretty grim. Any sufficiently advanced neglect is indistinguishable from malice. How to tell if you are sexually normal. Juxtaposition of wish fulfilment violence and infantile imagery, desire to regress to be free of responsibility… Join the movement. Know your sins.
* And even in the darkest times, there is still hope: Spiders could theoretically eat every human on Earth in one year.
Written by gerrycanavan
April 10, 2017 at 5:53 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with 1960s, 2017, academia, Adam Roberts, Africa, Afrofuturism, air travel, airplanes, Alien, America, America's Black Holocaust Museum, animals, apocalypse, archery, art, Australia, Baloo, baseball, Batgirl, boxing, bureaucracy, California, Carrie Fisher, Carry Me, catastrophe, CFPs, charter schools, Chicago, children, Chuck Schumer, class, class struggle, climate change, college basketball, college sports, Colorado River, comics, conferences, conspiracy theories, cultural preservation, Dan Berry, David Higgins, death, debt, democracy, deportation, depression, diabetes, dinosaurs, Disney, dolphins, Donald Trump, Doomsday Vault, Duke, dystopia, ecology, elegy, Episode 9, evolution, Francis Spufford, futurity, geoengineering, Great Barrier Reef, Great Lakes, Groundhog Day, Hamlet, Harry Mudd, health care, hope, How the University Works, Hugo awards, humanitarianism, Huntington Library, ice, if you want a vision of the future, immigration, Infowars, Invincible, James Comey, Joe Hill, John Scalzi, Joss Whedon, kids, Kim Stanley Robinson, libraries, literature, lunch-shaming, malice, Margaret Atwood, Marvel, Mega Man, Mets, Milwaukee, Minnesota, misogyny, museums, music, my scholarly empire, NASA, NCAA, neglect, Neil Gorsuch, neoliberalism, New York, New York 2140, Nnedi Okorafor, Nommo awards, North Carolina, Norway, NPR, ocean acidification, Octavia Butler, octopuses, Operation Blue Milk, Oracle, outer space, Oxford Research Encyclopedia, pandemics, parenting, pedagogy, Peter Frase, podcasts, poetry, politics, polls, Polonius, porn, poverty, public health, Quantum Leap, Rahm Emanuel, rich people, Richard Scarry, Robert Kirkman, robots, Rogue One, sadness, Sara Appel, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, science fiction, sex, sexism, sin, single payer, slavery, sleep, social media, Something Awful, Spider-Man, spiders, standup comedy, Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery, Star Wars, Stephen King, stepmothers, student activism, student debt, Supreme Court, Syria, T. rex, teach-ins, teaching, the courts, the filibuster, The Handmaid's Tale, the Internet, the kids are all right, the law, The Life Aquatic, The Three Hoarsemen, theology, to thine own self be true, Transformers, Twilight Zone, Twitter, Uber, United, Utopia, war, war huh good god y'all what is it good for? absolutely nothing say it again, Watchmen, water, wealth, Wes Anderson, Westworld, white people, women, X-Men, Yankees, Zoey
Weekend Links!
* Huge congratulations to my colleague Larry Watson, three-time winner of the Wisconsin Library Association’s book of the year.
* How To Survive A Zombie Apocalypse According To Margaret Atwood.
* The climate deal with China is the distraction, Keystone XL is the grift. More unhappy news: China Is More Likely to Keep Its Climate Promise Than We Are.
* But Democratic super-billionaires will save us… by suing their pollsters. Yay?
* To end global poverty, we have to end global capitalism.
* United Kingdom universities are pioneering exciting new horizons in Mafia-style university management. Now to sell derivatives based on the proposition that the unis won’t able to pay back the money… now to force a situation where those derivatives pay off…
* Finishing a Humanities Dissertation in Six Years (or Less). There’s good advice here, though as I grousing on Twitter I don’t like the framing “with working relationships, marriage, health, finances, and sanity all still in good shape at the end.” These things are in many cases prerequisites for graduate work as much as they are things graduate study puts at risk; the “still” in that sentence is really crucial.
