Posts Tagged ‘endangered species’
Monday Morning Links (The Kind You Don’t Take Home to Mama)
Well, I’ve been on the new Star Tours, and I regret to inform you I have some pretty serious concerns about its canonicity 1/89
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 9, 2018
* CFP: The Evolution of Evil in Fantasy and Science Fiction, Academia Lunare.
* But the other thing that strikes me – we were talking early on about the history of modernity as connected in a structural way to the history of slavery, of capitalism, to histories of ordering and wasting – when I read that long history, a striking thing is capitalism’s impulse to abolish limits. From a capitalist’s standpoint, there are simply no limits. In regard to almost anything and everything, limitlessness is the law. Another striking thing is that capitalism aims to abolish some of the key dualisms without which the very idea of society as we understand it would have been unimaginable. To some extent, capitalism is the only religion without taboos humans have ever invented.
* The way it works is that, once the first settlers on a new planet demonstrate that they won’t die horribly from allergies, pathogens, or getting buried under the excrement of herds of titanosaurs, they then spread out to build mining settlements all over the planet, high-grade all the most accessible mineral deposits, drill for oil, and grow the infrastructure needed to build starships. With starhips built and trade links established, they grow into a mature colony over the course of a few centuries, all the while founding as many daughter colonies on new planets as possible. Eventually, they run into serious pollution problems, loss of usable mineral deposits, changing climate (both natural through the equivalent of Milankovich cycles, and anthropogenic), and a biosphere that coevolves to exploit the colony, because that’s just what life does (think pesticide resistant bugs, coyotes, superweeds…). At that point, the colony starts to fall apart. Interstellar trade shifts away from it (after all, whatever’s causing them to collapse them might be contagious). Ultimately the survivors hang on to become a truly resilient indigenous population in a backwater world–or all die horribly as their critical infrastructure fails. Their fate doesn’t matter to our interstellar civilization, because it has literally already moved on to new frontiers, boldly going where no man has gone before. So long as they can find new worlds to conquer, they can go on forever.
* Hard to argue with this reading of Harry Potter, honestly.
Wizards in Harry Potter fought a war over whether they should be genteel and cultured about racism but vulgar about everything else or vulgar about racism and genteel and cultured about everything else.
— Alexandra Erin (@alexandraerin) July 9, 2018
The figureheads of the war (Harry Potter and Voldemort) were mostly divorced from the larger cultural context of the sides they inspired or led. Their motivations were personal: Harry wanted revenge and to protect people he knew personally, Voldemort wanted power to live forever.
— Alexandra Erin (@alexandraerin) July 9, 2018
* “Eco-Philosopher Fails Hurricane Test, Crawls Under Rock.”
* A mere couple of hours away till the end of America, get excited.
* Still, God help me, I can’t get enough of this stuff: What if Donald Trump has been a Russian asset since 1987?
* Madeleine Albright: ‘The things that are happening are genuinely, seriously bad.’ Yeah, that’s what I keep saying!
* America is catastrophically incapable of holding its elites responsible for their crimes, and that’s supposed to be the good news.
* Meanwhile, the Trump Foundation was a comically illegal slush fund and it just doesn’t matter.
* A Mexican couple was turned over for deportation this week when they tried to visit a New York military base to celebrate the Fourth of July with their son-in-law, who is an army officer. They had lived in Brooklyn for decades. More here.
The couple’s son-in-law is a sergeant in the U.S. Army’s 10th Mountain Division. According to the family, the Department of Defense won’t let him intervene in the case.
“Most worrying is the fact that both parents have recently undergone surgery and need medication,” the report said. “The Silvas say they have gotten calls from their mother, who said she was denied her medication. They say they have not heard from their father.”
This is a different army base in Brooklyn than the one that called ICE on a pizza delivery guy a few weeks ago.
* Trump admin won’t reunite all migrant families, will place some kids in foster care.
* Illinois governor profits off ICE detention center contracts.
1. 3K children were separated from their parents which is a humanitarian catastrophe
2. Trump signed a document in the Oval Office designed to communicate that family separation was “over”
3. 3K kids remain separated
4. There’s no indication of any real plan for reunification
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) July 9, 2018
1. You really want to know what grinds me gears about a good portion of "the resistance?" We are literally going through the early stages of ethnic cleansing, yet people are urging that we play chess against an opponent that has flipped the board over & set the house on fire.
