Monday, June 30, 2008

This Brave Nation: Naomi Klein and Tom Hayden

(This is a great series in which they pair up inspiring activists from different generations and have them engage in a dialogue.)

Naomi Klein and Tom Hayden
This Brave Nation



Author, Activist and Former California State Senator Tom Hayden talks in depth with the author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein, about the state of the fourth branch of government: journalists. Both Hayden and Klein became serious journalists in college, and it was during that time that both experienced their defining moment. When Tom Hayden interviewed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr at the 1960 DNC in Los Angeles, he asked questions while imagining the headline, "Tom Hayden Interviews MLK," but by the time he wrote the article he knew there were more important things in the world than personal glory. Naomi Klein rebelled from her liberal, feminist mother until Mark Lepine gunned down fourteen women in what became known as the Montreal Massacre. It was then she realized people were dying for the beliefs her mother fought for, and that realization awakened the activist within her. After both events, Hayden and Klein dedicated their lives to telling the truth about the world, and doing everything in their power to not use subjects like "they," but use "we" instead. It is that distinction that defines their journalism to this day.



To Watch the Video

Watch the previous episodes:

Carl Pope and Van Jones

In any other profession, Carl Pope might be considered a "company man." He has worked loyally and tirelessly in the name of the Sierra Club for thirty years, running the organization – the largest of its kind in the country – since 1992. Van Jones has founded several organizations within the last decade, including The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Green For All. They both live in the Bay Area. They both care intensely about saving the environment. The thing is, they use very distinct methods, although the lines differentiating those methods are blurring as we race further into the 21st century. From the environment to the economy, from old fashioned door-to-door fliers to streaming internet video, Pope and Jones discuss the myriad elements effecting our lives today and the many possible solutions that are nearly within reach.

Bonnie Raitt and Delores Huerta

Bonnie Raitt: legendary musician, feminist, activist. Dolores Huerta: legendary organizer, feminist, activist. Two women who both achieved great successes in their fields and who are not stopping anytime soon. But while one was marching on the streets for migrant laborers, the other was headlining concerts bringing attention to the risks of nuclear energy. Two distinctly different women who chose such opposite paths and came from radically different backgrounds, but both chose to spend their lives trying to make the world a better place for all of us. In this conversation, Raitt and Huerta talk about their passions, their regrets, their fears, and most of all their dreams for future generations.

Anthony Romero and Ava Lowery

It's hard to call someone younger than 18 years old a "legend," but Ava Lowery is just that in progressive circles. She created a website at fourteen where she made videos railing against the war. Today, her site, PeaceTakesCourage.com, gets nearly two million hits per month. And she doesn't live in a liberal hotbed like San Francisco or New York, rather in a small town in Alabama. Anthony Romero is the son of a proud Puerto Rican who worked hard to support his family while waiting tables. Anthony grew up to not only be the first in his family to go to college, but to become the Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union, and someone we thought Ava should have on her cell phone speed dial. Just in case. Together they discuss the legal quagmire the country has become since 9/11, among other quagmires created by George W. Bush and his Administration.

Pete Seeger and Majora Carter

In a Lower Manhattan apartment, one of the greatest living musicians and activists sat down with one of the country's newest great leaders. Pete Seeger, with a list of awards and honors longer than the neck on his famed banjo, still works tirelessly at 88 years of age. He spoke with Majora Carter, the young and indefatigable founder of Sustainable South Bronx, an organization that is re-shaping the neighborhood of her youth through pioneering green-collar economic development projects, about the environmental work he has worked at for more than forty years. And while he's at it, he also finds time to sing a couple songs, demanding the film crew sing along, because it's not nearly as much fun singing to someone as it is singing with someone.

A Toolbox for Sustainable City Living

(Courtesy of LW and Just Seeds)



The Toolbox for Sustainable City Living is a DIY guide for creating locally-based, ecologically sustainable communities in today's cities. Its straightforward text, vibrant illustrations and accessible diagrams explain how urbanites can have local access and control over life's essential resources: food production, water security, waste management, autonomous energy, and bioremediation of toxic soils. Written for people with limited financial means, the book emphasizes building these systems with cheap, salvaged and recycled materials when possible. This book will be an essential tool for transitioning into a sustainable future threatened by the converging trends of global warming and energy depletion.