* More kids are getting hurt on playgrounds. Blame iPhones.
* Having just one drink doubles your risk of going to the E.R.
* Adjuncts at N.Y. College Are Fined $1,000 for Not Joining Weeklong Strike.
* Harvard to screw its adjuncts, just ’cause.
Rule of law watch!
* Why Does a Campus Police Department Have Jurisdiction Over 65,000 Chicago Residents?
* ‘Ready For War’: 1,000 Police Officers Mobilized In Advance Of Grand Jury Ruling In Ferguson.
* Police Killings in the US Are at a Two-Decade High.
* New Orleans Police Routinely Ignored Sex Crimes, Report Finds.
* In Alabama, a judge can override a jury that spares a murderer from the death penalty.
* Of course, it’s not just cops, every bureaucratic structure in America turns out to be toxic just beneath the surface: LA School District: Students Can Consent to Sex With Their Teachers.
* Harvard students take the 1964 Louisiana Literacy Test.
* Cosmonauts Used to Carry Insane Machete Guns In Space.
* These days, the idea of the cyborg is less the stuff of science fiction and more a reality, as we are all, in one way or another, constantly connected, extended, wired, and dispersed in and through technology. One wonders where the individual, the person, the human, and the body are—or, alternatively, where they stop. These are the kinds of questions Hélène Mialet explores in this fascinating volume, as she focuses on a man who is permanently attached to assemblages of machines, devices, and collectivities of people: Stephen Hawking.
* The amazing sculptures of Duane Hanson. Milwaukee Art Museum has a Hanson too.
* 200,000 brave and/or insane people have supposedly signed up for a one-way mission to Mars. But the truth about Mars One, the company behind the effort, is much weirder (and far more worrying) than anyone has previously reported.
* Against disability, kind of: Able-Bodied Until It Kills Us.
* Tarantino says he’s retiring.
* Poster for They Still Live. I’d watch it.
* Dogs Playing Dungeons & Dragons.
* And they say adults in America are infantilized: Underoos Are Back, Adult-Sized, And Better Than Ever!
* A Stunning Alt-History Map Showing A Completely Uncolonized Africa.
* DC in talks to let Michelle MacLaren take the blame for direct Wonder Woman. Good luck to her!
* SMBC: Prayer and the speed of light.
* And MetaFilter celebrates Asimov’s Foundation. Bonus Golden Age SF@MF! The Great Heinlein Juveniles, Plus The Other Two.
Written by gerrycanavan
November 15, 2014 at 7:54 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with 1960s, a new life awaits you in the off-world colonies, academia, adjunctification, adjuncts, administrative blight, adults, Africa, Alabama, alcohol, alternate history, America, apocalypse, art, Asimov, Barack Obama, Bono, books, capitalism, China, Choose Your Own Adventure, class struggle, climate change, cosmonauts, cyborgs, DC Comics, death penalty, debt, Democrats, derivatives, disability, dissertations, dogs, Duane Hanson, Dungeons & Dragons, ecology, Ferguson, film, Foundation, graduate student life, Harvard, Hateful Eight, How the University Works, iPhones, Keystone XL, kids today, Larry Watson, let me tell you about my childhood, literacy tests, Los Angeles, maps, Margaret Atwood, Marquette, Mars, Mars One, Michelle MacLaren, Milwaukee, Milwaukee Art Museum, Missouri, my childhood, neoliberalism, New Orleans, obituary, only the super-rich can save us now, outer space, parenting, physics, police brutality, police riots, police state, police violence, politics, polls, poverty, prayer, privilege, R.A. Montgomery, race, racism, rape culture, religion, Robert Heinlein, rule of law, run it like the Mafia, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, schools, science fiction, sculpture, St. Louis, Stephen Hawking, superheroes, Tarantino, the courts, the humanities, the law, the Mafia, They Live!, they say time is the fire in which we burn, underoos, unions, University of California, University of Chicago, voting, Wonder Woman, writing, young adult literature, zombies
The Malcolm X Liberation School
Via @whitneytrettian, an exhibit at Duke Library about the 1969 takeover of the Allen Building, including the students’ list of demands.