— ✊🏿Black Aziz aNANsi✊🏿 (@Freeyourmindkid) July 7, 2018
Hard to imagine a greater blasphemy against Jesus than the living example of Christians in 2018, to be honest.
— Julius Goat (Read Pinned Tweet!) (@JuliusGoat) July 8, 2018
* Not for nothing. Of course you’ve heard me sing this song before.
My plan is to accept a cushy job at a university in New Zealand about six months before the killings start, if you’re wondering
— Gerry Canavan (@gerrycanavan) July 8, 2018
hmm 🤔 https://t.co/3l7cFabX7p
— MF (@MF_return) July 8, 2018
* Notes from the Ocasio-Cortez campaign.
* Even “being drunk” is culturally specific.
* Introducing the Marvel Curriculum: A look at film history via the MCU.
* What if HBO, but super, super creepy?
please, i want to die now https://t.co/WPKj1ew1RC pic.twitter.com/TPEWNF0bEG
— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) July 9, 2018
* How Much Does Being a Legacy Help Your College Admissions Odds?
* Elon Musk’s submarine is nonsense. Meanwhile.
* Brexit vs. Gibraltar. Brexit vs. Britain. Brexit vs. the Tories. Brexit vs. Brexit.
* I happened to listen to NPR for a few hours this morning, and I heard three stories that are very much connected to climate change without anyone on the radio mentioning climate change even once.
This week in climate change:
-Quebec: heatwave kills 54
-Algeria: 124.3 degrees F as hottest temps ever recorded scorch Africa.
-Japan: “unprecedented” rain kills dozens
-California: LA notches all-time-high temp, wildfires kill 1 and force 1000s to evacuate.— Alexander Kaufman (@AlexCKaufman) July 7, 2018
Still astounded by the people arguing that the Puerto Rican government has a moral responsibility to funnel all of its money to bondholders rather than making basic services work as hurricane season begins
— Kate Aronoff (@KateAronoff) July 8, 2018
Tired: Humans are killing the planet
Wired: literally like ninety specific people are killing the planet and we literally know their names— Bigger Laius Theory (@the_bird_roads) July 8, 2018
* U.S. Opposition to Breast-Feeding Resolution Stuns World Health Officials.
* Like Pizzagate but it actually happened.
* 150 Cheers for the 14th Amendment.
* Killing all the whales and turtles to own the libs.
1/7: We are now in a transitional moment: as was the case internally for people in the Soviet system c.1980, most people in the West who today are involved in or thinking about the int’l system realize that the warm & fuzzy things that are said about this crumbling system are BS.
— Nils Gilman (@nils_gilman) July 8, 2018
a more just social order is not only possible it’s near, reactionary fascism is just that – a reaction.. to the rest of us, don’t let them steal the future
— Ayesha A. Siddiqi (@AyeshaASiddiqi) July 8, 2018
Whenever I get irritated with young people for incomprehensible weirdness like calling crispy duck pizza racist or watching videos of people playing computer games, I feel it's important to remember that old people voted to burn down the economy and put babies in prison.
— John B (@johnb78) July 8, 2018
* Actually existing media bias watch: 1, 2.
* Siri: show me fragile masculinity.
* And the headline reads: “Fake sultan was scamming a Miami billionaire. Then he ate pork.”