Topics covered in the book include:
Aquaculture: ponds, plants, fish and algae
Microlivestock and city chickens
Rainwater Harvesting
Low-tech bioremediation: cleaning contaminated soils using plants, fungi and bacteria
Constructed Wetlands/ Greywater
Autonomous energy: bicycle windmills, passive solar
Biofuels: veggie oil vehicles, methane digesters
Struggles for land and gentrification
Humanure and worm composting
Floating Islands to clean stormwater
Asphalt removal and air purification
And much more!

DIY (Archive)

Ongoing:

Apartment Therapy: Saving the World, One Room at a Time

Creative Commons

Instructables: The World's Largest Show & Tell

2008:

A Toolbox for Sustainable City Living

Digital DIY: Web Helps Do-It-Yourselfers Share Ethic

Saving the World One Room at a Time

(Along the line of the DIY site Instructables)

Apartment Therapy

Ken Mondschein: Diamond Engagement Rings

(Courtesy of LW. The Dialogic staff has always supported a boycott of diamonds--your love must be weak if you have to prove it with a "blood" stone!)

Diamond Engagement Rings
by Ken Mondschein
Nerve

There's no more apropos subject for a column on the history of single life than the object that signifies the end of singledom: a sparking diamond set atop a band of gold. Engagement rings have been around since antiquity, and various theories suggest they originated as a miniaturized form of slave bands, a ritualized exchange of wealth, or as symbols of eternity. But while the rich often decorated such rings with jewels, the idea that "only a diamond will do" is a relatively recent innovation. And, as Edward Jay Epstein's 1982 exposé in The Atlantic Monthly and his follow-up book made clear, the way in which would-be grooms became required to tithe "two month's salary" to the bijouterie gods ain't a pretty story. Diamonds, as Carol Channing sang, may be a girl's best friend, but it's a pretty unhealthy, codependent relationship.

For much of human history, diamonds were found in only a few hard-to-reach places — the jungles of Brazil, and a couple of riverbeds in India. They were so rare, in fact, that only the ultra-wealthy could afford them. Archduke Maximillian, who would soon be Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, gave one to Mary of Burgundy to seal their 1477 betrothal in what is often cited as the first historical example of a diamond engagement ring. However, this situation changed in the 1870s, when massive diamond mines were discovered in South Africa. Poorly-paid, abominably treated native African workers could now strip the gems from the earth by the ton. Faced with the prospect of a massive oversupply of diamonds, the investors (chiefly arch-racist Cecil Rhodes and his partner C. D. Rudd) formed the De Beers mining company in 1880. By the end of the century, Sir Ernest Oppenheimer had managed to collect all the colonial African diamond discoveries under the De Beers banner. To quote Epstein, the cartel was (and to some extent still is) "the most successful cartel arrangement in the annals of modern commerce," carefully controlling the supply of diamonds to assure their scarcity and value.

But what about the demand side? How to convince the world that an isometric-hexoctahedral crystal lattice allotrope of carbon was something they absolutely needed to buy?

How to convince the world that an isometric-hexoctahedral crystal lattice allotrope of carbon was something they absolutely needed to buy?
The answer was marketing. Anyone who owns a TV has seen the commercials: the dancing shadows on the wall, the violin score quickening to the point of string-ensemble orgasm. The thirty-second spots are only the latest incarnation of a carefully orchestrated campaign that stretches back decades. In 1938, in the midst of the Great Depression, De Beers formed an alliance with the New York advertising agency N.W. Ayer. With war in Europe looming on the horizon, the United States seemed the safest bet to expand the diamond market, and Ayer performed brilliantly. Soon, Hollywood movies featured prominent product placements, celebrities and actors were festooned with diamonds for public appearances and fashion designers, photographers and reporters were encouraged to talk up the "diamond trend" or the size of the rock Ginger Rogers was sporting.