Written by gerrycanavan
September 16, 2013 at 2:59 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with 1960s, Duke, Malcolm X, protest, race, student movements
Thursday Links
* 21st Century America summed up in a single headline: Why Is a Defense Contractor Paying for Sesame Street’s Parents-in-Jail Lesson?
* If Only This Goes On: science fiction and modernity in Russia.
* Intact fallout shelter discovered in California backyard. More links follow the image.
* Profit-Driven Surveillance and the Spectrum of Freedom. Bank robbery suspect wants NSA phone records for his defense.
* A friend on Facebook reminds me, in response to Walker’s latest, just how badly Wisconsin is malapportioned. Just crazy.
* Lucas and Spielberg announce film is dead. No, they’re not making another Indiana Jones; that’s really what they’re saying.
* California’s Online Education Bill SB 520 Passes Senate. You might know this better as the MOOC bill.
* The enemy within: Toddlers Killed More Americans Than Terrorists Did This Year.
* Science Has Discovered a New Human Body Part.
* And SCOTUS says human genes cannot be patented. The good guys win a game!
Written by gerrycanavan
June 13, 2013 at 3:08 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with 1960s, abortion, academia, America, California, college, copyright, domestic surveillance, fallout shelters, film, genetics, genomics, George Lucas, guns, How the University Works, if only this goes on, Information wants to be free, intellectual property, kids today, medicine, modernity, MOOCs, neoliberalism, NSA, nuclearity, patents, politics, prison-industrial complex, rape, rape culture, Russia, science, science fiction, Sesame Street, Steven Spielberg, Supreme Court, surveillance society, terrorism, the commons, the courts, the law, toddlers, war on terror, Wisconsin
Monday Links
* The Ambiguous Utopia of Iain M. Banks.
* Steven Chu waves the white flag on the tar sands. This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal… If only Obama had won!
* Colorado to split into two states over gun control? America has become a bad fan fiction of itself.
* The Constitutional Amnesia of the NSA Snooping Scandal: John Judis remembers the 60s and 70s.
* Grouping Students by Ability Regains Favor in Classroom.
* And Dan Harmon says he won’t retcon season four. Of course, he hasn’t seen it yet…
Written by gerrycanavan
June 10, 2013 at 1:09 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with 1960s, 1970s, America, Barack Obama, carbon, climate change, Colorado, community, Dan Harmon, domestic surveillance, ecology, education, fan fiction, Guantánamo, guns, Iain Banks, kids today, leaks, pedagogy, science fiction, Steven Chu, surveillance society, tar sands, television, The Culture, Utopia, war on terror
Friday Night!
* Today in the grad school backlash backlash: Tressie McMillan Cottom, Karen Gregory, Freddie deBoer.
* Gasp! But how could this be? Universities Benefit from Their Faculties’ Unionization, Study Finds.
* Anatomy Of A Failed Campus: What Happened At Tisch Asia?
* “Ms. Molly, I want you to be my sister so you can stand up for me against bullies.”
* And some Friday night Graeber: A Practical Utopian’s Guide to the Coming Collapse.
In retrospect, though, I think that later historians will conclude that the legacy of the sixties revolution was deeper than we now imagine, and that the triumph of capitalist markets and their various planetary administrators and enforcers—which seemed so epochal and permanent in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991—was, in fact, far shallower.