Siri: show me fragile masculinity pic.twitter.com/XVtCDKSW5D
— Nun Ya (@Ishfery) July 8, 2018
Written by gerrycanavan
July 9, 2018 at 12:07 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #TheResistance, 14th Amendment, a new life awaits you in the off-world colonies, Achille Mbembe, actually existing media bias, alcohol, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, America, apocalypse, books, border patrol, breastfeeding, Brexit, Brooklyn, Bruce Rauner, cable news, California, capitalism, censorship, CFPs, charity, Charles Stross, China, Christianity, class struggle, climate change, college, concentration camps, deportation, Donald Trump, drunkenness, ecology, elites, Elon Musk, endangered species, ethnic cleansing, evil, fantasy, fascism, film, fragility, galactic empires, Gibraltar, Great Britain, grifts, Harry Potter, HBO, How the University Works, hurricanes, ice, Illinois, journalism, kids today, legacy admissions, lies and lying liars, Madeleine Albright, Marvel, masculinity, math, MCU, Mexico, Miami, MSNBC, New York Times, New Zealand, outer space, parenting, philosophy, pizza, Pizzagate, politics, Putin, racism, rape, rape culture, Russia, science fiction, Soviet Union, Supreme Court, surveillance society, taxes, Thailand, the courts, the law, Tim Morton, trade war, true crime, Trump Foundation, turtles, United Kingdom, USSR, whales, zero
Weekend Links!
* Are you at AWP? Or in DC generally? Jaimee is! She’ll be doing a book signing at the Waywiser Table at 12:30 Saturday and then reading at the Waywiser reading at 7:30 PM at the Den.
* This is so outrageous. 21 years in the US, arrived at 14, two US citizen children, arrested at a scheduled check-in with ICE. You could hardly find more compelling proof that this is entirely and exclusively about cruelty.
* “Pentagon journal explores what could happen if a president called for Muslim internment camps.” Gee, I wonder.
* Meanwhile, in another classic authoritarian maneuver, the outsized ego at the heart of the Trumpist seizure of power has surrounded himself with an obliging retinue of enablers and quisling yes-men. Trump likes to divide people between “haters and losers”—a cheap shot that is actually a fairly useful way to categorize his own team. It’s Already Happened Here. How to Stop an Autocracy. Profiles in Courage: Rand Paul, Civil Libertarian.
* Every day. Something crazy happens every day.
Today:
1. Trump lost appeal.
2. NYT broke China won't take our call.
3. Wash P broke Flynn lied about Russia.
4. Conway broke the law.
TODAY— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) February 10, 2017
It's been 20 days since the swearing-in, and you could make solid legal cases for firing Conway, Flynn, and Bannon, and impeaching Trump.
— Ken Tremendous (@KenTremendous) February 10, 2017
* The history of this era is going to be so, so unbelievable.
* Neither Nordstrom nor Ivanka but International Socialism.
Do you support impeaching Trump?
2 weeks ago—35%
1 week ago—40%
Today—46%—via @ppppolls https://t.co/eNG6SOYc9u
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 10, 2017
* It’s getting to the point where you can’t even call for the wanton slaughter of students without some PC SJW raising a stink about it.
* How Political Fear Works. Beware of Self-Censorship. Who Benefits From Trump’s Chaos? What’s in it For The Collaborators? There Are No Good Reasons Not To Fight.
* Obama’s Lost Army: When Obama Killed OFA.
* I liked this: The Meitheal Manifesto: Thirteen Agreements to Save the World.
* Some rare good news on the climate.
* Darkest thing I’ve ever seen, first for one the one reason and then for the other.
* The arc of history is long, but Mac malware is slowly catching up to its Windows rivals.
* Solitary Confinement Is a Great American Shame.
* Remembering Richard Rorty on Trump (and the reformist left) (again).
* No one is reading those reference letters. “Truly, this is the single easiest fix in academic culture.”
* Science education in the time of Trump.
* You can’t argue with facts, little brother.
* Bees aren’t endangered anymore! Surprisingly easy fix actually.
* Everything is hot now and getting hotter. Everything seems off or wrong and it is hard to get your bearings because so few of the old landmarks remain. It is hard to believe that some things ever happened, that certain places ever existed. Sometimes I am convinced my memory is wrong or fooling me. The idea that there might be a United States. The idea that this vast and unruly countryside, these ruined cities, these endless refugee camps, might have once been something else. If no one invades us now and only some countries send food and aid, it is only because they too are under stress. Or because we are so fucked up and so many of us have so many weapons. Somewhere in the lost places, there are still nukes, too. Jeff VanderMeer’s “Trump Land.”
* SF Cities Beyond Blade Runner.
* Graverobbing the Star Wars Expanded Universe.
* Source map from the first great comic book crossover.
* TGIF!
* Oh, this was so brutal to read. There but for the grace of God go I at least for now.
