Haiku Tunnel

Josh Kornbluth‘s film (with his brother Jacob) Haiku Tunnel (2001) is basically a shaggy-dog story about the horrors of office work, told with self-reflexive wit and self-deprecating Jewish humor…

Josh Kornbluth‘s film (with his brother Jacob) Haiku Tunnel (2001) is basically a shaggy-dog story about the horrors of office work, told with self-reflexive wit and self-deprecating Jewish humor. It started out, in fact, as a comic monologue, but its translation into a movie went quite well. You have all these absurd situations, both those imposed by the nature of the workplace (a law firm) and those that result from Josh’s own out-of-control (but endearing) neuroses. (I refer to the fictional “Josh Kornbluth,” of course, not to the person of the same name who wrote, directed, and starred in the film). It’s always nice to see a low-budget, independent film like this, unpretentious but smart and on the money with what it is trying to do. Not to mention that it’s shot in San Francisco, and my old friend (from elementary school!) Joshua Raoul Brody has a small role. Extra points for including, briefly, stuff about heterosexual Jewish men’s lusting after WASP women (on the one hand) and black women (on the other). (A double subject that was treated much more extensively, but also much less interestingly, in Barry Levinson’s Liberty Heights).

Antonio Damasio

Antonio R. Damasio is a neurobiologist, and one of the scientists whose work has seemed most provocative and interesting to me recently. I just finished reading is new book, Looking for Spinoza…

Antonio R. Damasio is a neurobiologist, and one of the scientists whose work has seemed most provocative and interesting to me recently. I just finished reading is new book, Looking for Spinoza…
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Quoted Without Comment

“Representative John Carter, (R-Texas), suggested that college students would stop downloading if some were prosecuted and received sentences of 33 months or longer, like the defendants in the DOJ’s Operation Buccaneer. ‘I think it’d be a good idea to go out and actually bust a couple of these college kids,’ Carter said. ‘If you want to see college kids duck and run, you let them read the papers and somebody’s got a 33-month sentence in the federal penitentiary for downloading copyrighted materials.’ ” (from Yahoo News)

“Representative John Carter, (R-Texas), suggested that college students would stop downloading if some were prosecuted and received sentences of 33 months or longer, like the defendants in the DOJ’s Operation Buccaneer. ‘I think it’d be a good idea to go out and actually bust a couple of these college kids,’ Carter said. ‘If you want to see college kids duck and run, you let them read the papers and somebody’s got a 33-month sentence in the federal penitentiary for downloading copyrighted materials.’ ” (from Yahoo News)

Iraq

I have nothing to say about the war. Everything Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and company are doing is too revolting and too cynical for words.

I have nothing to say about the war. Everything Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and company are doing is too revolting and too cynical for words.

The Value of “Diversity”

An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on a new study that casts doubt upon “academic research that asserts the educational benefits of diversity.” According to this new study, “students of all ethnic backgrounds feel that as minority enrollment grows, the quality of their education diminishes and incidents of discrimination increase.” If “diversity” doesn’t improve the quality of education, then one of the main arguments for affirmative action has been refuted. Or so the study suggests. But (as Jerry Springer used to say) there’s more to this story…

An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (paid registration needed to access text–sorry) reports on a new study that casts doubt upon “academic research that asserts the educational benefits of diversity.” According to this new study, “students of all ethnic backgrounds feel that as minority enrollment grows, the quality of their education diminishes and incidents of discrimination increase.” If “diversity” doesn’t improve the quality of education, then one of the main arguments for affirmative action has been refuted. Or so the study suggests. But (as Jerry Springer used to say) there’s more to this story…
Continue reading “The Value of “Diversity””

Reload

The first part of Warren Ellis’ three-part miniseries, Reload, is out. Justified paranoia, government conspiracies, Presidential assassination, electromagnetic pulse bombs. Good stuff….

The first part of Warren Ellis’ three-part miniseries, Reload, is out. Justified paranoia, government conspiracies, Presidential assassination, electromagnetic pulse bombs. Good stuff. In this series, as well as in the recently-completed Transmetropolitan, and the ongoing Global Frequency (that I commented upon here), Warren Ellis has his finger on the pulse of the 21st century.

DJ Krush

DJ Krush makes mostly vocal-less hiphip. His music is all about textures and rhythms. His latest album, The Message At the Depth, is pounding and aggressive, but still seems to me to be mostly dedicated to the pursuit of beauty, as Charles Mudede suggests. The early tracks sound like the music of twittering, highly propulsive machines. The later tracks get somewhat lighter: they sound to me more like the song of birds–not actual birds, exactly, but genetically and cybernetically enhanced birds. (Or even, perhaps, the golden birds of Byzantium).

DJ Krush makes mostly vocal-less hiphip. His music is all about textures and rhythms. His latest album, The Message At the Depth, is pounding and aggressive, but still seems to me to be mostly dedicated to the pursuit of beauty, as Charles Mudede suggests. The early tracks sound like the music of twittering, highly propulsive machines. The later tracks get somewhat lighter: they sound to me more like the song of birds–not actual birds, exactly, but genetically and cybernetically enhanced birds. (Or even, perhaps, the golden birds of Byzantium).

RFID Tags

Everybody seems to be linking to the story about howBenetton is tagging all its clothes with RFID chips…

Everybody seems to be linking to the story about how Benetton is tagging all its clothes with RFID chips, tiny radio transmitters embedded in the clothing that allow the clothing to be tracked from factory to store–and possibly beyond. This is supposed to reduce theft, as well as letting “business managers easily store detailed information about customers’ buying habits that could spur further sales. For example, when a Benetton customer makes a purchase, a sales clerk could pull up that client’s history and say, ‘Last time you were here, you bought a black skirt. We have a sweater that matches that skirt.'” Of course, the potential for the police to track people this way hasn’t been ignored either, though the story says something about deactivating the chips at the cash registers, so that customers can walk out unmarked. Frankly, I’m less worried about being tracked in my everyday motions by RFIDs–since I always assume that this can be done anyway, if the FBI really wants to have me followed–than about how this sort of device could be used by corporations to enforce brand loyalty, for instance (as in, “you’d better not ware our competitor’s shirt with our pants”), or to preserve trademarks and copyrights (no removing the corporate logos from your clothes, the way Cayce Pollard, the heroine of Gibson’s Pattern Recognition, does). I’m sure science ficton writers can come up with some even more creepy uses for this technology… Not to mention the use of guerrilla RFID readers as a counter-measure, as Rick Bradley suggests on nettime. The possibilities are endless.