Written by gerrycanavan
April 5, 2013 at 6:44 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with 1960s, academia, academic jobs, adjuncts, bullies, class struggle, collapse, David Graeber, debt, graduate student life, How the University Works, labor, NYU, politics, revolution, tenure, the humanities, unions, Utopia
Big Monday Links
(some links stolen from the great zunguzungu)
* It’s bad enough that I’ll never be asked to reboot Back to the Future—but it’d be utterly intolerable if the gig goes to two guys I went to high school with. Jon says it’s all a big misunderstanding but you know he’s just trying to throw me off the scent.
* There is no fresh start: The Return of Mad Men and the End of TV’s Golden Age. A metafictional reading of the series. And for fun: The Foreign Language of Mad Men: Do the characters really talk like people from the ’60s?
* Let us start with the obvious: in the entire decade or so of airport security since the attacks on America on September 11th 2001, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has not foiled a single terrorist plot or caught a single terrorist.
* Arundhati Roy: “Capitalism: A Ghost Story.”
* In his novel “2066: Red Star Over America,” Han, China’s premier science-fiction writer, depicts a disturbing future. It is the year 2066. China rules the world while the U.S. festers in financial decline and civil war. A team has been sent to America to disseminate civilization through the traditional Chinese board game Go. But during the critical Go match held at the World Trade Center, terrorists strike. The seas around New York rise, the Twin Towers crumble and the U.S. is plunged into pandemonium. You had me at “Go.” Via io9.
* Do professors get paid too much for too little work? Obviously. More here.
* Related: “College Professors Demand Right to Be Mean.”
* Facebook asserts trademark on word “Book.” Can’t see that being controversial.
* It must be an election year, because suddenly the Obama administration is talking about the environment.
* Extreme weather events over the past decade have increased and were “very likely” caused by manmade global warming, a study in the journal Nature Climate Change said on Sunday. “Scientists at Germany’s Potsdam Institute for Climate Research used physics, statistical analysis and computer simulations to link extreme rainfall and heat waves to global warming,” Reuters reports. “It is very likely that several of the unprecedented extremes of the past decade would not have occurred without anthropogenic global warming,” said the study. Why didn’t anybody warn us!
* Government spending is good in a recession? Why didn’t anyone tell us!
* Why is horseracing even allowed? Via MeFi.
* Rules: This is a very specific contest. Don’t tell us why you like meat, why organic trumps local or why your food is yours to choose. Just tell us why it’s ethical to eat meat.
* If They Directed It: The Hunger Games. I don’t think anything I’ve written on Twitter has gotten as many retweets as my brief reading of series as a utopia.
* Imagining The Wire Season Six.
* On not calling Rich Santorum “crazy.”
* Jeffrey Jerome Cohen writes up his visit to the wonderful conference I was at last weekend, ICFA 2012.
A highlight of ICFA was China Miéville’s talk “On Monsters.” I am a fan of Miéville’s work; The City and the City is one of my favorite books. His narratives are always beautifully written as well as philosophically challenging. Besides possessing an astonishing vocabulary (he sends me to the dictionary, and makes me wonder how they ever gave me a PhD), he is a writer widely read in theory — though his books never turn into allegories for lit crit. They always trace problems, and stay away from anything easy. Miéville brought up Quentin Meillassoux and speculative realism, for example, during his paper (dismissively: he is not a fan of SR or object oriented philosophy, which surprised me). China’s presentation started off as straightforward account of how the uncanny might be broken into various subcategories: the ab-canny, the sur-canny, the sub-canny, the post-canny, the para-canny, and onwards. His account began seriously but spiralled into a proliferative joke. His point was that classification is not analysis, and that such a “taxonomic frenzy” (as he called it) mortifies: “the drive to translate useful constructs into foundations for analysis is deadly,” because it violently takes away the potency and possibility of the terms it organizes. What was interesting to me, though, is that China’s talk performed something, um, para-canny (right beside itself, there but unseen) that I’ve also learned from studying medieval encyclopedists: taxonomic frenzy might produce a desiccated system of emplacement in which everything gets filed into a cabinet and drained of its vitality. Or it might actually be so creative in its proliferative energy and so limned by the necessity of its own failure that it undermines its own rigidity in the very process of articulation, becoming an envitalizing and innovative act — an act of writing — rather than a system of deadening inscription. China’s multiplication of canniness had a power that he walked away from, I think: why abandon your monster like that?