This, however, was only the beginning. The next step was a psychological approach: consumers everywhere had to see the diamond as the universally recognized symbol of love, commitment and the social status derived from middle-class domesticity. The slogan "a diamond is forever" debuted in 1947, giving consumers not only the idea that the diamond is a symbol of enduring love, but that it shouldn't be resold. This was because diamonds lose considerable value in resale, and since there's no point in paying De Beers full price when you could get a cheaper one second-hand, De Beers loses a lucrative sale on every diamond resold.

Bradley Denton: "Sergeant Chip"

The 2005 Theodor Sturgeon Award winning short story explores the usage of animals in war and how the development of the warrior's moral code would play out for a much more honest creature:

Sgt. Chip

Bradley Denton's Website

To the Best of Our Knowledge: Apocalyptic Fiction

Apocalyptic Fiction
To the Best of Our Knowledge

SEGMENT 1:



After Kevin Brockmeier reads an excerpt from his "Brief History of the Dead," Jim Fleming talks with Justin Taylor, editor of "The Apocalypse Reader," a collection of 34 short stories abut the end of the world. Taylor says writers have always been fascinated by the subject. ... Also, Anne Strainchamps talks with Kevin Brockmeier about his novel which concerns the dead who have not yet passed from living memory.



SEGMENT 2:



Lydia Millet tells Steve Paulson that she lives in the middle of a national park outside Tucson, Arizona, and is always mindful that she is encroaching on the space of the wild creatures when she drives her car. Her novel is called "How the Dead Dream" and considers the current human impact on animals to be apocalyptic in scope. We also hear excerpts from Millet's novel, cited by the National Book Critics Circle as one of the ten best of the year.

SEGMENT 3:



Scott Westerfeld writes wildly popular post-apocalyptic and dystopian science fiction for teenagers. He's the author of the "Peeps" series about parasite-positive vampires, as well as "Uglies" and "Pretties," who live in a world where plastic surgery is compulsory. Westerfeld tells Anne Strainchamps the idea for thee stories came from a friend's experience with a dentist in Los Angeles.



To Listen to the Episode

Thomas Merton: Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

"Democracy cannot exist when [people] prefer ideas and opinions that are fabricated for them. The actions and statements of the citizen must not be mere automatic 'reactions'--mere mechanical salutes, gesticulations signifying passive conformity with the dictates of those in power."

--Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (1966)

To the Best of Our Knowledge: Boredom

BOREDOM: THE TEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE
To the Best of Our Knowledge (Wisconsin Public Radio)

SEGMENT 1:



Lars Svendsen teaches philosophy at the University of Bergen in Norway and is the author of "A Philosophy of Boredom." He talks with Anne Strainchamps about boredom's long, long history. Or maybe it just seems that way. Also Jon Winokur has compiled and edited a book called "Ennui To Go: The Art of Boredom." Doug Gordon combines some of the famous quotes about boredom with some songs about boredom. And the results are anything but boring. And, Ghita Schwartz wrote about "A Case of Boredom" for the February issue of "The Believer" magazine. She reads the opening paragraphs of her essay and tells Jim Fleming what inspired her to write it.



SEGMENT 2:

Augustin De la Pena is a psycho-physiologist who works at a sleep disorders center in South Texas, and a leading authority on boredom. He talks with Steve Paulson and says boredom is not a trivial problem and that it could doom us all.

SEGMENT 3:



Tom Lutz wrote "Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America." He tells Steve Paulson it was his way of dealing with his teen-age son, who never left the couch.

To Listen to the Episode

Studio 360: The Big Gondry

The Big Gondry
Studio 360 (WNYC: New York)
Host: Kurt Andersen



Inspired by his [recent] film "Be Kind Rewind," director Michel Gondry created a special exhibit of movie sets at the Deitch Projects art gallery in New York, where people can walk in and make their own movies. So Studio 360's Michele Siegel gathered her co-workers to remake The Coen brothers cult hit, "The Big Lebowski" -- starring Kurt in the title role.

