hitched to everything

R.I.P. Václav Havel

2011-12-22T10:16:00.002-05:00

I was stunned the other day when Václav Havel died just three days after Christopher Hitchens.

Havel had a huge influence on me in my 20s, when I was still a college students, studying journalism and politics. I became more aware of him in about 1992, studying in a Political Journalism program at Georgetown. There I became friends with a Polish journalist, who eventually sent me a signed photo of Havel. I read Havel's writings at the time, and, yes, he too, was another huge influence on me at the time, as I was beginning my journey away from the religious fundamentalism of my upbringing. That the ancestors on my mother's side came from Bohemia - which is now part of the Chzech Republic - also deepened my interest in Havel's homeland. I eventually went to study Czech Culture for a month at Charles University in Prague and I left Prague seriously considering whether I might want to move there myself.

A brilliant, kind, creative man. A playwright, poet and essayist. A faithful and effective letter writer. A political dissident and human rights advocate. He earned the respect of his countrymen and proved too good to be a very effective President. In other words, he hung onto his soul.

To contrast him with Hitchens (if we have to), Havel seemed to be all the brilliance without the bitterness than spoiled Hitchens for so many. Something else that he had in common with Hitch, though, aside from the obvious love for literature and writing? He loved a good drink. Which reminds me of the one time I interacted, if briefly, with Havel.

In December 2006, shortly after I moved to New York, Havel was here to accept an award he'd won years earlier, but couldn't accept because he was in jail. The band Uncle Moon with Michelle Shocked was playing Velvet Underground's entire "Banana" album at Joe's Pub in the East Village in tribute to Havel, and it was rumored that the great man himself might be there. I lived walking distance away, but didn't have tickets. Nonetheless, I walked up there from 3rd Street, only for the doorman to tell me the event had sold out. Then, he told me since the event was probably mostly over, I could go in anyway and stand at the bar. I did that and noticed Havel sitting at the table immediately in front of me. I shamelessly took a photo at the time, one which didn't turn out terribly well, though I remember his profile was discernible. The show did end before much longer and as Havel filed past me, he stumbled, righted himself, and I offered a steadying hand to his shoulder as he filed by in close quarters. I never heard him speak in person, never got to speak with him (I did speak briefly with Hitch). No, the moment was entirely human, entirely anonymous. It could've happened the same way if I hadn't even known who he was.

My fiancee and I are traveling to Prague for Christmas this year and staying both in and near Old Town Square, so I imagine we'll see a few tributes to Havel. For me, it'll be a moment of coming full circle with someone, one of those few people, who rose not only to become great, but remained greatly authentic.

Na zdraví, Václav!

R.I.P. Christopher Hitchens

2011-12-16T01:28:00.000-05:00

Christopher Hitchens has died. Already. No one can say he didn't rage against the dying of the light. But what a loss.

He was certainly one of the handful of writers who left a permanent impact upon my life. An extraordinary mind, a scathing wit, with a voluminous vocabulary. Compelling even when I believed him wrong. A fine exemplar of the pen as mightier than the sword.

His writing came at a point in my life, in my early twenties, when because of the environment I found myself within, I felt that my burgeoning thoughts about the world around me were in a distinct minority. When I knew no one who I could share my doubts with. He was an illuminating discovery for me then, along with a few other great minds, living and deceased, who helped me learn there was another way to look at the world, one which still roiled with majesty and meaning. Who shone a light into my life, and helped me to walk away from the darkness with the confidence that I was not alone.

Christopher Hitchens - 1949 - 2011.

Jennifer Egan on Social Media

2011-12-14T09:31:00.001-05:00

Jennifer Egan on the transactions we make in order to participate in social media:

He never could quite forget that every byte of information he’d posted online (favorite color, vegetable, sexual position) was stored in the databases of multinationals who swore they would never, ever use it—that he was owned, in other words, having sold himself unthinkingly at the very point in his life when he’d felt most subversive

- Jennifer Egan, A Visit from the Goon Squad

Sharansky on Dissent

2011-12-12T09:41:00.000-05:00

I'm thinking about dissent today and came across these thoughts from human rights activist Natan Sharansky, which ring especially true to me.

Will dissent be permitted? The answer to that question will determine whether the society is a free society or a fear society.

Fear societies are societies in which dissent is banned.

People may believe that there can be a society where dissent is not permitted, but which is nonetheless not a fear society because everyone agrees with one another and therefore no one wants to dissent.

If a person cannot walk into the middle of the town square and express his or her views without fear of arrest, imprisonment, or physical harm, then that person is living in a fear society, not a free society. We cannot rest until every person living in a "fear society" has finally won their freedom.

- Natan Sharansky

Here's an interview PBS Newshour did with Sharansky about his book, The Case for Democracy.

Photography: Painted Streets

2011-10-16T09:09:00.000-04:00

Nice work by my brother Christopher Stribley aka PlasticRobot: He recently debuted his book of street art photography on Blurb.com.See it/buy it here.

Photos: Occupy Wall Street

2011-10-16T00:15:00.000-04:00

I'm currently uploading a series of photos I took at Occupy Wall Street yesterday and today. The protests are in interesting thing to behold. There's a variety of different types of people there: hippies and hipsters, sure, but also war veterans, union workers, elderly people, and folks from all other walks of life. It's crowded but not terribly dirty. I saw several people cleaning up at the time. There's a volunteer medic tent and library, and they were serving up food for $2 a plate, I think. I also saw people getting free haircuts and suits in order to join a protest march to Times Square today. Whatever you think of the "occupation," it's a fascinating thing to behold and I feel fortunate to be able to witness it first hand, whether I agree with every point being made or not.

RIP Steve Jobs

2011-10-05T23:30:00.000-04:00

"No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."- Steve Jobs

from the prepared text of the Commencement address delivered by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, on June 12, 2005

Plastic Robot Kickstarter Project

2011-06-04T00:53:00.000-04:00

Help fund my brother's Kickstarter project. He's raising money towards the supplies for his August show here in New York.

In Memoriam

2011-01-08T23:06:00.004-05:00

Just moments after hearing about the tragic shootings in Arizona today, I saw the following scrawled on the subway wall at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway station here in Brooklyn. Regardless of the outcome or reason behind today's events, they seem an appropriate response to the mindless violence.

People who seek to execute those they disagree with are the enemies of democracy and free speech, regardless of what party they align themselves with. People commit such atrocities, apparently, when they're incapable of articulating or defending their beliefs. Either that or they're seriously, mentally disturbed.

At least six people died in these attacks. May they rest in peace.

I Was Wrong

2010-11-06T16:12:00.002-04:00

I was proud recently to participate in Razorfish New York's own "It Gets Better" video, part of the series initated by Dan Savage's effort.

I had some notes I referred to and understandably, with so many involved, a lot had to be edited out for the video to be edited tightly. I'm posting them here in case they help anyone to see that you can change your mind on this issue. My notes then, somewhat updated for clarity's sake:

- I grew up within a belief system that wasn't very tolerant to gay people or gay rights
- In my early 20s, I attended a very conservative college where these beliefs were reinforced, daily
- I was talking with a friend one day when I made a very nasty remark about gay people
- It was so inappropriate, I don't even want to repeat it today
- He replied, you mean people like my brother?
- That really took me back because I was confronted with the reality of his brother's existence instead of whatever stereotype of a gay person I had in my head
- That began a process of thinking for me and as the years went by and after a lot of reading, I became a supporter of gay rights
- If you're watching this and you disagree with me about gay rights, please do challenge yourself to read up on the subject - and especially challenge yourself to read the thoughts and opinions of people who disagree with you
- If you're watching this and you're a young gay person, please know that people can and do change their opinions on this issue. I did
- Also, I know many gay people who grew up in environments that were unkind to gay people and they're doing fine now. I work with many such talented and intelligent people every day
- Things really do get better

I also wrote a post several years ago, which tells the story I allude to above more explicitly. I ain't proud of it.

If I could make one suggestion to Dan Savage to add his project, it'd be this: How about a channel for straight people, explaining why they concluded they were wrong about their beliefs and how they came to be gay rights supporters.

SpiritDay 2010

2010-10-20T10:22:00.001-04:00

In solidarity with all my gay and lesbian friends.

USA Today - Youths, adults sign on to wear purple, support gay teens
GLAAD - Tools for supporting SpiritDay

Subway Poem 15

2010-10-18T18:54:00.009-04:00

To behold actual human zombies
Simply stand at the edge of a New York City subway platform
Then watch them shamble towards you
Hurrying to insert themselves between you and the oncoming train
Arms flailing, legs awkwardly flapping
They must. Reach. The vessel.
As the doors slide open, they crash by you
And into the carriage ahead of you
Collapsing through the exiting citizenry
To seize a seat or a position
To be first
Pity the frail human in their way

10/18/10

*this is my first subway poem actually published to the Web from the subway: as the B train crossed Manhattan Bridge

Music for Wireframing

2010-10-06T17:08:00.001-04:00

The right music can really help me get into flow while on working on something, especially when wireframing. Here's some of the stuff I listen to the most when wireframing, hand-picked to be less intrusive, but not all of it falling into ambient territory. Somewhat verified by my Last.fm profile. And in no particular order ...

1. Burial
2. Brian Eno
3. Hans Zimmer - Inception Soundtrack
4. Underworld
5. Cinematic Orchestra
6. Massive Attack
7. LCD Soundsystem
8. James Newton Howard - Michael Clayton Soundtrack
9. Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I-IV
10. Sigur Ros

Also: Fujiya & Miyagi, Hot Chip, UNKLE, Four Tet, Boards of Canada, Free Association - Code 46 Soundtrack

What are some of your favorites? Add 'em in comments.

Flying into JFK, 9/11/10

2010-09-11T23:16:00.000-04:00

Flying into JFK, 9/11/10

Our descent slower than normal
Since the sky swarmed with planes
The houses of Queens blanket
The ground rising beneath us
Our craft thick with travelers
Accented voices burbling
German, English, Indian, Arab, Latin
A supple sampling of our boroughs.

