randomWalks: July 2001

The Persian wild ass is only one of six subspecies of the Asiatic wild ass that was once common across central Asia and the Middle East. The Syrian subspecies is already extinct.

The Internet Sacred Text Archive is a non-profit archive of electronic texts about religion, mythology, legends and folklore, and occult and esoteric topics.

I ran into nedlog at Burrito Brothers last night and he urged me to look for this The Philadelphia Experiment story that aired on NPR over the weekend.

"When I get down on all fours and go up to dogs and go 'hhuhahhuhahhuh,' they get very solicitous."

"That's racist!" is a record of angry asian man's observations and experiences with racism. It's got a lot of sharp insight mixed with a fair amount of humor, but if you disagree with more than about 10% of his accusations, that's racist!

Then, one by one the prisoners were asked, in broken English: 'Who is your government?' Norman thought they meant what nationality he was, but then he noticed the replies of the others. Taking his cue from his neighbour, he answered in Italian: 'Polizia'. Anything else would almost certainly have meant another beating.

Free Dmitry!

Fabulous little essays on art history, from painter Robin Urton.

Despite the fact that most modern Westerners have collectively agreed on a certain pace at which the world operates, this is by no means a universal perception. Sloths, creatures who have an average body motion of one inch per 2 seconds (try moving that slow!), are a refreshing testament to a worldview based on taking your time, on out-slowing rather than out-speeding danger.

Challenging White Supremacy resources for workshops.

Just a quick note (while I'm on vacation) to say that I saw the premiere of Planet of the Apes here in Portland, and it's good. Real good. As you see it please [discuss] below but please don't spoil the ending.

Simply watch your breath whenever possible.
After few breaths your mind will wander.
Catch this.
No matter how long or short a time you have been away simply come back to the breath.
Don't dwell on what is past.
Be ever present with the breath.
If no other object arises return to the breath.

Vipassana

I used to be editor of the Open Directory Project's Race and Racism category. Lately, my login has not been working. I need to look in to that. The ODP is neat; some of you may be interested in looking at a proposed reorganization of the Society: Issues: Race-Ethnic-Religious Relations category. I have had a year to think about it, and am still not quite sure why it doesn't satisfy me, but it doesn't. What do you think?

John Kass has emitted some intense columns lately about the Chicago Mob. Curiosity led me to a cop site full of wild stories. There's tons more about Midwest organized crime at the site of CJ prof. Gary Potter.

G4G4.com

Plague upon your house, Rice. Damn you for introducing me to Bejeweled. I can't stop playing. I'm addicted. CURSES!!!!

But that, of course, should not be the issue. The first issue to be addressed is the non-economic value — one would hope it would be a high value — that we ascribe to human beings based solely on the fact that they exist. But even if the discussion is limited to economic matters, there is a problem with Philip Morris's contention that countries can derive benefits from the early demise of smokers. It flies in the face of accepted economic theory, which argues that the benefits of a free market flow from rational decisions made by consumers who, when spending their money (and only their money), understand the risks and rewards of the choices they make.

Lebanon brawls with China.

Ananova's Amazing Science page includes links to some, um, weird stories. Headlines include:

Biker gets new penis from arm muscle

Menopause makes cockroaches desperate

Left-handers at greater risk of bowel problems

There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.

Our Song is by far the best movie I've seen this year. Here's an excerpt for director Jim McKay's appeal to the MPAA to NOT give it an R rating:

Our Song is a realist-style film with mature themes. Because our society is filled with mature teenagers whose choices at the movie theaters are extremely limited when seeking work that does not belittle or speak down to them, trivialize their dilemmas, or objectify them as reckless, uncaring airheads, we believe that teens deserve access to Our Song.