* Honoring the 20th anniversary of Apollo 18 the only possible way: interactive fiction.
* This American Life: What kind of ideology?
* “He Was a Crook”: Longform.org remembers Hunter S. Thompson’s obituary for Richard Nixon.
* Haiti: Where did the money go?
* Support for Afghan War falls. Support for NC anti-gay amendment rises.
A recent Elon University poll found that 58 percent of North Carolinians oppose the amendment, with 38 in favor of it. That poll surveys adults statewide, while the WRAL News poll includes the results only of likely voters.
Despite the broad amendment support in the WRAL News poll, only 37 percent of voters said same-sex couples deserve no legal recognition in North Carolina, according to the poll.
So you have no idea what you’re voting for and won’t bother to find out. Got it.
* Because the 2012 campaign hasn’t been tedious enough: 2016.
* Trayvon Martin and the history of lynching. The Corporations Behind the Law That May Let Trayvon Martin’s Killer Go Free. On Trayvon Martin as innocent victim.
* Why Obama’s Healthcare Law Is Constitutional. Absolutely everything you need to know about health reform’s Supreme Court debut. What the Supreme Court Could Do About Obamacare, Explained. Legal experts: Court won’t strike down ‘Obamacare.’
* If I didn’t know better I’d say this little video has some sort of message.
* MLA Job Information List data back to 1965.
* Infographic of the night: Doomsday Predictions Debunked.
* The headline reads, “UC review backs use of pepper spray on protesters.” Huh! I really thought they’d give themselves hell.
Referring to pepper spray, he wrote: “A few focused applications on the crowd that blocked the officers near the row of bushes would likely have cleared that area very quickly, with few additional baton strikes.”
You’re a university, for Christ’s sake. My god.
* What could possibly go wrong? Has Obama put us on a permanent war footing, even in peacetime?
* And what could possibly go wrong? Tacocopter could be the unmanned future of food delivery. Some should have read more Jenny Rhee.
Written by gerrycanavan
March 26, 2012 at 11:58 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with "Is Health Care Reform Constitutional?", 1960s, academia, academic jobs, Afghanistan, airport security, animals, apocalypse, Arundhati Roy, austerity, Back to the Future, Barack Obama, capitalism, carbon, China, China Miéville, climate change, conferences, consumerism, consumption, democracy simply doesn't work, ecology, executive orders, Facebook, film, games, gay rights, general election 2012, general election 2016, Go, Haiti, Harold and Kumar, health care, high school, horseracing, horses, Hunger Games, Hunter S. Thompson, ICFA, ideology, India, innocent victims, interactive fiction, Koch brothers, lingo, lynching, Mad Men, mandatory niceness, marriage equality, meat, mental illness, metafiction, MLA, monsters, movie posters, my particular demographic, Nixon, North Carolina, obituary, Occupy Cal, over-educated literary theory PhDs, pedagogy, pepper spray, politics, polls, protest, Randolph, Republican primary 2012, rhetoric, Rick Santorum, robots, science fiction, Skynet, stand your ground, student movements, Supreme Court, tacocopter, television, text adventures, the Constitution, the economy, the law, the recession, The Walking Dead, The Wire, They Might Be Giants, This American Life, trademarks, Trayvon Martin, TSA, UC Davis, Utopia, vegetarianism, war, what it is I think I'm doing, words
Race and ‘Mad Men’
It’s been accepted more or less as a truism that black people didn’t work on Madison Avenue in the 1960s. But facts are stubborn things. There were black people in advertising even then, some (a few) in high places. Contrary to the popular assumption, blacks in that era met with success and challenges on Madison Avenue, like everywhere else.