Here are my vitals: I have more than $200,000 in student loans and $46,000 in credit card debt—all accumulated during my B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., and then search for a tenure-track job. My annual salary translates to a little more than $3,000 in monthly take-home pay. I pay $800 a month in rent, $1,100 in credit card bills (paying only the monthly minimums), $350 in student loans, and have $285 a month car payment. I also pay the usual insurances, utilities, groceries, gas, et al. I don’t have cable. Or a kitchen table. Or blinds on any of my windows. I’ve cancelled all magazine and newspaper subscriptions—an actual dilemma for a journalism professor. For my first year in Bangor I didn’t even have a bed. Instead I slept on a Target air mattress until it lost its breath; then I moved to the couch (which I had purchased on credit), until my back finally demanded I buy a bed (credit, again).
* And of course you had me at A New Deep Space Nine Documentary Reveals What Would Have Happened in Season Eight. Here’s another good writeup.
Written by gerrycanavan
February 10, 2017 at 1:51 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with academia, academic jobs, authoritarianism, autocracy, AWP, Barack Obama, bees, Blade Runner, Chuck Schumer, cities, class struggle, climate change, comic books, computers, concentration camps, Corey Robin, debt, Deep Space Nine, Democrats, deportation, documentary, Donald Trump, dystopia, endangered species, fascism, first-born children, Guadalupe García de Rayos, Heroes, humanity, immigration, impeachment, intelligence, Islamophobia, Ivanka Trump, Jaimee, Jeff Vandermeer, Kellyanne Conway, Kent State, kids, Kindred, letters of recommendation, libertarianism, Macs, malware, manifestos, maps, memory, metafiction, Michael Flynn, my scholarly empire, Nordstrom, Obama for America, Octavia Butler, our brains don't work, parents, poetry, politics, prison, prison-industrial complex, profiles in courage, protest, Putin, Rand Paul, reformism, resistance, Richard Rorty, Russia, sanctions, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, science, science fiction, solitary confinement, Stanford, Star Trek, Star Wars, Star Wars Expanded Universe, Steve Bannon, student movements, the Iliad, the Left, totalitarianism, Washington D.C., World of Warcraft
It’s Week One of Year Zero and I’m Declaring Total Tab Bankruptcy
* CFP: SFRA 2017. CFP: 14th Annual Tolkien at UVM Conference. CFP: Toxic Fans. CFP: Whiteness and the American Superhero. CFP: The Gibson Critics Don’t See. Call for Applications: R.D. Mullen Fellowships. CFP for MLA 2018: Creative Economies of Science Fiction. And also at MLA 18, the science fiction panel I’ll be chairing: Satire and Science Fiction in Dystopian Times.
* This thread on Gene Roddenberry and Grace Lee Whitney makes some flat assertions that are actually just well-supported speculations, but is nonetheless is a shocking and dispiriting revisionist history of Trek that’s well worth considering.
* The part I was born to play.
* Calling Bullshit in the Age of Big Data.
* The novel in the age of Obama.
* The Life-Changing Magic of Decluttering in a Post-Apocalyptic World.
* Aid in reverse: how poor countries develop rich countries.
* From my colleague Rebecca Nowacek: Don’t Retreat. Teach Citizenship.
* Student evaluations: still bad.
* Keywords for the Age of Austerity: Alternative.
* I’m not normally one to defend college admin, but: Trade school fires president after he let homeless student stay in library during sub-zero weather.
* Without communism, there’s something missing from dystopian stories.
* Junot Diaz remembers Octavia Butler.
* Legislation in two states seeks to end tenure at public colleges and universities. Missouri Lawmaker Who Wants to Eliminate Tenure Says It’s ‘Un-American.’
* The university as asylum. The university and the class system.
* The Changing English Major. The collapse of history as a discipline. A liberal arts college without English majors? Massive cuts at the University of Alberta.
* MLA Rejects Israel Boycott. MLA by the numbers (from the right).
* When a school hires adjuncts, where does the money go?
* UBI already exists for the 1%.
* 26, 171.
* Shockingly enough, legalizing murder means more murders.
* Bill Perry Is Terrified. Why Aren’t You?