When finally we fell to the ground
And began a long crawl to nuzzle the dock,
Manhattan's delicate silhouette
Stretched westward for miles
Haloed by the flush of the setting sun
Though clouds lowered high above
Waiting perhaps to descend.

And to the north,
So many aircraft lined up,
Drifting jaggedly towards earth
Like bright, white flares
Falling from the heavens.

Subway Poem 14

2010-08-31T09:58:00.005-04:00

The D train stopped aloft the Manhattan Bridge
Just up the Brooklyn side of the hanger
A young woman slumped to the floor
A police officer on board would stand before her
As one woman traversed the carriage,
Looking for an emergency alarm
While another yelled, "Forget about it! Just forget about it!"
And there you had it
The entire human condition
Encapsulated in a steel tube
Hovering, hesitant over the East River

08/31/10

A Subway Story

2010-08-26T00:33:00.005-04:00

I just saw the most astonishing thing I've seen in over 4 years riding the New York City subway.

As I boarded the train, one guy was yelling obscenities at and threatening another seated guy for 5 minutes; the rest of us staring on in amazement, me hoping security would arrive to interrupt him. The guy next to me sat with his head in his hands, seemingly to block out the noise. Finally, the first guy comes and sits down across from us with one of his friends, both of them drunk, still talking loudly and swearing.

Finally, the guy next to me looks up and speaks up. "Your day could be worse, you know. I just found out I have cancer." It's clear he isn't joking.

The two guys across from are silenced, literally dumbstruck. "I'm sorry, man," one of them eventually mutters.

"It's OK," says the guy next to me. "I'm just saying, your day could be worse. I went to the doctor today and he told me I probably have cancer." His eyes are red: he's been sitting there, hiding the fact that he's been crying. As he speaks, his voice starts shuddering, then his whole body is shaking and he's weeping. This was not remotely an act. It was pure, visceral emotion.

Both men across from me were completely silenced now. The train stops at 34th Street and the two get off, but not before each lays a hand on the guy's shoulder and says, "I'm sorry, man."

"It's OK," he says. "Just remember, your day could be worse."

He got off at Union Square. I followed him off. We went our separate ways.

Why Should a Muslim Community Center Be Built in Lower Manhattan?

2010-08-20T22:58:00.001-04:00

After I linked to the twitter feed for the Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan, where the center responds to its critics, a friend on Facebook asked me to explain "why the mosque SHOULD be built in this location as opposed to somewhere else, when clearly whatever side you are on it is a divisive thing?" My response follows.

I think it should be built there for a number of reasons:

Because it's not a mosque and it's not at Ground Zero, it's 4 blocks away
Because some folks have drummed up fear around this being a Mosque (false) at Ground Zero (also false) where it needn't exist, so why cave into them? The community center location wasn't a controversy until some very radical anti-Muslim individuals began to paint this fictitious version of what it is to be (more on the real origins of this debate here on Salon)
Because although saying it's insensitive and divisive for it to be there may be the most civilized argument being offered against it, that argument still sort of tacitly conflates Islam as practiced by this really pretty liberal Imam with the radical ultra-violent Islamicists, who attacked us on 9/11, as much for political reasons, as religious
It's not really insensitive for Rauf to place his community center there (even if it were a mosque) because he's been working in the Tribeca area of Lower Manhattan for about 20 years, a long time before 9/11 - this fact is never mentioned by the folks trying to describe it as a "victory mosque" or whatnot because it would undermine their theory about why it's being built in the first place
Rauf is precisely the sort if Imam Bin Laden *wouldn't* want building a mosque near Ground Zero because he stands against the violence of Bin Laden and actually encourage communication among the world's religions in ways Bin Laden would despise and denounce (read more about him here)
The Constitution - specifically freedom of religion and freedom of speech. It's precisely because we don't want to become like Saudi Arabia that we allow a religious center to be built near Ground Zero (along with all the other religious centers, shopping centers, bars, sex shops and strip clubs), even tho we may not agree with every single thing that's going to be said there. In this way, we say, Bin Laden, no, you don't win.
Many Muslims died in 9/11. They have as much right to grieve and memorialize the 9/11 event, as the rest of us Americans - a listing of Muslim victims on About.com

It's a sensitive subject, I know, so I appreciate that my friends on Facebook were able to engage in a civil conversation about it. But I think it's also a great opportunity for us all to engage in a great dialogue on the subject. It's the folks comparing Imam Rauf's building a community center to Nazis placing a sign at the Holocaust Museum - those folks aren't helping. (Looking at you New Gingrich!)

I think all the arguments above, by the way, can be made irrespective of political party or religious background.

So, in short: I don't think the center has to be built there either. But "there" isn't Ground Zero. And it ain't a mosque, but if it were, no big deal. We believe in freedom of religion. We don't throw in the towel or chuck out the Constitution because a bunch of nutjobs attacked us on 9/11. What an opportunity to prove that to the world.

I decided to post my thoughts on this subject here because I think this event has become a touchstone for so much of what's going on in the United States right now - especially in regards to 9/11, terrorism, and hostility towards Muslims and people of other religions and ethnicities - and I'd like to track my own thoughts on the subject.

Feel free to share your own in the comments.

Subway Poem 13

2010-08-06T16:14:00.003-04:00

Standing at one end,
looking down the morning train,
as it emerges from its tunnel
onto the sunsplashed Manhattan Bridge.

The faces of these travelers,
largely calm, impassive,
as they align this carriage,
their bodies gently wavering,
like so many grassy stems in a subaquatic passage.

08/06/10

California's Historic Prop 8 Ruling

2010-08-04T20:27:00.000-04:00

Congratulations to all those who have fought so hard for human rights in California and around the United States. This is truly an exciting and historic milestone.

Prop 8 Ruling FINAL

ScienceBlog's Soda Pop Saga

2010-07-22T16:45:00.000-04:00

I've got a new piece on Scatter/Gather, Razorfish's content strategy blog, about the Scienceblogs debacle, knowing your audience and transparency.

Subway Poem 12

2010-07-19T12:41:00.000-04:00

Red riding hood sits slumped on the F Train,
No longer little nor lithe
That hood definitely protection
Against whatever wickedness she's weathered
Via the wolves of the world
Her eyes shut against the elements
Us

06/19/10

Getting Out of the Box

2010-06-18T16:59:00.000-04:00

I'm very proud to have a piece on Razorfish's brand spanking new diversity blog: "Getting Out of the Box" on razorfishpride.com.

Tourists Keep Left

2010-06-10T00:17:00.001-04:00

I know some outsiders found Jeff Greenspan's New Yorker/Visitors sidewalk lanes obnoxious but try working in Times Square and navigating the sidewalk crowds at lunchtime, and you'll be wanting your own lane too!

Although Improv Everywhere eventually helped with a prominent 5th Avenue version, Greenspan was eventually revealed as the original creator.

Subway Poem 11

2010-05-26T10:29:00.002-04:00

The one F train driver
Her tones a calm, smoky jazz
You all have a good week, a lovely day, she says
And for once we think, yes, we will
Thanks to her
Believing in us

05/26/10

The National - "Terrible Love"

2010-05-08T22:28:00.002-04:00

Shepard Fairey Working on Mural in New York

2010-04-21T08:50:00.004-04:00

I posted a story last night to CNN's iReport on Shepard Fairey's gigantic new wheat paste mural going up at the corner of Houston and Bowery in New York. Photo above by me. More on Flickr.

Suspense!

2010-02-17T23:03:00.001-05:00

Reading this Malcolm Gladwell piece on alcoholism and I realize what he has in common with the writers of Lost: the ability to withhold the tasty morsels you really want right now in order to create and maintain suspense.

Social Camp

2010-02-16T20:22:00.003-05:00

The New Yorker reports folks are actually debating whether this YouTube video, entitled "That's Why I Chose Yale," is earnest or high camp. Presumably, it's a knowing attempt at a viral video, performed in the vein of Glee Club. One hopes anyway.

Quote of the Day

2010-02-12T11:46:00.004-05:00

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.

- Albert Einstein

Constructive Action?

2010-02-10T01:05:00.006-05:00

I was rather disappointed today to find that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committees response to Sarah Palin's Tea Party speech was to ask people to sign a letter to Palin, which says the following, "We haven't forgotten that Republicans created this mess and we won't stand for your smears."

I learned this when the DCCC tweeted, "We just hit 20K signatures on our letter to Palin: 'We won't stand for your smears.' Help us hit 25K! http://bit.ly/9ZdPHw." To which I responded, "I'm no fan of Sarah Palin, @dccc, but does anyone really think signing a letter like this is going to help things? http://j.mp/cK4zI5." To me, the letter felt more like an exercise in futility than any sort of constructive response to Palin's agenda. (One of my friends on Twitter even responded, "If Palin won't read a newspaper, why do they think she'll read their letter?" Heh.)

To their credit, someone at the DCCC direct tweeted me the following earlier this evening: "Fair question. With our letter, we aim to send a clear message to the GOP that we will call them out for their false and outrageous attacks." I appreciated their answering me directly, but I still feel the brief, scabrous letter itself amounts to little more than returning a swipe from Palin with a swipe back. So I direct tweeted a message back to them, then posted the following only slightly reworded tweet: "Challenge to @dccc: Do something *constructive* with social media. Organize an answer to the Tea Partiers, demanding universal healthcare."

Then I visited their website and noticed a link to become a fan on Facebook. I did so and immediately posted the above challenge there, too. Again, to their credit, they quickly responded with the following, "We're always interested to hear our supporters' ideas. How would you organize an answer to the tea partiers?"