It is true that, by the MPAA's count, Our Song contains 9 (nine) "fucks," 2 (two) "motherfuckers," and one humorous English-language translation of the word "pussy" refering to the act of cunnilingus. But it is also true that the film contains 0 (zero) uses of the word "nigger," a word that, in this filmmaker's opinion, is far more degrading and harmful than any of the above words. In fact, for a realist film, the absence of this word is glaring and a close reading of the film makes the word not simply absent, but meaningful in its absence. Furthermore, it is also true that Our Song contains 0 (zero) incidents of nudity, 0 (zero) guns, 0 (zero) murders, and in fact, 0 (zero) portrayals of violence of any kind, another absence glaring enough to pierce the reality of the story for many young, innercity teens who have watched the film and discussed it with me ("that was a good movie, Jim, but it shoulda had some fights in it, then it woulda been better").


I truly believe that a young person growing up in the 21st Century will encounter more images of lewd sexuality, glamorized violence, and the denigration of women and girls in ten minutes of viewing of MTV or E! or numerous PG-13 rated films on the market now than they will in an entire viewing of Our Song.

In an unexpected turnaround, Adobe Systems called yesterday for the release of a Russian programmer accused of violating American copyright law after he helped create software that can crack Adobe's security software for electronic books.

Slice of life in a leather bar.

Washington Post: Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Eudora Welty Dies at 92.

State terrorism in Genoa International action appeal
List of solidarity demonstrations
WP photos 7/20 - 7/21

IMC print 7.22.01
The wild boy who became a martyr
Police seek Black Bloc who brought mayhem to city
Leaders Start to Rethink the Big-Summit Format

G8: Still tension after the violences that have upset Genoa
G8 halts 'super summits'
Aftermath in Genoa
Prodi defends demonstrators
"Truncheons rained down on me..."

sigh. Is nothing sacred? Steven King is going to remake Lars Von Trier's 10 hour masterpiece "The Kingdom."

stephenpratt.com/weblog

I’ve got to stop now. We should be safe if we can make our way back to where we’re stayiing. Call the Italian Embassy. Go there, shame them! We may not be able to mount another demonstration tomorrow here if the situation stays this dangerous. Please, do something!

See also an account of the day before in Genoa:

A whole lot of people have been badly hurt, people who clearly and unmistakably are not rock throwing, streetfighting youth, people who believed they were going to be in a peaceful and reasonably safe place. Lisa and I had done a training for the women, trying to give them some sense of what they might face on the streets from our experience in other actions. But there’s no real way to prepare for a cop beating a peaceful, non-aggressive, midde-aged woman on the head.

Some very bad things are happening in Genoa. At least one person is dead, but there's conflicting reports on how they were killed. The mainstream media is saying he was shot with a bullet and run over by a van. Indymedia is reporting he might have been killed after being shot in the head with a tear gas cannister. Check Italy's Independent Media Center for reports. Check out why 100,000 people are protesting the G8 summit and find out exactly what the Summer of Resistance is all about.

Percentage of Americans who would allow "churches and other houses of worship" to seek federal funds for charitable work : 75
Percentage who would allow "Muslim mosques" to do so : 38

We are currently negotiating with Springer's producers over a proposed "brand" showdown in which a young female representing the WTO "brand" would face-off against a young male representing "Anti."....In focus groups, 59% of teens reported that they would consider purchasing WTO product if associated with friendly talking frog.

This one goes out to Mimi Fariña.

High Windows

When I see a couple of kids

And guess he's fucking her and she's

Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,

I know this is paradise

Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives—

Bonds and gestures pushed to one side

Like an outdated combine harvester,

And everyone young going down the long slide

To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if

Anyone looked at me, forty years back,

And thought, That'll be the life;

No God any more, or sweating in the dark

About hell and that, or having to hide

What you think of the priest. He

And his lot will all go down the long slide

Like free bloody birds. And immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:

The sun-comprehending glass,

And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows

Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

ConnectNet.org takes your zip code and shows you places nearby where you can connect to the Internet for free.

Why Boycott Adobe? Because Adobe Systems (creator of Photoshop) has leveraged the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to sic the Federal Bureau of Investigation on a Russian graduate student presenting a research paper in Las Vegas this week. You, too, can violate the DMCA (and risk Adobe's wrath) if you just decode the following cipher: enaqbzJnyxf ybirf lbh. Am I an accessory if I give you a hint?