* Somali refugee in Milwaukee publishes book.
* When the homeless die, it’s up to forensic investigators to find their families.
* The End of the Rural Hospital.
* Secrets of my success: Cracking a Joke at Work Can Make You Seem More Competent.
* The FBI has been using the Geek Squad as all-purpose informants.
* Trump Promised to Resign From His Companies — But There’s No Record He’s Done So. Congress moves to give away national lands, discounting billions in revenue. Mark Hamill, National Treasure. Searching for Time-Travelers on the Eve of the Trump Inauguration. Donald Trump, David Foster Wallace, and the hobbling of shame. A mere 34. It would be crazy not to impeach him. Keep America Great. Oh, you think? The DeVos Democrats. That’ll solve it. Here’s What You Can Do to Beat Trump. Preventing 2017 America from becoming like 1934 Germany: A watchlist. Philip K. Dick vs the Time of Trump. Here’s what Sci-Fi Can Teach Us About Fascism. Stop making sense, or, writing in the age of Trump. The stories coming out of this White House are bananas. Watch this story. And this one! How jokes won the election. This is fine. This is fine. This is fine. This is fine. This is fine. This is fine. This is fine. This is fine. This is fine. This is fine. This is fine. This is fine. This is fine. UPDATE: This is fine.
* But this one takes the cake.
* Meanwhile, the 2020 Dem frontrunner…
* But Jeet Heer thinks we can do even worse.
* Democrats in the Wilderness. Oh, they’ve got this.
* The Electoral College Is Even Worse Than You Think. But it can always be worse.
* What Would Happen in the Minutes and Hours After North Korea Nuked the United States?
* The Obama speeches. A politics that surrenders every level of government to its opposition cannot win the future. It has already lost the present. But this was good.
* Want to Raise Successful Boys? Science Says Do This (But Their Schools Probably Won’t).
* Teachers who drink and drinkers who teach.
* Bumblebee is first bee in continental US to be listed as endangered.
* The Suburbanization of the US Working Class.
* You Can Write a Best-Seller and Still Go Broke.
* Thousands of Skittles end up on an icy road. But that’s not the surprising part.
* Forced to watch child porn for their job, Microsoft employees developed PTSD, they say. The people behind the AI curtain.
* Ha ha ha, he’s the sheriff of my county, what a character, this is not frightening at all.
* Lessons from Octavia Butler: Surviving Trump.
* I still think every adult who let this get to trial should be utterly ashamed of themselves.
* MST3K is that for me. It saved my life, at least twice. There’s no hyperbole in that declaration.
* Sherlock‘s bizarrely self-aware problem with women.
* About that biometric password you’re born with and will never be able to change.
* Women only said 27% of the words in 2016’s biggest movies.
* Most primate species are now threatened with extinction.
* Neanderthals were people too.
* When a Video-Game World Ends.
* Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich.
* Twilight of the cruelty factory circus.
* “We Will Miss Antibiotics When They’re Gone.”
* “Genderless Nipples account frustrates Instagram.”
* Disability and as-seen-on-TV.
* Wolf-Sized Otters Prowled the World Six Million Years Ago.
* Not all that long ago, as the editor in chief of Gawker.com, Daulerio was among the most influential and feared figures in media. Now the forty-two-year-old is unemployed, his bank has frozen his life savings of $1,500, and a $1,200-per-month one-bedroom is all he can afford. He’s renting here, he says, to be near the counselors and support network he has come to rely on lately.
* I still believe in Arrested Development Season Five.
* Your blast from the past: Prodigy Online’s MadMaze.
* Superheroes and the kids today.
* And RIP, Mark Fisher. A memorial fund for his wife and son. His piece on depression.