Given that Facebook allows for a more verbose response than Twitter, I shared a few thoughts to take them up on their question. Here's my response:

Thanks for your willingness to engage in dialogue. I understand that the DCCC is "the official campaign arm of the Democrats in the House of Representatives," so I'm not sure how much you can do to organize a grassroots effort (and would it be a true grassroots effort if organized by the DCCC?), but I'm disappointed to see the DCCC organizing people to sign a letter to Sarah Palin, which does little more than call her out on her inflammatory rhetoric, when the Tea Partiers are organizing people to march on Washington, to spread all manner of disinformation about the President and universal healthcare, and meeting regularly in a continued effort to plan actual real world activity. Yet what has been the democratic response? I think many people who deeply believe in healthcare have grown despondent and disillusioned over the lack of progress on the issue.

I wouldn't necessarily know all the nuances of how to organize an in-the-streets movement on that scale, but you have almost 60,000 fans on Facebook and well over 11,000 followers on Twitter. That seems like a good start. There must be constructive things those people can do: to show up in public and challenge the Tea Partiers, show others that healthcare does represent the will of the people - and isn't just some "socialist" program Obama is trying to force on us.

Another constructive solution would be to create content that people could be encouraged to distribute on their blogs, on Twitter, on Facebook, etc, that effectively - and diplomatically - refutes the misconceptions about healthcare (and other misinformation the Tea Partiers are spreading). Make it bulleted, easy to read, succinct. Encourage people to actively engage with the Tea Partiers on these issues - and to share that information with other Americans, too. Just yelling "you lie" to the Tea Partiers and to Palin may serve as an outlet for Progressive frustration, but it does nothing constructive.

The President set a good example for all us recently when he reached out the Republicans and firmly called them out on some of their behavior - but also invited them to dialogue. I'd like to think his request was genuine. We've got to do the same thing as individuals if we're to make any real progress. We've got to challenge people to think, challenge them with the facts. But we won't get their attention unless we focus on ways to do it constructively. Not just matching outbursts with outburts.

I wish you much luck to that end.

I do feel like there's a lot more constructive activity that could be generated vis social media, of course. That was just a hurried post to Facebook. Maybe we can get to brainstorming and working on such strategies, instead of just encouraging tens of thousands of folks to engage in what amounts to little more than a quick swipe at Wasilla's finest?

5 Things a Corporation Can't Do

2010-01-23T10:22:00.001-05:00

5 Things a Corporation Can't Do That a Human Being Can:

Produce a birth certificate
Enter into a same-sex marriage
Vote for elected officials
Fight to keep a mortgage and a roof over its family's head
Leave fingerprints or DNA at a crime scene

I'm referring, of course, to the Supreme Court's January 21st decision to allow companies the right to contribute to election campaigns, under the justification that doing otherwise would restrict their rights. In other words, conferring the rights of a human American individual upon a multi-million dollar corporation.

Points of Interest: Amsterdam, Belgium and Paris

2010-01-20T01:41:00.006-05:00

During our recent trip to Europe, I collected a slew of business cards from different places (restaurants, cafes, galleries, shops) we dropped into. Faced with filing these things away somewhere where I'd likely never see them again, I thought I'd enter them all here for other folks benefit, who may travel to The Netherlands, Belgium or France, too. So, it's by no means comprehensive, but here are some places worth checking out in the following countries and cities:

Antwerp, Belgium

Hotel Postiljon - small, clean, comfortable rooms - and bathrooms with no doors on them! But exceptionally close to the Cathedral of Our Lady (Onze-Lieve-Vrouwekathedraal) - right behind it, in fact

Brugge, Belgium

Gran Kaffee de Passage, Dweersstraat 26-28 - excellent eating: tasty ribs and beer at this convivial restaurant in the ground floor of a hostel, believe it or not.
Hotel Cavalier, Kuiperstraat 25 - better looking on the outside or in the quaint cafe, than inside one of the rooms. Ours had a bed, which slanted downward to the head. Nonetheless, terrifically handy to everything in old Brugge.

Paris, France

La Flèche d'Or, 102 bis rue de Bagnolet - we had to walk a few blocks from the metro to find this music venue in a renovated train station, but we caught a good show with a faux-Irish punk Celtic band. Or something like that.
La Frégate, 1, rue du Bac angle 35 quai Voltaire - a typical French bistro in a sense, but with a stunning view of the Seine and the Louvre. Also: it's on on the site of the home of Marshal D’Artagnan, who inspired Dumas to write The Three Musketeeers.
Hotel Champ du Mars, 7 rue du Champ de Mars - tiny rooms, but it was well kept and close to the Eiffel Tower and other great walks
Lili's Brownie, 35 Rue Du Dragon - American-style brownies in, um, Paris
Mandalas, Artisanat du Tibet - across from our hotel on Champ du Mars, lovely jewelry from Tibet, about a block away from the Rue Cler market street

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

De Aardige Pers, 2e Hugo de grootstraat 13 B - it's a bit of a haul to get to this Iranian restaurant, but really worth it
Quinta - Nieuwe Leliestraat 4, across from Anne Frank House - tasteful wine and liquor shop where the proprietor provided an informative and impassioned homily on absinthe
Reypenaer - nice, bright cheese shop with very helpful informative owners and employees
Temploe Doeloe, Utrechtsestraat 75 - delicious Indonesian food

Survivors

2010-01-14T17:42:00.001-05:00

I just got word that my roommate from my freshman year in college survived the earthquake in Haiti. A few details, which the school has apparently being circulating, really bring home the impact.

Maxime Pierre-Pierre (’92 grad, former employee, working in Petionville, southeast of Port-au-Prince, Haiti)

Thanks for your prayers. We thank God for keeping our whole family safe as well as our house. Telephone contact is difficult now. I was teaching at STEP seminary when the earthquake hit. The building was seriously affected, and several students were pulled out of the rubble. Our church building was not affected. We have been sleeping outside since Tuesday. We have little access to food, water or fuel and no electricity. Keep praying for us.

If you're reading this, Maxime, I was so relieved to hear you survived, and I'll be keeping you in my thoughts.

Top 5 Groups Pat Robertson Has It in For Next

2010-01-14T00:02:00.002-05:00

Presenting, the top 5 groups Pat Robertson has it in for next:

Asexual ants - they dispensed with the male of species (Science News)
Alaskans - the least religious of Americans (Pew Research)
Teenagers - they bear all the signs of demon possession (New Scientist)
Pilots - if man were meant to fly ... (CNN)
Australians - topless sunbathers! (The Telegraph)

Order Out of Nothingness

2010-01-13T11:06:00.002-05:00

My new article on Razorfish's Scatter/Gather blog, "Order Out of Nothingness: Tagging 101," discusses tagging mp3s in iTunes, as well as the principles for metadata we can derive from the sloppy tagging of them.

Marriage, The Constitution & Religion

2010-01-11T18:22:00.006-05:00

Some folks argue that California's provision against gay marriage is a matter of state's rights. That California has a right to uphold its Constitution, as declared by its citizens. Those folks are wrong. When we have gay marriage in all 50 states - and we will - it'll be precisely because it is unConstitutional for states to “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” That and the Declaration of Independence proclaimed each person's right to the "pursuit of happiness." Individual states have no say in what amounts to a human rights matter - nor should they. See slavery, segregation, suffrage, etc. The U.S. Constitution supercedes California's. That may not be recognized now, but I believe it will be in the future.

Further, contrary to what many folks say, allowing for gay marriage is not encroaching on religious territory; it is not trampling on line between church and state (which oddly some of the same folks aren't usually particularly concerned with). In fact, if you read about the origins of marriage, they were not religious. Marriage simply acquired religious accoutrements over the ages. Marriages began as a civil and legal affair, not as a religious affair and it essentially involved the the acquisition of women as property. Hardly admirable. Marriage has continued to evolve, however, into a more enlightened arrangement and the addition of gay marriage to the tradition is only another step in the right direction.

Read about the history of marriage in Wikipedia, where it's currently described as "a social union or legal contract between individuals that creates kinship." No mention of religion in defining marriage there.

Or try Merriam Webster if you prefer: "the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law." Again, no mention of religion. Whatsoever.

See also, About.com on the history of marriage.

Hero for the Day

2010-01-11T17:58:00.001-05:00

My hero for the day is the conservative Republican lawyer, Ted Olsen, who is taking his "Conservative Case for Gay Marriage" to the California Supreme Court in an effort to reverse that state's unConstitutional Proposition 8. From his opening statement this morning:

The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly described the right to marriage as “one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men;” a “basic civil right;” a component of the constitutional rights to liberty, privacy, association, and intimate choice; an expression of emotional support and public commitment; the exercise of spiritual unity; and a fulfillment of one’s self.

In short, in the words of the highest court in the land, marriage is “the most important relation in life,” and “of fundamental importance for all individuals.”

As the witnesses in this case will elaborate, marriage is central to life in America. It promotes mental, physical and emotional health and the economic strength and stability of those who enter into a marital union. It is the building block of family, neighborhood and community. The California Supreme Court has declared that the right to marry is of “central importance to an individual’s opportunity to live a happy, meaningful, and satisfying life as a full member of society.”

Proposition 8 ended the dream of marriage, the most important relation in life, for the plaintiffs and hundreds of thousands of Californians.

Favorite Albums of the 00s

2010-01-01T17:35:00.001-05:00

A work in progress:

Boards of Canada - Geogaddi
Burial - Burial
Burial - Untrue
Eels - Blinking Lights & Other Revelations
Nick Cave - Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus
The Cinematic Orchestra - Ma Fleur
Massive Attack - 100th Window
The National - Alligator
The National - Boxer
Radiohead - Kid A
Radiohead - In Rainbows
Wilco - Yankee Wilco Foxtrot

Bands of the Decade

2009-12-29T17:09:00.002-05:00

I could probably think of more, but here's a list of the bands I discovered over the past decade - the Oughts - which I came back to again and again. In simple, alphabetical order ...

Burial
Elbow
LCD Soundsystem
The National
M.I.A.
The Knife/Fever Ray

Song of the Decade
"Someone Great" - LCD Soundsystem or "Hey Yah" by Outlast (technically, André 3000). The latter must hands-down be the best pop song of the decade. An astonishing little atom bomb of a tune, that one.