Written by gerrycanavan
September 19, 2011 at 11:47 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with 1960s, Mad Men, race, television
David Graeber on Buffy
If nothing else, Buffy reminds us how much ’60-style youth rebellion was premised on an assumption of security and prosperity: Why put up with all this stodginess when life could be so good? Today’s rebellious youth, rather, are reduced to struggling desperately to keep hell from entirely engulfing the earth. Such, I suppose, is the fate of a generation that has been robbed of its fundamental right to dream of a better world. The very notion of being able to take part in a relatively democratically organized group of comrades, engaged in a struggle to save humanity from its authoritarian monsters, is now itself a wild utopian fantasy–not just a means to one. But cynics take note: If the mushrooming success of Buffy means anything, it’s that this is one fantasy which surprising numbers of the Slacker Generation do have.
From the archives: ‘Rebel without a God.’
Written by gerrycanavan
August 31, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with 1960s, 1990s, Buffy, David Graeber, end of history, Joss Whedon, postmodernism, rebellion, revolution, television, Utopia
There’s Only One Story and We Tell It Over and Over
The Atomic Knights, mounted as usual on their giant mutated Dalmatians, battle radioactive sentient plants in the post-apocalyptic ruins of the United States, c. 1992.
(original comic from Strange Adventures #150, March 1963)
Written by gerrycanavan
June 26, 2011 at 10:26 pm
Posted in Look at what I put on the Internet
Tagged with 1960s, Atomic Knights, comics, mutated Dalmatians, nuclearity, sentient plans
Wednesday, Right?
* Save the Bottle Rocket Motel.
* 40 Senate Republicans just voted to kill Medicare. And now the GOP wants to cut Medicaid by 25%, too. More here, here, and here.
Keep in mind that Medicaid pays for 40 percent of all births and that children comprise half its beneficiaries. But the real cost drivers are older Americans. Medicaid provides financing for 60 percent of nursing-home residents and pays 43 percent of America’s long-term care bill. Ryan’s reform would stick states with the bill and would likely leave many of the most vulnerable without coverage.
* Now even Floridians realize Rick Scott is horrible. And Wisconsin hates Scott Walker.
* The New Jersey Supreme Court just spanked Chris Christie on education.
* There’s so much Prozac in the Great Lakes it’s killing off the bacteria.
* China rips off Cory Doctorow and then does him one better: they’re forcing prisoners to gold farm.
* MSNBC really should just give Chris Hayes Ed Schultz’s timeslot, especially after this. One week’s suspension hardly seems sufficient punishment. But then I’ve always found his show unwatchable.
* And MetaFilter’s starting up another Nomic game. Get in on the ground floor!
Written by gerrycanavan
May 25, 2011 at 8:28 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with 1960s, alternate history, austerity, Bottle Rocket, China, Chris Christie, Chris Hayes, class struggle, Cory Doctorow, Ed Schultz, film, Florida, games, gold farming, health care, JFK, Medicaid, Medicare, MetaFilter, MSNBC, New Jersey, Nomic, politics, pollution, Prozac, Republicans, Rick Scott, science fiction, Scott Walker, Soviet Union, Space Race, the courts, the Moon, the Senate, war on education, water, Wes Anderson, Wisconsin
Worth 1000 Words
Bikini models photographed by young chimpanzee in a kimono. It was a different time. Via Boing Boing.
Written by gerrycanavan
January 3, 2011 at 7:29 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Wednesday Whatever
* Empathy fail: Science proves the kids aren’t all right. Via MeFi.
* Science also proves conservatives really just need a hug.
A study at University College London in the UK has found that conservatives’ brains have larger amygdalas than the brains of liberals. Amygdalas are responsible for fear and other “primitive” emotions. At the same time, conservatives’ brains were also found to have a smaller anterior cingulate — the part of the brain responsible for courage and optimism.