Written by gerrycanavan
January 24, 2017 at 9:00 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #NoDAPL, 2020 Democratic primary, A.J. Daulerio, academia, academic jobs, activism, adjunctification, adjuncts, administrative blight, administrative bloat, Affordable Care Act, alcohol, alcoholism, alt-ac, alternative facts, America, Andrew Cuomo, animal personhood, animal rights, animals, anti-Semitism, antibiotics, apocalypse, Arrested Development, artificial intelligence, asylum, austerity, autism, Barack Obama, bees, Betsy DeVos, Big Data, biometrics, bombs, books, boycotts, boys, Bruce Serling, bullshit, Cambridge, celebrities, centrism, CFPs, Christianity, circuses, citizenship, class struggle, climate change, Colby-Sawyer College, comics, communism, conferences, cows, cruelty, David Foster Wallace, Democrats, Dennis Hastert, depression, Disney, dominionism, Don't mention the war, Donald Trump, drinking, dystopia, ecology, education, Electoral College, emoluments, endangered species, English departments, English majors, EPA, Episode 8, espionage, ethics, fandom, fascism, FBI, film, games, Gawker, Geek Squad, Gene Roddenberry, Germany, Grace Lee Whitney, guns, health care, history, history departments, homelessness, How the University Works, humor, Hunger Games, ice sheet collapse, income inequality, Instagram, Israel, JCC, jokes, Junot Díaz, kids today, LEGO, livestock, MadMaze, Mark Fisher, Mark Hamill, Marquette, metafiction, Milo Yiannopoulous, Milwaukee, Milwaukee County, Minnesota, misogyny, Missouri, MLA, murder, Mystery Science Theater 3000, national parks, NEA, Neanderthals, NEH, neocolonialism, neoliberalism, nipples, North Korea, novels, nuclear war, nuclearity, obituary, Octavia Butler, otters, Palestine, Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents, parenting, passwords, pedagogy, Philip K. Dick, play, politics, pornography, preppers, primates, Prodigy, protest, PTSD, public health, race, racism, rationality, reality TV, refugees, Republicans, reverse development, rhetoric, rich people, Rick and Morty, Ringling Brothers, rural hospitals, Russia, satire, science, science fiction, sea level rise, segregation, sex, sexism, SFRA, shame, Sheriff Clarke, Sherlock, Skittles, Somalia, South Dakota, stand your ground, Star Trek, Star Wars, student evaluations, suburbs, superheroes, survivalism, teaching, tenure, The Joker, The Last Jedi, The Man in the High Castle, the Purge, theodicy, Third Way, time travel, Tolkien, Tom Gauld, true crime, universal basic income, University of Alberta, Utopia, UVM, vaccines, war huh good god y'all what is it good for? absolutely nothing say it again, war on education, wealth, white people, whiteness, William Gibson, women, words, writing, Zootopia, zunguzungu
Monday Morning Links!
* The first cut of ‘Avengers: Age of Ultron’ was over 3 hours long. I’m sure that would have solved all the problems.
* Science Fiction and the Urban Crisis.
* In short, riots aren’t counterproductive because they do not achieve their goals. They are counterproductive because they are an expression of those who are already-counterproductive, those “individuals committing the violence,” those ever-ready to riot.
* Starfleet as the Federation’s “Dumping Ground for Orphans.”
* Keywords for the Age of Austerity 18.5: “Peaceful Protest.”
* Wow: Rebuilt slave sites being unveiled at Jefferson’s Monticello.
* The U.S. Civil War ended 150 years ago, but once a year, deep in the sugar cane fields of southern Brazil, the Confederate battle flag rises again.
* Parents call cops on teen for giving away banned book; it backfires predictably. They’re banning Sherman Alexie? Come on.
* Salvage Accumulation, or the Structural Effects of Capitalist Generativity.
* Executive Who Presided Over Nonprofit’s Fall Seeks $1.2 Million Payday.
* The names of the chemical elements in Chinese. More links below the chart.
* The Washington Post‘s Police Problem.
* Judith Butler’s talents are wasted on a “What’s Wrong With ‘All Lives Matter’?” piece that really should be obvious to everyone.
* The most amazing thing about this exchange is that Sam Harris thinks he won this argument so completely he needed everyone in the world to see.
* The headline reads, “Nepal’s Kung Fu Nuns Have Refused To Be Evacuated – They’re Staying Back To Help Victims.”
* “Cripples, Bastards, and Broken Things: Disability in Game of Thrones.”
* Porn data: visualising fetish space.
* Ideology at its cutest (hat tip: Justin I.): Vermont Teddy Bear introduces Bernie Bear.