What do you think? I'd love to hear about the bands - or the music, which left the greatest impression on you over the past decade.

My Favorite Flicks from 2009

2009-12-28T17:49:00.004-05:00

Top 10
Gomorrah
Moon
Fantastic Mr. Fox
In the Loop
Inglourious Basterds
Hurt Locker
Disgrace
Goodbye Solo
Silent Light
Sin Nombre

In no particular order really, tho Gomorrah was probably my favorite - at 2008 release in Europe, I think. Also, The Road probably figures into my top 10, tho I don't know which I'd drop. Update: having seen Herzog's Bad Lieutenant and Police, Adjective now, I'd probably squeeze them into the top 10, too, if I were allowed.

Favorite Documentaries
Food, Inc
We Live in Public
Objectified
Art & Copy

- I didn't see Crude or The Cove yet, unfortunately

5 Which Would Probably Make the List If I'd Seen Them
A Serious Man
Up in The Air
Bad Lieutenant
My Son, My Son, What Have You Done
White Ribbon

Disappointing But Worth a Watch
District 9

As usual, I reserve the right to update or modify this list in any way, as the mood strikes or if I'm able to cram some more flicks in before the end of the year - or the few weeks that follow, for that matter.

Emoticons

2009-12-16T22:49:00.003-05:00

The reason the emoticon became popular is that with the advent of the Web, people began writing far more than previously, but not better.

So the emoticon replaced any gift for nuance lacking in their writing, which was always missing, but did not get nearly as much exposure.

Everyone is a writer now. For better or worse.

Those of us who think of writing as an art and therefore disdain "smileys" should remind ourselves that more people are writing more often than ever in the history of our species. It's no surprise they adopted the emoticon pretty quickly to fill in the gaps in their skillset, where writing and the art of letters is concerned.

Also, for what it's worth, most of us write differently in different arenas. I wouldn't the same way in an email, on Twitter, on IM, in a short story, in a music review, in presentation for work.

- In response to "Death to Smiley" by Mary Elizabeth Williams

The News That's Fit to Tweet?

2009-11-13T16:29:00.001-05:00

Three ways The Huffington Post flubbed their Fort Hood Twitter List implementation. My new article is live on Razorfish's Scatter/Gather.

Guidelines for Capitalizing Headings & Titles

2009-11-11T13:55:00.009-05:00

Folks often have difficulty knowing what to capitalize when writing headings for articles or, more often in my field, slides for PowerPoint presentations, so I've put together a list of rules to help you learn how to do it. Now, if you don't know the parts of speech, admittedly, I can't help you. Here's my small contribution to reducing the agony of presentation production. Note that it applies only to the English language.

What to Capitalize in a Heading or Title When Using Initial Caps

1. ALL nouns
2. ALL pronouns
3. ALL verbs, no matter how short. That means "is" and "are" always get capitalized
4. ALL adverbs and adjectives
5. ONLY prepositions over 3 letters in length - e.g. NOT "at" or "in" but "With," "Before" and "Along"
6. ONLY articles over 3 letters in length - e.g. NOT "a," "an," "the" but "There," "This," and "That"
7. NO conjunctions under 4 letters in length - e.g. NOT "for," "and," "or," "nor," "yet", "so," or "but"
8. ALWAYS the first word, no matter what part of speech
9. ALWAYS the last word, no matter what part of speech

Confusing? Yep. English often is. But I didn't make this stuff up. I did teach it to college freshmen for a couple of years, however, so that helped drill it in. Don't take my word for it, though. Here are some further sources. I'd link to more authoritative ones like the AP or Chicago Manual of Style, but they all have their content behind pay walls.

Government Printing Office - Style Manual
Search Engine Journal - Title Capitalization in the English Language
Your Dictionary - Rules for Capitalization in Titles

One final note: some sources vary as to whether prepositions should ever be capitalized. Since experts differ (this ain't uncommon in English either), I've chosen the over 4 letters route as it "just looks right" and it's what I learned and taught in college.

I'm sure this can use some refining, and I'll update it in the future accordingly. And I welcome your suggestions.

Subway Poem 10

2009-11-03T23:39:00.004-05:00

There's a man a foot of the subway stairs,
Angular, thin, white with graying hair
All pale against the pool of blood about him
And splashed upon the wall
He has fallen

After the sirens
A woman descends the stairs slowly to help him
It seems she will never arrive

11/02/09

Subway Poem 9

2009-11-03T23:38:00.009-05:00

Two older men on the train,
Reflecting each other across the aisle
Graying, grizzled with beards
Clothing distressed, huddling
Their belongings in bundles at their feet
Invisible to others, brothers to themselves
When one spoke, the other attended, responded
Used to being unlistened to himself

11/03/09

Symphony of Science Supergroup

2009-10-19T22:57:00.003-04:00

So great to see someone infuse so much joy into their love of science.

"The beauty of a living thing is not the atoms that go into it, but the way those atoms are put together. ... We are a way for the cosmos to know itself." - Carl Sagan

CNN Camerawoman Fights Back

2009-09-22T23:08:00.004-04:00

We Will Not Walk in Fear

2009-09-21T22:58:00.001-04:00

We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven into an age of unreason if we dig deep into our history and remember we are not descended from fearful men.

- Edward R. Murrow

We Live in Public

2009-09-02T19:34:00.000-04:00

Over on Razorfish's content strategy blog, my companero Rachel Lovinger and I discuss our reaction to Ondi Timoner's new documentary, We Live in Public. We IMed each other, then distilled down our conversation into a blog entry.

RIP Ted Kennedy

2009-08-26T01:31:00.009-04:00

Quality care shouldn't depend on your financial resources, or the type of job you have, or the medical condition you face. Every American should be able to get the same treatment that U.S. senators are entitled to.
- Ted Kennedy

Ted Kennedy has died of brain cancer at the age of 77. Sadly, "the liberal lion of the Senate" never saw the universal healthcare he fought so hard for come to fruition.

May the Senator's fight not have be in vain.

Related:

New York Times: "Edward Kennedy, Senate Stalwart, Dies"

Los Angeles Times: "Ted Kennedy is making a final press for universal healthcare, from his sickbed"

Newsweek: "The Cause of my Life" by Ted Kennedy

5 Links

2009-08-25T21:33:00.000-04:00

Time: Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin - Exercise makes many people gain weight. That's because the eat more because they exercised. Simple really. You have to eat less. And if you drink a bottle of Gatorade after you worked out, you may as well no thave worked out. Also, rats process fat better than we humans do and consequently stay slimmer more easily. Rats. If many people read this article, it could shut down thousands of gyms.

Wired: Why Craigslist Is Such a Mess - Fascinating insight into Craig Newmark and the evolution of Craiglist, a company with 30 employees, which draws more traffic than eBay (16,000 employees) and Amazon (20,0000). Also, seems a measure of their success is due to the fact that they don't give a rip about profits.

ReadWriteWeb: Google Maps Gets Smarter: Crowdsources Live Traffic Data - Google enables social driving.

Rob Report: Safety First: The Mercedes-Benz ESF 2009 - Mercedes enables social driving, too, relaying data to other cars, so they get a heads-up about upcoming road conditions.

Mother Jones: Fiji Water: Spin the Bottle - Some delicate details on the Fuji Water company and the nature of its operations in a country under a military junta. Be careful what you sip!

Happy Mirth Day

2009-08-24T22:45:00.003-04:00

We have Independence day in July, Labor Day coming up in September, but my good friend Jack Dillard - writer, poet, photographer extraordinairre, points out the sad fact: we don't have a holiday in August. Therefore, he's suggesting one. And if you're going to have a holiday between two such serious ones, why not something more frivilous, something fun. He's suggesting Mirth Day.As any 21st-century advocate worth his salt would do, Jack has set up a site with more info, including an exhortation to petition your elected officials.

Says Jack, "Join me in observing Mirth Day, a celebration of laughter and levity on the last Friday in August, the birth month of great American humorists, comedians, actors, and cartoonists, including Garrison Keillor, Steve Martin, Lucille Ball, Gary Larson, Ogden Nash, Dorothy Parker, Walt Kelly, Martin Mull, Buddy Hackett, Dave Chappelle, R. Crumb, Pee Wee Herman, and Chris Tucker." That's a whole lotta humor.

For more information, contact Jack Dillard at jack@happymirthday.com or 704-301-4317.

Hero of the Moment: Barney Frank

2009-08-20T01:32:00.005-04:00

I often enjoy Barney Frank's unguarded and incisive way of getting to the point. But this moment when he responds abruptly to a heckling protestor, who doesn't have her facts straight, seems destined to go down in political history. It may even prove to be a watershed moment in the fight for universal healthcare.

"My question to you is, why do you continue to support a Nazi policy?" the woman asked Frank.

"On what planet do you spend most of your time?" an incredulous Frank rhetorically replied, indignantly adding "You stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis....Trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it."

Of course, the fact that Mr. Frank has a Jewish heritage and may take allegations of nazism quite seriously seemed entirely lost on the woman.

A couple more great Barney Frank moments:

After the Senate aprroved a 105.9 billion wartime spending bill a couple of months ago, Frank chastised both sides and expressed his dismay with social networking:

The left and the right live in parallel universes. The right listens to talk radio, the left's on the Internet and they just reinforce one another. They have no sense of reality. I have now one ambition: to retire before it becomes essential to tweet.

A couple of months before that, Frank accused Republicans of not supporting a bill because if it passed, they'd miss something to be outraged about:

They appear to have become so attached to their outrage that they are even more outraged that they won't be able to be outraged anymore.

Subway Poem 8

2009-08-05T01:21:00.003-04:00

When two trains follow each other
beneath the ground,
the impact for a moment is such that
We are each human fish in an aquarium
staring across the few scant feet
to the human fish in the aquarium
just beyond our group
but eternally out of touch
before slipping up and away into the darkness.