Part of the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia, Dr. David Pilgrim's The Tragic Mulatto Myth is a marvelous survey of American film and literature. See also The Meaning of Mulatto by Erin Bannister:

By the end of twelfth grade, I had adopted the word mulatto, a term that originated from the Spanish word for mule, the ungainly, stubborn, and sterile offspring of a donkey and a horse. Which one of my parents, I wonder, is the donkey?

While the Society is not a "crackpot" group, it is opposed to the fashionable, politically correct Spherical Earth theory, which is expounded every day by so-called "scientists", the media and political leaders. The Society asserts that the Earth is flat and has five sides, that all places in the Universe named Springfield are merely links in higher-dimensional space to one place, and that all assertions are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true false and meaningless in some sense.

If you can't watch the MacWorld New York keynote currenty in progress, check out this MacNN text feed or this pbzone text feed.

Bottle Village, Cadillac Ranch, Carhenge, Chandigarh,
Dickeyville Grotto, Heidelberg Project, House Sculptee,
Las Pozas, Milkovisch House,
Owl House,
Palais Idéal, Pasaquan,
Rainbow House, Roden Crater,
Salvation Mountain, Tarot Garden, Villa d'Este, Watts Towers.

Preventing image 'theft' with Apache.

Memo to those true Mets fans: do not get boastful in your calls to sports talk-radio stations. Do not treat a decent stretch that has lasted five days as if it has lasted five weeks. Do not calculate where the Mets are in the wild-card and division races because the deficits are daunting. Do enjoy seeing the Mets playing a crisper style of baseball. Do have hope. You are allowed.

Effects were present in twenty minutes, and I took my portable radio into the garden at forty minutes just to pull weeds. Each weed had special significance, and my cat Ms. joined me and agreed with me. This is excessively strange.

Mac OS Rumors is hiding, but the rumors are sweet like candy.

washingtonpost.com: Floridans Protest Street Cameras

NYTM: (1) hilarious portrait of a 15-year-old intern attorney expert. (2) advertising infiltrations.

I've begun collecting mushrooms, and they're mighty good on pizza. I haven't grown my own wheat yet, but I have ground whole organic wheat into flour. I've done it on a stone mortar and pestle, but I prefer to use a metal grinder. I don't grow my own olives yet, but when I do I'll press them for oil. And now I can bake them in an oven made completely by hand from raw materials.

Mother Jones' Debt to Society special report. It includes an interactive atlas of incarceration stats in the US. This is what the web is for. I really wish I made this. I should have.

Phase 2 Sim continues.

The Detroit page.

news.bbc.co.uk: Q & A: Son of Star Wars

It's one thing to send thousands of soldiers to attack another army on a battlefield. But an engineering project requires everything to be put precisely into place.I prefer to think of the technology as simple, with relatively few people involved.

Diagnose disorders of tomato fruit, leaves, and stems with these photos.

Exiled poster artist Julio Eloy Mesa.

Q: How many pennies are there? A: There are this many.

Salon is now publishing weekly comeeks by the superlative Lynda Barry. Dig it and dig it well. Thanks to boing boing for the heads up.

Global City Transit Navigation Design. "These maps capture our imagination by the way in which each solves a similar problem in a unique and culturally appropriate manner."

The incredible Springfield Interchange Improvement Project is underway not far from here. I should go take some more photos.

I just hate using my own hands to consume snacks. Oh how I wish there was a better way.

Sinkers.org posters for S30: DC. Read more about September's World Bank/IMF convergence at abolishthebank.org.

Down with Randomwalks!

Friday, July 13, 1951: Kansas City, Kan.

No time for love, Dr. Jones:

• nytimes: salvia divinorum on DEA's agenda


• via xblog: you must understand the "Great Wave" from right to left


• via follow me here: MyMobileStuff is a directory of sites designed for phones and handhelds (and suitable for lynx or any other browser -- more such sites at plinkit.)

This article argues that wealth is a zero-sum game in more, or more important, ways than it is not. It sounds right, but I need to learn me some economics to be sure.