* Big Bird Actor: I Almost Died on the Challenger and I Cry in the Suit.
* Report: Cop Dismissed Freddie Gray’s Pleas for Help as “Jailitis.”
* Christie signs law greenlighting fast track sale of N.J. public water systems.
* The Great Victoria’s Secret Bra Heist of Pennsylvania.
* Behind the scenes of the Game of Thrones map.
* It’s always worse than you think: The CIA has been organizing clandestine TED Talks.
* “Cool” is a bit of a moving target. Sixty years ago it was James Dean, nonchalantly smoking a cigarette as he sat on a motorbike, glaring down 1950s conformity with brooding disapproval. Five years ago it was Zooey Deschanel holding a cupcake.
* “Social media trend sees men ditching sit-ups for snack cakes.” My moment has arrived!
* Tesla unveils a battery to power your home, completely off grid.
* I hate to link to an SNL bit, but their parody of a Black Widow movie was really pretty good.
* Area X novella coming… eventually. I liked the first book in the trilogy much, much more than the latter two, but I’m still in.
* Can 3D printing save the rhino? Seattle-based bioengineering start-up Pembient believes it can. The company plans to flood the market with synthetic 3D printed rhino horn in an effort to stem the number of rhinos killed for their horns. But conservationists fear that the plan may backfire, undermining their own efforts to cut the demand for such products in China and Vietnam, the main black markets for rhino horns.
* The coming DC Cinematic Universe trainwreck, Suicide Squad edition.
* A University Is Not Walmart.
* Trustees are basically heroes, and the Chronicle is ON IT.
Written by gerrycanavan
May 4, 2015 at 8:09 am
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with #dads, 3D printing, academia, actually existing media bias, administrative blight, Age of Ultron, Area X, austerity, Baltimore, banned books, batteries, Bernie Sanders, Big Bird, Big Data, Black Widow, bras, capitalism, CEOs, Challenger, charts, Chinese, Chris Christie, CIA, cities, Civil War, class struggle, cool, cultural preservation, dadbod, DC Comics, debate, disability, disability studies, endangered species, film, Florida, Freddie Gray, Game of Thrones, Grace Lee Whitney, How the University Works, Iain M. Banks, it's always worse than you think, Jeff Vandermeer, Joss Whedon, Judith Butler, kung fu, LLAP, Marvel, Monticello, neoliberalism, Nepal, Noam Chomsky, nonprofit-industrial complex, nonprofits, nuns, obituary, orphans, Pennsylvania, periodic tale, plantations, police brutality, police state, police violence, poliitcs, pornography, primitive accumulation, privatize everything, protests, race, racism, rhinos, riots, Sam Harris, science fiction, Sesame Street, sex offenders, Sherman Alexie, slavery, SNL, social media, Star Trek, Suicide Squad, TED talks, teddy bears, Tesla, The Avengers 2, the Confederacy, The Culture, the Federation, Thomas Jefferson, trustees, Vermont, Walmart, water, words
A Few More Friday Links
* We shouldn’t be assessing the health of the humanities by market-share metrics that are far more about demographics and the changing face of higher ed than they are about the intellectual shifts at the heart of actual humanities practice. Besides, the actual numbers show long-term stability post 1980:
The interpretation: The chart never quite reinforces the point that something terrible is going on in the humanities right now. Anyone looking at it closely will notice, as Michael Bérubé has, that the real collapse of humanities enrollments happened in the 1970s. The Great Recession has been less ruinous to enrollments than were the mid-1990s. Sure, a few Harvard majors have switched from history to government in the last decade: is that really a story?
But it does succeed in making the humanities appear massively out of date. And that’s a compelling story for all sorts of people. It makes humanists feel as though they deserve a larger share of the university, and that their sense of being under seige is due to the some pathology in the culture at large; it makes traditionalist critics of the humanities feel secure in pointing out that something has gone very wrong in the field.
* Malcolm Harris has a followup on his previous excellent student loan piece from Boston Review.
* Obama: PRISM Doesn’t Apply To U.S. Citizens. I don’t see how this could mean why Obama seems to be implying. Surely he’s saying that they’re collecting all data but only using data from noncitizens? How could they discriminate between citizen bandwidth and noncitizen bandwidth at the point of recording?