8/4

Trust but Verify

2009-08-04T16:08:00.004-04:00

I have a new essay up on Razorfish's content strategy blog Scatter/Gather, entitled "Blinded by Content Bliss." In it, I argue for more care in verifying the authenticity of user-generated content before incorporating it into a site. The national media showed us how not to this recently when covering the election in Iran. Since that country's government keeps a tight reign on information, the media had to resort to broadcasting a lot of user-created content in the form of Flickr images, tweets and blog entries. Of course, some of this material did prove excellent, but all too often we started seeing the media backpeddling on content they'd already aired. Not a good for journalism. And not a good practice for any of us as content disseminators either. I offer some simple principles in how to avoid reproducing poorly-sourced content - and plain old fabrications.

You'd think these principles would be common sense, but with 28% of Republicans still believing Obama may not have born in the United States--due to the spread of this very sort of poorly sourced information--well, you'd be wrong.

Two more of my recent pieces:

"Cultivating Effective User-Generated Content," With Bob Maynard, Razorfish.com, July 2009 [pdf]

"Crowdsourcing Content," Scatter/Gather, April 22, 2009

Send to Trash After Reading

2009-07-31T15:33:00.006-04:00

The last two years, I've reviewed a book of the year's best technology writing. If I could vote on entries for this year's, I'd have to include this New Yorker piece by Nicholson Baker on the Kindle. In it, he explains how the Kindle is still light years away from providing a superlative reading experience. Some consider Baker a bit of a neo-Luddite, but I can't sling that pejorative at such a good writer - especially since by the article's end, he does recommend using the iPhone with the Kindle app, as well as several other apps.

The whole article's definitely worth a read, but I found this section in particular on the experience of reading The New York Times on the Kindle particularly telling.

The real flurry over the new DX, though, has to do with the fate of newspapers. The DX offers more than twice as much Vizplex as the Kindle 2—about half the area of a piece of letter-size paper—enough, some assert, to reaccustom Web readers to paying for the digital version of, say, the Times, thereby rescuing daily print journalism from financial ruin. “With Kindle DX’s large display, reading newspapers is more enjoyable than ever,” according to Amazon’s Web site.

It’s enjoyable if you like reading Nexis printouts. The Kindle Times ($13.99 per month) lacks most of the print edition’s superb photography—and its subheads and call-outs and teasers, its spinnakered typographical elegance and variety, its browsableness, its Web-site links, its listed names of contributing reporters, and almost all captioned pie charts, diagrams, weather maps, crossword puzzles, summary sports scores, financial data, and, of course, ads, for jewels, for swimsuits, for vacationlands, and for recently bailed-out investment firms. A century and a half of evolved beauty and informational expressiveness is all but entirely rinsed away in this digital reductio.

Sometimes whole articles and op-ed contributions aren’t there. Three pieces from the July 8, 2009, print edition of the Times—Adam Nagourney on Sarah Palin’s resignation, Alessandra Stanley on Michael Jackson’s funeral, and David Johnston on the civil rights of detainees—were missing from the Kindle edition, or at least I haven’t managed to find them (they’re available free on the Times Web site); the July 9th Kindle issue lacked the print edition’s reporting on interracial college roommates and the infectivity rates of abortion pills. I checked again on July 20th and 21st: Verlyn Klinkenborg’s appreciation of Walter Cronkite was absent, as was a long piece on Mongolian shamanism.

The Kindle DX ($489) doesn’t save newspapers; it diminishes and undercuts them—it kills their joy. It turns them into earnest but dispensable blogs.

Emphasis mine.

None of this is to say that the Kindle (or, more accurately, the e-reader) isn't a revolutionary device. But sometimes we can get so caught up cheering on the technology that we overlook its obvious deficiencies.

Also,

New York mag article in which Lane Brown guesstimates Baker's expenses for the piece, only to be corrected by him in comments.
Stephen Johnson's more positive forecast for the impact of the e-reader on the future of books in April 20th's Wall Street Journal. He concludes, "We all know the story of how the information-wants-to-be-free ethos of the Web threatened the newspapers with extinction. Wouldn't it be ironic if books turned out to be their savior?"
On the Media podcast from May 8, 2009 on a Senate committee hearing on the "Future of Journalism."

Image above from my Flickr stream

Profiting from Healthcare

2009-07-23T00:43:00.004-04:00

I don't agree with everything Michael Moore says, nor with the strident tone he often adopts, but on some things he's just dead on. Like with these thoughts on "socialized medicine" aka universal healthcare:

Socialized medicine. Ooh, socialized. Bad. Really? Isn’t that what our police departments are? Socialized? Run by the government. Free service. Do you think anybody would ever ask if the fire department should have to post a profit? You know? Seriously. Would we allow a fire department to every time they get a call for a house fire, when they arrive at the house determine whether or not this is going to affect the fire department’s bottom line. We wouldn’t allow that, would we? When someone is wheeled into a hospital, that question should never be asked. That is an immoral question amongst a—in a humane society to ask that question, where is the profit here? How will it affect our bottom line? How do we make money off this sick person? I mean, this doesn’t look good, folks. It doesn’t look good to the rest of the world and it won’t look good to the anthropologists who dig us up hundreds of years from now. They will wonder what were these people thinking?

- Michael Moore addressing California lawmakers in 2007

RIP Walter Cronkite

2009-07-18T10:25:00.001-04:00

I can't imagine a person becoming a success who doesn't give this game of life everything he's got.
- Walter Cronkite, 1916-2009

Walter Cronkite has died at 92.

Obey

2009-07-13T19:44:00.005-04:00

Many stickers have been peeled down by people who were annoyed by them, considering them an eye sore and an act of petty vandalism, which is ironic considering the number of commercial graphic images everyone in American society is assaulted with daily.
- Shepard Fairey in his Obey Manifesto

Visited the Shepard Fairey exhibit at the ICA in Boston this weekend. It's the first museum exhibit for Fairey and features examples from his earliest work up to his iconic Obama posters, as well as a handful of brief documentaries and clips. In the brief documentary, "Andre the Giant Has a Posse," Fairey explains how his original Andre stickers (which he refers to above) were meant to poke fun of gangs and skater culture, but evolved into much more.

The exhibit lasts until August 16th and is definitely worth checking out if you're a Fairey fan.

I know plenty of folks are critical of Fairey's work, but I don't find much of the most-repeated criticism terribly compelling. It's simplistic, some say. The music of the Beach Boys sounds simple, too. Try recreating it. It's derivative or he steals from other people are the most frequent arguments. What isn't derivative? And Fairey's been completely open about his sources since his earliest work. See Warhol and Rauchenberg, two of the luminaries he's compared with in this exhibit.

Fairey's work is often succinct and iconic. Those are valuable traits that might look easy, but prove quite difficult to pull off with any regularity.

More:

"Street Cred," ARTINFO - explains the origins of the pointed "Obey" meme and offers thoughtful criticism of the commercialization of his work
Video: Shepard Fairey on Fighting the AP Over Obama HOPE Image

RIP Robert S. McNamara

2009-07-06T21:03:00.005-04:00

“We burned to death 100,000 Japanese civilians in Tokyo — men, women and children. LeMay said, ‘If we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals.’ And I think he’s right. He — and I’d say I — were behaving as war criminals. What makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?” - Robert S. McNamara

Robert McNamara seemed a tortured soul towards the end of his life. Errol Morris's compelling 2003 documentary, The Fog of War, found him apologetic, even haunted. Can we imagine Donald Rumsfeld, who served in the same position, Secretary of Defense, as McNamara, similarly apologetic some time into the future? Or Bush? Or Cheney? It's hard to imagine. But I suppose it's possible.

More: McNamara writing in Foreign policy in May/June 2005 on the dangers of nuclear proliferation

Subway Poem 7

2009-07-05T20:31:00.002-04:00

Young European girl, twenty-something
slouching beside her hooded friend
She sucks her thumb
And I smile
Hoping she sees it
not as a smile of derision
But of understanding
I know, it's a big city
Filled with buzz, jitter, and judder
Like so much else of the world

Subway Poem 6

2009-06-12T01:11:00.000-04:00

On the subway, across from me
I see a girl with the same scar
as I.

A compound fracture to the radius on her left arm
leaves its tracks down the otherwise smooth skin
of her arm.

We have something in common.
And nothing in common.

6/7

Some Thoughts on Torture

2009-04-23T21:29:00.011-04:00

There are some subjects my idealistic self hopes people won't continue to politicize. Abortion is one and torture is most certainly another.

I'm less interested in what one person in any administration has to say about torture than what experts say, who refer to rational, carefully considered evidence. Empirical data.

Let's not fall then for the fallacy of anecdotal evidence. The possibility that torture "worked" on one person (and let's remember that 24 is fiction - and fiction created by a man who was an open fan of the Bush administration) wouldn't justify its use on prisoners willy nilly anyway - especially when those prisoners were often gathered on a so called "field of battle" without any evidence that they were actually participating in acts of terrorism. Sadly, some of the people have even been proven completely innocent later, though they have received permanent physical and psychological damage from their mistreatment.

Conservative pundit Andrew Sullivan has been carefully cataloguing the ethical and efficacy problems with torture for many months now. I recommend searching for "torture" on his blog and delving into the reams of thoughtful evidence he's compiled.

Let's also recognize that the mere fact that something might (upon rare occasions, possibly) prove effective, does not automatically justify its use. The ends does not justify the means. Otherwise, we might quickly return to all manner of barbarism.

It's surprising to be put in the position in the 21st century of arguing against the use of torture. What has 9/11 done to us?

Washington Post - "The Torture Myth"
Army Col. Stuart Herrington, a military intelligence specialist who conducted interrogations in Vietnam, Panama and Iraq: Aside from its immorality and its illegality, says Herrington, torture is simply "not a good way to get information."