* How it works: Upton once considered a “moderate on environmental issues,” but has worked hard to refashion himself as a hard-right defender of pollution in recent months. Some Tea Party groups tried to block Upton from taking the gavel of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, attacking his past support for energy-efficient light bulbs. Upton previously claimed that “climate change is a serious problem” and that “the world will be better off” if we reduced carbon emissions. However, in the course of the past two years — as he received $20,000 from Koch Industries — Upton has shifted to oppose not only cap-and-trade legislation but any form of limits on climate pollution whatsoever, instead supporting investigations against climate scientists and lawsuits against the EPA and its supposed “unconstitutional power grab that will kill millions of jobs”… Via Benen.
* Sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression: Another take on life in Yazoo City, c. 1960. Also via Benen.
* Arnold Schwarzenegger: worst governor ever?
* And you can have my smoking ban when you take it from my cold, dead hands.
Written by gerrycanavan
December 29, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with 1960s, America, Arnold Schwarzenegger, California, carbon, climate change, conservatives, ecology, empathy, from my cold dead hands, Haley Barbour, kids today, Koch brothers, Mississippi, North Carolina, our brains work in interesting ways, politics, race, Republicans, science, segregation, smoking, the South, Yazoo City
Wednesday Night Everything
* Details are emerging about Wes Anderson’s next film, Moon Rise Kingdom:
[The film] is set in the 60s. Two young adults fall in love and run away. Leaders in their New England town are sticking the idea that they’ve disappeared and go in search of them. Norton will play a scout leader who brings his charges on a search. Willis is in talks to play the town sheriff who’s also looking, and who is having an affair with the missing girl’s mother, the role McDormand is in talks to play. Murray, a regular in Anderson films, will play the girl’s father, who has his own issues.
Let Bleeding Cool have the final word for now: “The film is set in the 60s and has a script by Anderson and Roman Copolla. The potential for obsessive compulsive production design and a soundtrack full of hipper-than-thou needle drops is actually quite frightening.”
* Why Humanities? Talks from the Birkbeck College Conference. Via @traxus4420, who smartly proclaims it the “antidote to stanley fish’s studied moronism.”
* Rep. John Shimkus, candidate for House Energy Committee chair in the new Congress, explains why we don’t have to worry about climate change. New Jersey governor and potential presidential candidate Chris Christie frets that it’s all just so complicated.
* According to the International Energy Agency World Energy Outlook peak oil happened in 2006. So there’s that.
* From now on, every time you say “It’s on like Donkey Kong” you have to give Nintendo a quarter.
* Holy crap: what hospitals do with foreskins. Via Kottke.
* Child abuse at 0% in lesbian households. You read that right.
* What I didn’t see was a party that supports single-payer health care, free universities, the redistribution of wealth from the top one percent, an end to corporate-owned elections. I also want a party that hopes to abolish the death penalty, the internal combution engine and the U.S. Senate, an anti-democratic body that should go the way of the House of Lords. My friend and sometime editor David Fellerath quits the Democratic Party.
* Only the super-rich can save us now: PNC Bank Will No Longer Fund Mountain Top Removal.
* Ad the co-chairmen of the Catfood Commission has returned from hibernation with a triumphant plan to fix the deficit that absolutely no one likes, not even the other members of the Commission itself.
Written by gerrycanavan
November 10, 2010 at 9:49 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with 1960s, academia, Bill Murray, Catfood Commission, child abuse, Chris Christie, circumcision, climate change, coal, Democrats, Donkey Kong, ecology, film, foreskins, John Shimkus, lesbocracy, Moon Rise Kingdom, New Jersey, Nintendo, only the super-rich can save us now, Peak Oil, politics, religion, Republicans, Social Security, Stanley Fish, the humanities, trademark, Wes Anderson, Won't somebody think of the children?
Vietnam, 35 Years Later
Elsewhere in the 1970s: The Big Picture’s post today is “Vietnam, 35 Years Later.”
Written by gerrycanavan
May 10, 2010 at 11:35 am