The 34-year-old former gymnast says China's athletes and public deserve the glory of hosting the world's premier sporting event. But ask Feng, muscular and 6 feet tall, how he became a wheelchair athlete, and what emerges is a disturbing tale of state-sponsored violence, discrimination, and suppression.

The New York Times' Thomas Friedman, is pretty much the megaphone of corporate globalization. Mark Rupert, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Syracuse University, does an excellent job in debunking Friedman's claptrap on behalf of institutions such as the World Bank.

Alex Grey's Chapel of Sacred MIrrors.

Dean Chamberlain's color-saturated photos of LSD heroes.

When I want to get up to speed on what's happening around the world and why, I turn to the following current events primers:

• washingtonpost.com Special Reports


• BBC News In-Depth


• Yahoo! News Full Coverage


• Z Magazine's ZNet

So, while it might be comforting to dismiss McVeigh as a maniacal, one-of-a-kind deviant, he was, in fact, just a particularly apt student of the very government he hated.

There is the overwhelming sense among most whites that things can't possibly be as bad as black Americans say they are.

Chemistry opens you to receive another being; you grow to enlarge yourself beyond what you would otherwise be, know and perceive.

I bet riding a broom is a lot like riding a motorcycle -- you really gotta lean through those curves.

Insane precautions for the G-8 summit include snipers, 200 body bags and "little" missiles.

Dr. Menlo is now hosting abuddha's memes! I should have offered to host that great site when it first occurred to me.

One evening when she was two, lying in bed waiting for her story, Greta started singing the words, "My tushy feel good, my vagina feel good." The tune was quite pleasant, and she sang it for about ten minutes, the same words, the same tune, over and over. Then, with one last "My tushy feel good, my vagina feel good," rising to a kind of crescendo of pure well-being, she looked up at me and said, "Know that song?"

The Poynter Institute's excellent Diversity Digest, linking to rare and important journalism that covers underserved communities in non-formulaic ways, finally has a permanent URL.

Career women 'rent' wombs to beat hassle of pregnancy.

"Dot com types" are to blame for the violence at recent gatherings of the World Trade Organisation, according to WTO director general Mike Moore.

Moore made his remarks in Geneva, in an appeal for citizens groups (NGOs) to distance themselves from "masked stone-throwers who claim to want more transparency, anti-globalization dot.com-types who trot out slogans that are trite, shallow and superficial," he said.

Which came as news to us. We thought "dot com" types were too busy braying into mobile phones and snorting enormous quantities of Bolivian marching powder as they vandalised a communication infrastructure created at great public expense for research purposes, with marketing plans that would get a six year old suspended from kindergarten for frivolity.

Dot-commers to blame for anti-capitalist violence, says WTO boss.

In Western ideology, freedom is the freedom to make money, to own a corporation, it's the freedom of private capital. There are other models of freedom: freedom to decide -- what is made, how it's made and to whose benefit -- and how we establish parity between different communities.

World's largest cave system discovered in China. (People like caves in China.)

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all energy is freely and democratically provided by Nature, that utilities both public and private have no monopoly on the production and distribution of energy, that this century's monopolization of energy by utilities threatens the health of our environment and the very life of our planet.

• We, the Solar Guerrillas of this planet, therefore resolve to place energy made from sunshine, wind, and falling water on this planet's utility grids with or without permission from utilities or governments.
• We resolve to share this energy with our neighbors without regard for financial compensation.
• We further resolve that our renewable energy systems will be safe and will not harm utility workers, our neighbors, or our environment.

signed Solar Guerrillas of Planet Earth

"Hot Tuna" (Houttuynia cameleon). tricolor ground cover. All parts are edible. The gingery taste and herbal scent are good in oriental cooking and good for medicinal purposes too!

Root beer reviews

The Pancake Galleries

Concrete ghost town.

Beautiful essay on human consciousness.