PBS - "Debating Torture"
Sen. John McCain: "First, subjecting prisoners to abuse leads to bad intelligence because under torture a detainee will tell his interrogator anything to make the pain stop."

"Science and Engineering Ethics," 2004 - Springer
A utilitarian argument against torture interrogation of terrorists

Salon - "Mixed Messages on Torture"
The U.S. Army declares torture useless
Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, the Army deputy chief of staff on "tough" interrogation techniques: "No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices," Kimmons said. "I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the past five years, hard years, tells us that. ... Any piece of intelligence which is obtained under duress through the use of abusive techniques would be of questionable credibility." Kimmons conceded that bad P.R. about abuse could work against the United States in the war on terror. "It would do more harm than good when it inevitably became known that abusive practices were used. We can't afford to go there."

MSNBC - "Military agency warned against 'torture'"

Red Cross Report - "ICRC Report on the Treatment of 14 'High Value Detainees' in CIA Custody" [PDF]

U.S. Department of Justice - "Torture Memos" [PDF]

Finally, Amnesty International enables you to write your senators and state representatives asking them to investigate and prosecute those who responsible for encouraging a climate of torture on behalf of the United States.

Crowdsourcing Content

2009-04-22T20:30:00.007-04:00

I have a new post about crowdsourcing content over at Razorfish's Scatter/Gather blog. One of life's little mysteries is why folks would want to contribute content of one sort or another for free in the first place. I briefly describe some incentives and also discuss framing your inquiries and networking for providers.

Speaking of crowdsourcing, Iain McDonald, the founder of Amnesia | Razorfish, laid down the gauntlet today at the Razorfish Client Summit, asking attendees to see how many results they could create for a freshly minted word, specifically "razorfunfish" on Google within a single day. A prize would also be given to the person who created the entry, which rose to the top of the heap.

Well, moments later, I noted that results were already appearing. It'll be interesting to see who comes up with the most effective means of "owning" the term. I'm seeing some pretty creative efforts already. Someone even bought the URL. Also, coincidental to the subject of my article above, someone created an entry on Wikipedia. We'll see how long it lasts.

Also: Google results for razorfunfish

Kieren Hebden & Steve Reid - NYC

2009-04-18T20:33:00.003-04:00

KIERAN HEBDEN & STEVE REID
NYC (CD) – Domino

Kieran Hebden loses the Four Tet moniker again for this instrumental album with jazz drummer extraordinaire Steve Reid, their fourth expedition together. As its title intimates, it's an homage to New York with most of the songs paying particular attention to specific NYC locales. Those tunes comprise a flyby visit to the city with two tunes, the slow descent of "Arrival" and the ambient exit of "Departure," bracketing the trip. NYC attempts to capture the city's fizz and sizzle with limited instrumentation, relying very heavily on Reid's drumming and Hebden's ever-inspired knob fiddling. And since it was crafted within two days in a New York studio, the collaboration also bears a loose, improvisational sound. With its rumbling bass and skittering drums, "Lyman Place" begins like a number from a gritty David Holmes soundtrack, while eventually transmogrifying into something akin to a jet taking off. Then the clamor of “1st & 1st” approximates the hurly burly of that East Village intersection, which Seinfeld’s Kramer described as “the nexus of the universe.” Later, "Between B & C" commences with a sample of melodic guitar, bearing a hint of Alphabet City’s Latin influence, and also proves the disk’s most accessible track. NYC rounds out with “Departure,” a comparatively minimalist track, featuring accelerating Reich-like tintinnabulation. Like all of these tracks, it’ll provide challenging, yet rewarding grist for your ear. – Robert Stribley

kieranhebdenandstevereid.com

This review was originally published in Skyscraper Magazine, Issue 30 (Spring 2009)

The Matthew Herbert Big Band - There's Me & There's You

2009-04-18T20:28:00.005-04:00

The latest and unfortunately last issue of Skyscraper has hit the stands. A sign of the times, the mag will cease to occupy physical space and will be going entirely online in the coming months. Two of my reviews from the issue follow.

THE MATTHEW HERBERT BIG BAND
There’s Me and There’s You (CD) – !K7

Those familiar with Matthew Herbert won’t be surprised that his new effort, There’s Me and There’s You, proves a sometimes challenging, always swinging compendium of glitchy show tunes. This second release from his incarnation as The Matthew Herbert Big Band is also a highly political album. We’re told its “dominant theme is power and its abuses in the 21st century,” and its cover even features a petition for music to be “a political force of note and not just the soundtrack to over-consumption.” It’s complex and cheerily excoriating in a way that only Herbert could arrange. “The Story,” for example, begins with a rude shock of sound, a snap like lightning, then settles into heavy beats and then finger snaps before London’s Eska Mtungwazi kicks in with her powerful vocals. It’s a delight divining the mélange of sounds Herbert serves up. He swipes the sounds of matches being lit, nails being driven into a coffin, and, er, 70 condoms getting dragged across the floor of the British Museum, among others. Most provocatively, he knit “Nonsounds” together with recordings from Palestine, including cicadas, roosters, and the sound of protesters being shot against the wall separating Palestine from Israel. The see-sawing here between expertly-crafted big band sound and more abrasive electronica may prove too challenging for some, but for those accustomed to Herbert’s manic method of musical chemistry, he doesn’t fail to satisfy and provoke. – Robert Stribley

matthewherbertbigband.com

This review was originally published in Skyscraper Magazine, Issue 30 (Spring 2009)

AutoPromotion

2009-03-30T23:49:00.001-04:00

I have a new article, "Auto promotion: Using Twitter in the automotive industry," on Razorfish's Headlight blog about how the automotive industry is using (or failing to use) Twitter.

Kudos to Razorfish

2009-03-18T18:49:00.004-04:00

Kudos to Razorfish for winning a MIN Best of the Web Award for Design for our work on WWD.com. I'm happy to say I worked on the project as a content strategist.

Scatter/Gather

2009-03-13T11:57:00.007-04:00

Proud to announce the launch of Razorfish's new content strategy blog, Scatter/Gather. My first contribution, "To Fabricate or Not to Fabricate" critiques the practice of "astroturfing," wherein folks basically fabricate grassroots campaigns or, more loosely, positive reviews for a company or products. I advise against.

Don't Sounds Like Your Parents

2009-03-02T14:12:00.000-05:00

AdRants comments on Don't Sounds Like Your Parents, a site we developed at Razorfish for the Partnership for a Drug-Free America.

Protected

2009-02-20T17:42:00.002-05:00

Protected: Massive Samples is the new album, which collects songs that Massive Attack have sampled throughout their albums.

Guantanamo To Go

2009-01-22T23:44:00.024-05:00

Great change is already afoot in the United States as our newly minted President, Barack Obama, ordered the shutdown of Guantanamo Bay, saying the orders reflect "an understanding that dates back to our Founding Fathers: that we are willing to observe core standards of conduct not just when it's easy, but also when it's hard."

You can commend Obama on his action via Amnesty International's prepared message, which also encourages him ensure that an independent commission to investigate abuses committed by the U.S. government in its "war on terror" is set up and to ensure that anyone responsible for human rights violations is held accountable."

Minding Your Microblogging Manners

2009-01-21T11:10:00.001-05:00

My new article "Mind Your Microblogging Manners" is live on Slant, Razorfish's newsletter on the intersection of marketing and technology. (Link to PDF.)

The opening couple of paragraphs follow:

If you have any doubt about the impact of Twitter as a powerful forum for communication, talk to the folks at Motrin. In mid-November, Motrin pulled an ad aimed at mothers – or Motrin Moms – from the homepage of its Web site after scores of angry moms protested on Twitter that the ad slighted them for using baby slings. As a result, Motrin had to restructure their site after taking it down for part of the day.

Arguments followed as to whether Motrin should’ve pulled the ad or not. Perhaps, some argued,
they overreacted to a vocal, if highly organized (thanks to Twitter), minority of voices.
Regardless, the episode is another milestone in Twitter’s growth and proof of the economical
power it affords. Instead of smarting at the impact of the medium, companies would do well to
embrace it, as a powerful and economic means of Social Influence Marketing™.

Winter Thaw - A Playlist

2009-01-16T10:40:00.001-05:00

Trying out 8-Tracks. Not sure whether I'm a fan or not yet, but it's a replacement for Muxtape, which the RIAA put the kibosh. Of course, Favtape still lurks, which does remarkably the same orientation as Muxtape.

The 8-Track selections seem to all fade out after a sample, which quickly proves annoying. There's no explanation on the site for why this is happening. Am I missing something? Maybe they've had to scale back their functionality due to complaints from RIAA as well?

I Feel New York

2009-01-03T01:39:00.002-05:00

Love New York, but not know what to do with her? I Feel New York is a great place to start. The site, currently in Beta, encourages you to select a mood - Naughty, Manly, Girly, Hungover, Energetic, Broke, Romantic, etc - and then offers you a few things to do, via a mashup of Google maps and some cute little icons. You can ask for invitation if you'd like to contribute to fleshing the maps out.

Cavalcade of Quotations

2009-01-03T00:29:00.003-05:00

Doing a little winter cleaning tonight and happened to come across a string of quotations, which meant a lot to me at different times in my life. So, here they are then:

The only kind of dignity, which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others. - Dag Hammarskjöld

I place the struggle for the victory of reason and of moral values above a peace brought by their loss. - Václav Havel in Memorandum

The voice of intelligence ... is drowned by the roar of fear. It is ignored by the voice of desire. It is contradicted by the voice of shame. It is biased by hate and extinguished by anger. Most of all, it is silenced by ignorance. - Dr. Karl Menninger

Values must be acted on to incite change. - me, I think, in grad school

U.S. Department of Paranoia

2009-01-02T12:27:00.001-05:00

Via Reuters: A Muslim family was kicked off an AirTran flight yesterday after passengers heard them talking about safest seats.

What's unclear to me is: why weren't the complaining passengers the ones kicked off the plane? After all, they were the ones creating the ruckus, not the Muslim family. Apparently, to be Muslim is to be guilty by default.