* But the real question: is Glenn Greenwald working for the ChiComs?
* Obama says go ahead kill all the wolves.
* And still another outrage of the day, as if your docket weren’t full: Hacker Who Exposed Steubenville Rape Case Could Spend More Time Behind Bars Than The Rapists.
Written by gerrycanavan
June 7, 2013 at 12:18 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with academia, America, animals, Barack Obama, China, class struggle, domestic surveillance, ecology, endangered species, EPA, Glenn Greenwald, hacking, How the University Works, NSA, outrages, politics, rape, rape culture, student debt, student loan reform, surveillance society, the humanities, wolves
First, Let’s Kill All the Wolves
One of the planned essays for our Green Planets book (from the brilliant Christina Alt) is about the prevalence of animal extinction and extermination fantasies in turn-of-the-century utopias like Wells’s. That was the first thing I thought of when I saw this link from Lawyers, Guns, and Money to this Prospect story on current plans to wipe out the gray wolf (again).
The reintroduction, he told me, had been one of the epic wildlife-recovery stories in U.S. history; in little more than 15 years, the number of wolves in the Northern Rockies had gone from 66 to roughly 1,600. Yet concerns about the threat posed by the wolves to cow, sheep, and elk populations had led to a stark reversal. After spending upward of $40 million studying the animals—then capturing, collaring, tracking, and protecting them—the federal government last year scheduled wolves to be killed in huge numbers across the Northern Rockies. In April 2011, following a series of lawsuits and an unprecedented intervention by Congress, canis lupus was removed from the endangered species list.
Written by gerrycanavan
March 14, 2012 at 4:22 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with animals, conservation, ecology, endangered species, Green Planets, Rockies, wolves, Yellowstone
Having Exhausted All Possible Avenues for Research
Japan has finally suspended its whaling fleet. (EDIT: Noting Tim’s important correction, should have said “only temporarily.”)
Written by gerrycanavan
February 16, 2011 at 11:41 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with ecology, endangered species, food, Japan, oceans, science, whales
Thurs. 3
* Bart Stupak’s reign of terror may finally be over.
* “Christians urged to boycott Glenn Beck.”
* “Someone should not be able to walk into a restaurant and order a plate of an endangered species”: Whale sushi illegally sold in California. Like Tim I’m disappointed to find out this was only a misdemeanor.
* The good guys are losing the messaging war on climate climate. More on these unfortunate poll results from Peter Daou, Kevin Drum, Amanda Marcotte, and Aaron Wiener.
Written by gerrycanavan
March 11, 2010 at 8:39 pm
Posted in Look at what I found on the Internet
Tagged with abortion, Bart Stupak, Christianity, climate change, Coen Brothers, ecology, endangered species, Glenn Beck, health care, politics, polls, religion, Star Wars, sushi, We're screwed, whales
The Human Ecology of Vampires
The human ecology of vampires.
In case you’re wondering, Buffy’s Sunnyvale reaches a stable equilibrium with a population of about 36,000 humans and 18 vampires.
And so Buffy emerges as the deeply anti-ecological force she is, disrupting nature’s balance with her pointless persecution of an endangered species…
Via Pharyngula.
Written by gerrycanavan
April 21, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged with Buffy, ecology, endangered species, vampires
Monday Night Ecology
Monday night ecology.
* Starbucks has an official corporate policy of wasting a whole lot of water for no good reason.
* At least 25% of the world’s mammal species are at risk of extinction, according to the first assessment of their status for a decade.
Written by gerrycanavan
October 7, 2008 at 1:36 am
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged with climate change, ecology, endangered species, mammals, mass extinction events, politics, Starbucks, tipping points, water
Bad News for culturemonkeys
Bad news for culturemonkeys: Around half of the world’s primate species are at risk of extinction. Even the recent surprise discovery of a kind of hidden Gorilla City of more than 125,000 western lowland gorillas—more than primatologists believed were alive—can make me feel better about this.
Written by gerrycanavan
August 7, 2008 at 1:35 pm
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged with culturemonkey, endangered species, Gorilla City, monkeys, primates