To Listen to the Episode

Saturday, June 28, 2008

What is the Most Fun I Ever Had?

(After thinking about what makes me happy... this eventually came to mind)

Getting launched out of a wave while body-surfing (or boogie-boarding) and quite literally flying for a few, brief, but fantastic seconds... for those brief moments I would feel like I had escaped this planet.

Staring at the stars out in the desert and realizing that we are but a tiny speck in the universe... and losing my sense of self in the completely awe-inspiring immensity of it all.

Traveling to new places and interacting/engaging with the people who live there.

Deep personal loving relationship with...

Camping with my family/friends when I was a kid/teen ... it was all so exciting, innocent and tribal.

Those heady philosophical conversations with good friends right about the second beer when you really start to feel the ideas flow and everything clicks ... and everyone is laughing, engaging and glowing with the buzz of thought/friendship.

Getting lost in a good book... that makes me think about the world in a new way (I admit I am addicted to books).

Communal Dinners... recent examples include dinners at the Mayers in Lexington, KY; Pit Pig Roast at the Bentons in Prineville, OR; July 4th WeinerFests at the Peyton's in Columbus, OH; dinners with the Webb's in Berea, KY; restaurant feasts with Wes/Anna/Nate/Amy/Jonathan/Danny in New Orleans, LA; weekend feast with previous group and many more at Cumberland Lake, KY; and barbecues at Marchman's/Simon's in Lexington, KY.

Walking/hiking in a stimulating environment... be it urban or a mountain or a beach or a forest... just moving and interacting unmediated with the environment (a curse on I-Pods)

Interacting with animals... whether directly or just observing them in their natural environments.

Mike Davis: Living on the Ice Shelf

Living on the Ice Shelf: Humanity's Meltdown
By Mike Davis
TomDispatch

1. Farewell to the Holocene

Our world, our old world that we have inhabited for the last 12,000 years, has ended, even if no newspaper in North America or Europe has yet printed its scientific obituary.

This February, while cranes were hoisting cladding to the 141st floor of the Burj Dubai tower (which will soon be twice the height of the Empire State Building), the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London was adding the newest and highest story to the geological column.

The London Society is the world's oldest association of Earth scientists, founded in 1807, and its Commission acts as a college of cardinals in the adjudication of the geological time-scale. Stratigraphers slice up Earth's history as preserved in sedimentary strata into hierarchies of eons, eras, periods, and epochs marked by the "golden spikes" of mass extinctions, speciation events, and abrupt changes in atmospheric chemistry.

In geology, as in biology or history, periodization is a complex, controversial art and the most bitter feud in nineteenth-century British science -- still known as the "Great Devonian Controversy" -- was fought over competing interpretations of homely Welsh Graywackes and English Old Red Sandstone. More recently, geologists have feuded over how to stratigraphically demarcate ice age oscillations over the last 2.8 million years. Some have never accepted that the most recent inter-glacial warm interval -- the Holocene -- should be distinguished as an "epoch" in its own right just because it encompasses the history of civilization.

As a result, contemporary stratigraphers have set extraordinarily rigorous standards for the beatification of any new geological divisions. Although the idea of the "Anthropocene" -- an Earth epoch defined by the emergence of urban-industrial society as a geological force -- has been long debated, stratigraphers have refused to acknowledge compelling evidence for its advent.

At least for the London Society, that position has now been revised.

To the question "Are we now living in the Anthropocene?" the 21 members of the Commission unanimously answer "yes." They adduce robust evidence that the Holocene epoch -- the interglacial span of unusually stable climate that has allowed the rapid evolution of agriculture and urban civilization -- has ended and that the Earth has entered "a stratigraphic interval without close parallel in the last several million years." In addition to the buildup of greenhouse gases, the stratigraphers cite human landscape transformation which "now exceeds [annual] natural sediment production by an order of magnitude," the ominous acidification of the oceans, and the relentless destruction of biota.