Woven Hand - Ten Stones

2008-12-19T19:49:00.002-05:00

WOVEN HAND
Ten Stones (CD) – Sounds Familyre

David Eugene Edwards return, his ancient, funereal voice in tow for the eleven songs, which comprise Ten Stones, the solid, if somewhat predictable new effort from Denver's Woven Hand. He jump-starts the effort with “Beautiful Axe,” which contains the sometimes baffling admixture of Native American imagery and New Testament fervor we’ve come to expect from his band. He engages his dirgelike delivery on the sermonic “Not One Stone,” too, which references Christ’s apocalyptic prophecy of the destruction of the buildings his disciples had admired, so that “not one stone would be unturned.” If there’s one complaint to level against this effort then, it’s that Ten Stones begins to smack of a patented Woven Hand template: ominous vocals, redolent with foreboding religious references sung against raw rock. As if fearing this tendency himself, Edwards does throw us for a loop or two: The album’s riveting centerpiece “White Knuckle Grip” chronicles wild rides and Saturday night carousing via dirty, bluesy Southern rock. Even here, though, Edwards pauses to ask the man upstairs to keep an eye on him. The most startling entry is Edwards' take on Antonio Carlos Jobim’s "Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars." Edwards allies his lilting drone to the samba song, modulating his tone, but still infusing it with enough of drama to throw a few threatening shadows across the starry skies.
– Robert Stribley

wovenhand.com

This review was originally published in Skyscraper Magazine, Issue 29 (Winter 2009)

Joan as Policewoman - To Survive

2008-12-19T19:34:00.002-05:00

JOAN AS POLICE WOMAN
To Survive (CD) – Cheap Lullaby

I saw Joan Wasserman open for Joseph Arthur a few years ago in Denver, Colorado before I could really appreciate her in toto. She played entirely by herself and was pretty riveting, but I wasn't familiar enough with her music then. Oh, to return to that moment back and appreciate it properly. Wasserman's latest effort under the Joan as Poilice Woman moniker doesn't pack the visceral wallop of her last effort, Real Life, but To Survive is a lovely, refined effort nonetheless. It’s an intimate affair, whether you're ensconced in the slo-mo drip of "Start of my Heart" or the sultry, almost funereal "Honor my Wishes." The dirty guitar on "Holiday" is about as noisy as the album gets, but it's distorted and mixed in far enough back not to disrupt the proceedings. On all these tracks, Wasserman’s tender, quavering vocals are generally the focus, as well as her hesitant, jabbing piano. She maintains this tone on the yin/yang duo of “To Be Loved” and “To Be Lonely” and on the title track, in which she addresses her childhood fear that she might meet the fate of her namesake, Joan of Arc. Eventually, Rufus Wainwright joins Wasserman on “To America,” a subtle, almost stately rebuke to her country’s recent recklessness, closing the album with a loping beat, and, eventually, fading skyrockets. – Robert Stribley

joanaspolicewoman.com

This review was originally published in Skyscraper Magazine, Issue 29 (Winter 2009)

Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds - Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!

2008-12-19T19:04:00.005-05:00

The latest issue of Skyscraper has hit the stands. Here are three of my reviews from the previous issue, starting with my favorite album of the year.

NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS
Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! (CD) – Anti

The old-timey preacher may have warned that our arms are too short to box with God, but damned if Nick Cave ain’t gonna give it a shot anyway. “We call upon the author to explain,” he insists six songs into the emphatically titled Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, Cave’s latest electric assembly with the Seeds. What follows is a rattling good album from the now 51-year-old Cave and his increasingly hoary disciples. In Cave’s topsy-turvy world, Lazarus, freshly raised from the dead, proves rather ungrateful, when confronted with the pace of “the dog-eat-dog world” and set offs for the left coast only to discover it equally inhospitable. From there, the threads are hard to follow, but who cares: Cave calls and we follow. Along the way, we encounter a cavalcade of sweaty meat lockers, receptive vulvae, hand guns, angels, and hotel beds. Against the crunch of guitars and The Seeds “Ooo-Ooo” background vocals, “Albert Goes West” follows three more men on their respective quests across America, and none of them seem to find what they’re looking for either. The song ends, however, with the narrator exclaiming, “I like it here!!!,” extolling the virtues of staying put. It’s a gentle reminder that wherever you go, there you are. And those pleasures you’re looking for may already be in your lap. Elsewhere, when Cave finds his bliss, it’s settled right beside him, too – and often in mundane places. The gorgeous “Jesus of the Moon” takes place within a hotel room. And “Moonlight” and “Midnight Man” place the onus on time to proffer pleasure, not place (nor religion, as the explosive “We Call upon the Author” declaims). Apropos of Cave’s disposition, beauty's often swirling within a cacophony. Tripping piano and snarling guitar propel Cave through “Lie Down Here (& Be My Girl)” with the Seeds cooing and chorusing along with him. “Night of the Lotus Eaters” proceeds at a gentler pace, but not without an industrial clatter. So, too, the spookily beautiful “Moonland” creeps along, itchily, and “Hold on to Yourself” materializes within the subtle, circadic swirl of Warren Ellis’s looping strings. By the time we get to the album closer, “More News from Nowhere,” —and note that the place now is explicitly “nowhere”— Caves practically ambles through eight minutes of dense lyrics. Still, we’re in no hurry for him to leave. – Robert Stribley

nickcaveandthebadseeds.com

This review was originally published in Skyscraper Magazine, Issue 29 (Winter 2009)

Best Albums of 2008

2008-12-07T00:32:00.003-05:00

Here's my 10 favorite albums from the past year. There's a bunch of stuff I haven't heard yet, and I tend to buy a few disks near the end of the year, if I think I've missed something I'd like - so this may change. The order's somewhat debatable, too.

1. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Dig Lazarus Dig!
2. Elbow - Seldom Seen Kid
3. Hot Chip - We Were Made in the Dark
4. Joan as Policewoman - To Survive
5. Bug - London Zoo
6. Portishead - 3
7. Saul Williams - The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust!
8. Steinski - What Does It All Mean?
9. Johnny Cash Remixed (aside from the godawful Snoop Dogg track)
10. Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree OR Spiritualized - Songs in A&E

What, no Vampire Weekend? I really enjoyed some of it, but to me they lacked the soul of the musicians whose music they templated: Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon.

Technically, Saul Williams was released late last year in its digital format, but it got a meatspace release in July '08. There's more soul in any 30 seconds of it, than in the whole Vampire Weekend set.

Your suggestions?

I know I'd like to hear more of TV on the Radio's latest, as well as Flying Lotus, Fleet Foxes, Hold Steady, Benga, Juana Molina, Randy Newman. I'm sure there's a slew of other great stuff I didn't get around, too, as well.

CNN Vs. Science

2008-12-04T22:05:00.003-05:00

In a bizarre and disheartening move today, CNN announced they are lopping off their entire science department, including technology and environment staff and their chief technology and environment correspondent, Miles O'Brien. In an age where there's so much misinformation and ignorance around important scientific subjects, I can think of other areas , which could've been cut (or at least reduced in their scope) and brought greater integrity to CNN as a news-gathering enterprise, rather than just another channel for entertainment. Call me an idealist, but news should be more about what we need to know and less about that which we simply want to know.

(Via CJR )

Close Guantanamo Bay

2008-11-30T20:51:00.001-05:00

Amnesty International has a petition asking that President Obama make it a high priority to announce plans to close Guantanamo Bay soon after taking office.

Go here to sign it.

Snag Film

2008-11-25T13:06:00.006-05:00

Documentary lover? Snag Films lets you watch docs online for free and embed promos for them (or snag them) on your site. Here's their most popular offering, Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me.

Some Nice Things I've Laid Out For You

2008-11-24T10:21:00.007-05:00

Brian Eno on NPR's This I Believe - "Singing allows us to stop being me for a moment and become us."
A PDF of that fake New York Times issue, 1 million copies of which were recently distributed recently by The Yes Men. I really, really want one of the originals.
KASK Hats - hand-knit beanies and whatnot by Kaj Zackrisson and Sverre Liliequist, two Swedish professional free skiers featured on Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations.
Duckrabbit by Paul St George, 2008. This fun, simple sculpture was fashioned by the same guy who created the Telectroscope, which graced DUMBO and London earlier this year. Eyestorm suggests you buy two so you can get both the duck and the rabbit, but you can't fool me; you get both anyway.
The (Mostly) True Story of Helvetica and the New York City Subway by Paul Shaw - how the signage on New York's subway came to be in Helvetica, except when it's not. Which is pretty often.

Death Watch for the Watch?

2008-11-17T17:48:00.014-05:00

Numerous folks commenting on this Wired post had the same thought that I did: the watch is the sixth gadget getting killed by the cell phone. (Tangentially, the mobile phone hasn't killed the laptop. It has, however, knocked off the beeper.)

Most of us grew up with watches and not cell phones. What happens with folks who grew up having both? I would be surprised if watch sales don't decline. Turns out they have already -dramatically - in some parts:

From a 2006 Businessweek article "Time's up for watch sales in Japan":

According to a new survey by Seiko Watches, the proportion of Japanese aged between 16-49 wearing wristwatches has plummeted from 70% in 1997 to 46% today. The culprit, if you haven’t already guessed, is the mighty cell phone.

Another study shows clock and watch sales both falling five percent in 2005 after four years of slow growth. Much more recently, this September '08 IHT article details declining watch sales - in this case due to the slumping economy. And anecdotally, a collegue says his wife is an 8th-grade teacher and some of her students can't tell time via a regular clock or watch. "If it wasn’t for their cell phone, they wouldn’t know what time it is."

So in the not-too-distant future, will watches be like Captain Kirk's Kirk antique bifocals? They weren't generally really necessary – just more of a antique instrument kept around for nostalgia's sake. I suspect people will keep them around for that reason, as well, of course as (often gaudy) status symbols.