Edible Landscaping (Edible Landscaping Gardening Fruit Trees Apples Asparagus Bamboo Banana Blackberry Blueberry Che Cherry Citrus Chestnuts Chinquapin Coffee Cranberry Currants Dogwood Elderberry Figs Filberts Gingko Gooseberry Grapes Ground Cover Heartnuts Herbs Honeysuckle Hot Tuna Jostaberry Jujube Juneberry Kiwi Lingonberry Mayhaw Medlar Mulberry Passionflower Paw Paw Peaches Pears Pecan Persimmon Pine Nuts Plum Pomegranate Quice Raspberry Rhubarb Roses Shiitake Strawberry)

We bought a tea kettle today and the whistle turned out to be shrill and unpleasant. Should we learn to live with it, or endeavor to listen to 18 tea kettle whistles in hopes of finding a fun (or at least pleasant) one we'll look forward to hearing?

"The good thing is, it's solid," he said, rapping the shed's metal walls. "It doesn't leak at all."

By any measure, Prince George's County Maryland police have shot and killed people at rates that exceed those of nearly any other large police force in the nation.

In 1995, police shot and wounded a man who allegedly tried to run over an officer with a Chevy Blazer. A jury acquitted the man of assault after he and other witnesses testified that the vehicle was not moving and that he had raised his hands to surrender when he was shot.

In 1997, police said they shot and killed a distraught college student because he attacked them with a knife. When his family sued years later, the officers admitted under oath that the dead man never touched the alleged weapon – which turned out to be a butter knife sitting on a kitchen counter.

In 1998, two officers said they fatally shot a Landover teenager in self-defense after he tried to grab their guns. In fact, records indicate he was shot 13 times in the back while he was unconscious and lying facedown on the floor.

Sources of RSS feeds.

Looking around my kitchen, I see that I can make tarragon pills, salt pills, heavy cream pills and breadcrumb pills. You can pipe frosting into the capsules, or fill them with caramel sauce or melted chocolate, for a dessert you don't even have to taste.

If you've never been to Disinformation, it's worth a visit.

Did I mean: let's wig out at danko's? No.

Map: The Colombian Connnection

When we see a red light or a stop sign, we can smile at it and thank it, because it is a bodhisattva helping us return to the present moment. The red light is a bell of mindfulness. We may have thought of it as an enemy, preventing us from achieving our goal. But now we know the red light is our friend, helping us resist rushing and calling us to return to the present moment where we can meet with life, joy and peace. Even if you are not the driver, you can help everyone in the car if you breathe and smile.

Gothic gardens, corpse compost, naturist naturalists, world wide weeding? The New York Times Magazine: Extreme Gardening

World New York: Most people who claim they live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, don't.

Smoking pot and tripping your brains out.

from Reuters: a trove of cave art found in France.

The first two poems on this page were written for my daughter. You may skip them and scroll to the third poem, "MERCY" where my Poems to God begin. I have left the poems I wrote for Rachel here in case she ever finds these pages. I want her to know I still love her and am sorry for the mistakes I have made.

A meeting of two great minds: Billy Wimsatt interviews Ira Glass, of public radio's This American Life.

Love your country: ride a bike | support Sarah Jones, and free speech | stop the ACA | read a book | recognize white privilege | eat a hot dog

Fillmore West (once called Carousel) shut its doors on July 4, 1971.

Next week the Olympics will probably go to Beijing. I have mixed feelings about this - the PLA freaks me out 'cause of where I live. I wish they would get rid of the Olympics.

Mike Godwin on the horror of DMCA.

Required reading for parents (and not just moms): Mothering magazine. They don't put new articles online, but the website does feature some older ones. A subscription is well worth the money.

There's lots of fun stuff to see at Milky Elephant, but use with care. I inadvertently terrified my 21-month-old daughter last night with one of the little Flash cartoons. As she fell asleep, she woke up several times, sobbed, and said, "Bye-bye, computer!" I felt awful about it. You have been warned. But thanks anyway to William Fields.

When we with Sappho.

Don't know how it happened, but I got an e-mail telling me about the existence of the Bureau of Public Secrets. Seems to be a monster archive of lots of interesting writing--Situationism, Kenneth Rexroth, other countercultural stuff. The Rexroth alone could get me lost for ages. I'll post a good poem of his when I've had a chance to read more.

New York Times: Death Penalty Ignites a Musical Coalition. Features Michael Franti of Spearhead, whose new album focuses on the issue.