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POPSNewsflash about me: I got tenure! This is a personal note... This semester, I was up for tenure at the small Pennsylvania college where I work. I was just informed a few days ago that my tenure bid was approved. This clip says a little bit about what that means.
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POPSBarbara Ehrenreich on the criminalization of poverty There are a lot of Kafkaesque stories in this piece, like that of wheelchair-bound 62-year-old homeless veteran Al Szekely, who was imprisoned after a nighttime raid on a homeless shelter. His crime? He had an outstanding court summons for criminal trespassing -- he'd gotten a ticket for sleeping on a sidewalk. In other words, " hey arrested a homeless man in a shelter for being homeless." The truancy discussion strikes me as the most vicious part, though.
14
POPSDowntown business district bans outdoor photography Silver Spring, Md., where I spent a lot of time as a kid, now has a "revitalized" downtown area, where, as it turns out, you are not allowed to take photographs. Why? The main business street, though it was built and paid for with taxpayer money, was "vacated" by the county and leased to a private developer, who now manages the space. This says a lot about the demise of the commons and of public space in the U.S., I think. The photographer in question comments: "I wonder if people know they traded their rights for a Potbelly’s and a Starbucks" (source: http://snipr.com/1nmvg). Also see the discussion at http://flickr.com/groups/dcphotorights/
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POPSLearning from history: the British pullout from Iraq, 1932 Maj. Joel Rayburn, a historian and officer now posted to CENTCOM, writes about the dangers of a too-hasty exit from Iraq, drawing on the British experience post-WWI. I need to read this more carefully, but it seems his ideas present a pretty strong rebuke to both Republican and Democratic positions on the war right now. He says: a purely military approach, which is what the administration is pushing (though they claim not to be) will probably make things worse, but leaving now would probably be just as bad. From Foreign Affairs; a cached version.
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POPSBill Kristol: "Why Bush will be a winner" Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard gives a mostly positive assessment of the Bush presidency. I mostly disagree, but it's worth a read. He's vague on what he thinks the U.S.'s real goals in Iraq are, but he is confident Petraeus will achieve them.
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POPSSexy chatbots deployed to steal your personal information! Some evil geniuses have developed an automated chat program that convinces people it's a real cybersex partner and convinces them to reveal personal information, which can then be used for ID theft, or it lures them to a fake malware-laden website. Called "CyberLover." Only in Russia thus far, but look out.
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POPS6000 Smithsonian images posted to Flickr Public.Resource.Org has downloaded and posted to Flickr 6000 images from the Smithsonian Institution's website. SI asserts it holds copyright; the group claims the images are in the public domain. We'll have to see what happens. Flickr link in the clip.
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POPSJFK, 1963, on peace JFK's commencement address at American University in 1963, after the Cuban missile crisis. In it he remarks on Soviet propaganda claims that the U.S. is planning a "preventative war" -- which he describes as outlandish -- and declares, "The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war."
8
POPSStudy: "Organic farming can feed the world" Compared to the low-intensive non-organic methods used throughout the developing world, organic methods produce significantly greater yields. This is good news. Researchers hope this will put to rest the idea that organic farming simply can't produce enough food to meet global demand.
8
POPSWomen forcibly ejected from Santorum book-signing receive settlement Back in August 2005, four women at a book-signing by then-Sen. Santorum were overheard by members of his staff discussing their disagreement with Santorum's policies. At the staffers' request, Delaware state troopers forcibly removed the women from the bookstore and arrested them. They have now reached a small settlement with the state police, which they are donating to charity. The ACLU, which supported the case, comments that "you can't use the state’s police power to cleanse crowds of dissenting voices." Note that the women weren't even accused of being disruptive or of "protesting"; they were simply overheard talking about opinions unfavorable to the senator -- yeah, one of those guys who used to like to sell himself as a tireless defender of "freedom."
8
POPSGreek statuary showing reconstructed pigmentation Archaeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann has reconstructed the original painting scheme that colored many classical sculptures. The effect is startling. See the NYTimes, http://snipr.com/1sesr. This is the best collection of photos I could find, but it's short on information; plus, it's in Danish.
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POPSPrivacy law: "I've got nothing to hide" misses the point Haven't read this yet, but it looks interesting. Addresses the common, dismissive response to concerns about privacy and the law by people who say, "I've got nothing to hide, so why should I care?" and explains why this misrepresents the nature and importance of privacy.
8
POPSLong-term effects of Iraq war likely worse than Vietnam for U.S. The WaPo interviews a number of experts who suggest that given the current situation, the Iraq war will probably have disastrously long-term fallout for U.S. global standing that "makes Vietnam look like a cakewalk." Already the rest of the world sees the war as incompetently mismanaged, ethically and legally indefensible, strategically misguided, and resulting in a massive humanitiarian catastrophe.
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POPSMel Stuart on the making of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory An interview with the man behind the film version of "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." I never knew the movie was funded by the Quaker Oats Co. as part of a product tie-in that never materialized. Stuart describes such arcana as the difficulties of working with Oompa-Loompas and how to keep a chocolate river from smelling bad.
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POPSBill McKibben on why "self-reliance" is a chimaera Self-reliance is the American "pathology" -- in the consumerist form of everyone cocooned in front of his own TV screen, or the environmentalist back-to-the-land form, or the survivalist nut-job form. We depend on each other & might as well admit it.
7
POPSWhite House "eviscerates" CDC head's climate-change testimony Ho hum. Once again, the White House censors the presentation of scientific data. Hello? America? Anyone paying attention out there? The funny thing is, this time they said they did it because the CDC testimony conflicts with the IPCC report, which it doesn't. But since when does the White House care about the IPCC? Do they think everyone is stupid?
7
POPSConfess your sins anonymously, via Twitter.com I have no idea what to say about this ... except that I doubt I'll be able to keep myself from periodically reading the posts on this account. I haven't posted anything myself, yet, but I'm thinking about it.
7
POPSHow to wreck $100,000,000 worth of cars Mazda Corp. decides to destroy almost 5000 new vehicles after an almost-sinking freighter exposes them to unknown environmental stresses. Turns out wrecking a lot of new cars isn't as easy as it sounds: they created a "disassembly line."
7
POPSObama’s broken promise on Transparency So, who’s operating under false pretenses here: the last administration that’s calling for a full review of its most controversial program or the new one that wraps itself in the political glamor of “transparency” only to take an incoherent shot at its predecessor and move on?
6
POPSClipmarks suggestion: add Tumblr to Clip-to-Blog(tm)? Tumblr and Clipmarks seem like a perfect match. It's easy to embed a clip in a Tumblr-hosted tumblelog, but -- something for the developers to consider -- I bet the site would gain some good visibility from automating the process. Especially if it were just as easy to insert a plain HTML clip (like you can with Clip-to-Blog on Blogger) as it is to embed a Flash clip widget
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