Lest you think this as death of the watch Schadenfreude, I have three working watches (depicted above), plus two or three others I just don't seem to be able to part with. Since none of them would fetch more than 50 bucks on eBay, guess I fit into the nostaglia category.

Mixing It Up With Obama

2008-11-07T19:18:00.003-05:00

Throwing a link out to DJ Z-Trip's fantastic Obama mix , while it's still up. It's a hip-hop mix he created for some fundraisers he organized with Shepard Fairey. Having just labeled it hip-hop, it actually runs a gamut, including stuff from Pink Floyd to Public Enemy. And though it's a thematic mix, it's also tough-minded, aggressive, never slipping into the sort of sappy, reverent melange, which often results from politically oriented music. More a call to action than a praisefest. Z-Trip even breaks at one point to rebuke everyone who's not registered to vote and send them out to the lobby to sign up.

Tracklisting here.
Lots more remixes by DJ Z-Trip here , too.

A List of Demands

2008-11-05T21:45:00.006-05:00

OK, these aren't so much demands - that's an allusion to an excellent Saul Williams song - but here's a list of 10 reforms and changes I'd like to see take place now that we have a left-of-center President and a majority Democrat Senate. Some of these reforms may confirm the suspicions of the moment's more dismayed conservatives. They needn't worry: I'm probably further to the left of President Elect Obama anyway ...

Let's

Work with the Iraqis to plan an appropriate time to leave the country, and funnel more aid towards Afghanistan.
Institute universal health care.
Remove all travel restrictions for Americans and Cuban-Americans to Cuba.
Reinstate trade with Cuba.
Close Guantanamo Bay immediately.
Start a movement to have anti-gay marriage laws struck down as un-Constitutional. Pass legislation which legalizes gay marriage in every state in the Union.
Legalize marijuana for both medical and recreational use and determine what, if any, fronts in the "War on Drugs" are actually successful, dismantle the rest.
Install a highly-qualified female Muslim to a position in high office.
Provide amnesty for illegal aliens who meet certain conditions.
Reform our prisons, which are cesspools of violence and turn criminals into monsters.

If you believe in any of these causes, why not track down a related non-profit you can support or at least join a Facebook group, so you can keep track of the issues.

And feel free to add your own "demands" in the comments, too.

Who Said It?

2008-11-05T21:24:00.001-05:00

Last night a prominent political adviser remarked that the idea that "an African-American candidate who was aspirational and inspirational, who appealed to the better angels of our nature, is very powerful. It's a night for our country to celebrate, and for the world to celebrate."

Who made that statement after the landslide election of Barack Obama? Karl Rove.

Welcome to America 2.0

2008-11-05T01:59:00.007-05:00

New York City is electric with celebration and joy. Smiles splitting every face on the subway, the sidewalk. Grins and shouts from cars. It's the end of one era and the fresh beginning of another.

This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It can't happen without you, without a new spirit of service, a new spirit of sacrifice. So let us summon a new spirit of patriotism, of responsibility, where each of us resolves to pitch in and work harder and look after not only ourselves but each other. ...

To who would tear the world down: We will defeat you. To those who seek peace and security: We support you. And to all those who have wondered if America's beacon still burns as bright: Tonight we proved once more that the true strength of our nation comes not from the might of our arms or the scale of our wealth, but from the enduring power of our ideals: democracy, liberty, opportunity and unyielding hope.

That's the true genius of America: that America can change. Our union can be perfected. What we've already achieved gives us hope for what we can and must achieve tomorrow.

- Barack Obama

I've always believed that America offers opportunities to all who have the industry and will to seize it. Senator Obama believes that, too.

But we both recognize that, though we have come a long way from the old injustices that once stained our nation's reputation and denied some Americans the full blessings of American citizenship, the memory of them still had the power to wound.

A century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage in many quarters.

America today is a world away from the cruel and frightful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the election of an African-American to the presidency of the United States.

Let there be no reason now ... Let there be no reason now for any American to fail to cherish their citizenship in this, the greatest nation on Earth.

- John McCain

I voted for John McCain because I admire him immensely as a person, and agree with him on many more issues than I do with Senator Obama. And I ask a rhetorical question: Can we McCain voters, without embarrassment, shed a tear of patriotic joy about the historic significance of what just happened? And I offer a short, rhetorical answer.

Yes, we can.

- Mike Potemra, The National Review

MSNBC Election Results

2008-11-04T11:41:00.003-05:00

Lincoln

2008-11-04T00:08:00.000-05:00

Statue of Lincoln, Union Square, NY, taken this weekend. More of my photos on Flickr.

May the most Lincolnesque candidate win today.

Go Vote

2008-11-03T11:05:00.003-05:00

Obama album cover by Mark Avecedo

Mike Ladd - Nostalgialator

2008-11-03T00:42:00.001-05:00

MIKE LADD

Nostalgialator (CD) – Definitive Jux

If you’re familiar Mike Ladd's previous work, you may know what to expect on this re-release of his excellent 2004 album, Nostalgialator. Or not. I'm not sure anything could prepare you for the disk’s opener “Dire Straits Plays Nuremberg.” Ostensibly a hip-hop album, Nostalgialator really proves a ragged pastiche that defies genre. “Sail Away Ladies” showcases a rumbling electronic blues sound, while “Trouble Shot” sounds more like Jon Spencer’s raucous brand of blues. Ripe with Ladd’s jabbing wordplay and cut through with discordant, more experimental material, Nostalgialator whiplashes between slinkier fare like “Earn to Fall” and “Off to Mars” and blaring tunes like “Afrostatic,” “Black Orientalist” and “Wildout Day,” the latter often making a political point or two along the way. “Housewives at Play” is probably the most memorable track. It sways its hips suggestively, detailing the lives of women, who are not at all quiet in their desperation, driving their family cars while “thirsty between the knees.” And on the bubbly headphone-friendly “How Electricity Really Works,” Ladd throws some wonder into the mix with all that sensuality and passion. – Robert Stribley

myspace.com/mikeladd

This review was originally published in Skyscraper Magazine, Issue 28 (Summer 2008)

Nick Cave & Warren Ellis - The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

2008-11-03T00:30:00.008-05:00

NICK CAVE & WARREN ELLIS
The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (CD) – EMI

For the Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Nick Cave and Bad Seed violinist Warren Ellis have collaborated to create a reserved, but deeply beautiful soundtrack. The first thing soundtracks usually prove guilty of is bombast, but there’s none of that to be had here. Instead, Assassination opens with "Rather Lovely Thing," offering tender fiddle against piano, not much else, and conjuring the melancholy beauty you’d expect upon seeing Cave or Ellis’s name attached to anything. “Last Ride to KC” follows later with deep cello sawing gently against a constant buzz of violin. Simple piano and violin provide most of the instrumentation on other standout tracks like “Moving On” and “Song for Jesse,” too. So, what are we to make of the fact that two Aussies forged the soundtrack for a movie about such an iconic American figure? Well, Cave is no stranger to the genre, having penned his own outback Western, The Proposition. He and Ellis produced the soundtrack for that film, too. Next up? Cave and Ellis are working on a soundtrack for the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. It’s hard to imagine two men better suited for the job. – Robert Stribley

nickcaveandthebadseeds.com

This review was originally published in Skyscraper Magazine, Issue 28 (Summer 2008)

Underworld - Oblivion With Bells

2008-11-03T00:24:00.005-05:00

The latest issue of Skyscraper should hit stands soon. Here are three of my reviews from the previous issue.

UNDERWORLD

Oblivion with Bells (CD) – Ato

Overall, Oblivion With Bells is more about shy tintinnabulation than thudding beats, so club kids looking for more heaving dancefloor filler like “Pearl's Girl” or “Born Slippy” may want to look elsewhere. Still, Oblivion – Underworld's eighth album proper – does reward with subtle, sophisticated artisanship. While “Crocodile” does attempt to fill the obligatory banging club track slot, it's not the most noteworthy track, even if it does share moments of shivery elegance. More compelling, even cinematic is the gorgeous “Beautiful Burnout” throughout which Karl intones about “blood on a tissue on the floor of a train.” Over five minutes into the track, clattering percussion slips in, a spine-tingling moment during a recent Underworld concert. If you can get past Hyde's idiosyncratic rapping, “Ring Road” proves another standout track. Aboriginal rhythms and didgeridoo give way to thumping bass, as Hyde riffs on London’s multi-culti street scene. “To Heal” opens with a burst of sound that sounds alarmingly like the opening note to the Simpson’s theme. It quickly transmutes, however, into a quiet, meditative piece, which sounds more like a consciousness gradually tinkling to life. Oblivion may mystify the “lager, lager” set, but it should satisfy those who allow it to envelop them over a few listens. – Robert Stribley

underworldlive.com

This review was originally published in Skyscraper Magazine, Issue 28 (Summer 2008)

Let 'Em Talk

2008-11-03T00:23:00.000-05:00

Razorfish's Headlight blog focuses on digital trends in the automotive industry.

My article "Let 'Em Talk" was just published there last week. It discusses how car dealership employees use message boards and what can be learned from them - and consequently, the value for dealership employees in having a social networking outlet.

Saul Williams Says Vote for Change

2008-11-02T01:16:00.003-04:00

Williams also has one of the better albums out this year, The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of NiggyTardust, produced by Trent Reznor.

www.saulwilliams.com

Scary Monster & Super Creeps

2008-10-31T18:04:00.003-04:00

For your listening enjoyment, I created a Halloween FavTape: Scary Monsters & Super Creeps. Happy Halloween.

Broadcast Yourself

2008-10-30T11:29:00.001-04:00

The video ain't much to look at, but I just tried Qik, which allows you to live stream video from your mobile phone to the Qik Web site. That video is broadcast publicly (unless you choose otherwise), and automatically saved to your profile. Set up, as the name suggest, was very quick, and operating the installed application from my cell, astonishingly easy. I'd say the implications of this sort of technology for citizen journalism are huge.