This new age, they explain, is defined both by the heating trend (whose closest analogue may be the catastrophe known as the Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum, 56 million years ago) and by the radical instability expected of future environments. In somber prose, they warn that "the combination of extinctions, global species migrations and the widespread replacement of natural vegetation with agricultural monocultures is producing a distinctive contemporary biostratigraphic signal. These effects are permanent, as future evolution will take place from surviving (and frequently anthropogenically relocated) stocks." Evolution itself, in other words, has been forced into a new trajectory.

To Read the Rest of the Essay

Maggie Mahar and Niko Karvounis: Drug Addiction--Let Science Replace Ideology

Drug Addiction: Let Science Replace Ideology
by Maggie Mahar and Niko Karvounis
Health Beat



In 1986, Nancy Reagan made it clear that there is “no moral middle ground” when it comes to drug use. You either don’t take drugs—which means you are a “good” person—or you do take drugs, which means you are a “bad” person.”

The Reagan-era outlook on drug addiction has dominated our political culture for nearly three decades, though not without sharp criticism. In March, for instance, the writers of "The Wire," the critically-acclaimed HBO series that brought the Realpolitik of Baltimore’s war on drugs to the small screen, made it clear what they thought of the Reagan approach: “what once began, perhaps, as a battle against dangerous substances, long ago transformed itself into a venal war on our underclass. Since declaring war on drugs nearly 40 years ago, we've been demonizing our most desperate citizens, isolating and incarcerating them and otherwise denying them a role in the American collective. All to no purpose. The prison population doubles and doubles again; the drugs remain.”

They’re right; we are not winning the war on drugs. But the question remains: what should we do now? Those who view illicit drug use as willful behavior believe that we have no choice but to jail those who choose to continue committing crimes. Others who argue that drug addiction is a disease that weakens the addict’s ability to choose argue that rather than stigmatizing the addict and punishing him, we must find new ways to “treat” the patient.

One could argue about who is right. But rather than engaging in yet another political argument about personal responsibility vs. society’s responsibility to help its poorest citizens, it might be helpful to take a look at what medical science has been learning about drug addiction over the past few decades.

Addiction Treatment: Science and Policy for the Twenty-first Century (Johns Hopkins U. Press, 2007) does just that, and in the process “highlights the amazing discord between scientific knowledge and public perception,” according to a review by Stanford University’s Dr. Alex Macario in the June 4th JAMA.

To Read the Rest of the Article

Health (Archive)

Ongoing:

ACLU: HIV/AIDs

ACLU: Reproductive Freedom

AlterNet: Drugs

AlterNet: Health & Wellness

Eat Well Guide: Local/Sustainable/Organic

Expose: America's Investigative Reports

Fora TV: Health and Wellness

Health Beat (The Century Foundation)

Savoring Kentucky (Rona Roberts)

Science Cafe (University of California-San Francisco)

Science Friday (NPR)

Speaking of Faith (American Public Media)

Tara Parker Pope: On Health (The New York Times)

UChannel: Health

2008:

Maggie Mahar: How Vulnerable Are You Really to Heart Attack, Stroke or Breast Cancer?

On the Media: Money Talks/Gateway Drugs (Pharmaceutical Industry)

Tara Parker Pope: News Keeps Getting Worse for Vitamins

Health Director for the Veterans Administration: Average of 18 War Veteran Suicides a Day and 200,000 Sleep Homeless On the Streets On Any Given Night

Bill Moyers Journal: The fight the California Nurses Association (CNA) has been waging over universal healthcare

Democracy Now: Academy Award-Winning Filmmaker Michael Moore on the Election, the Bailout, Healthcare, and 10 Proposed Decrees for the New President’s

The Story: Destroyed by the War

Bernard Lowns' Prescription for Survival

R.D. Laing: The Mystification of Experience

Fora TV: The Future of Health Care--The Candidates' Plans

Alexa Kolbi-Molinas: Proposed Bush Administration Rule Fails to Strike Balance Between Religious Liberty and Access to Health Care

The Farm Bill: Understanding the Political, Agricultural, and Nutritional Impact

Speaking of Faith: Stress and the Balance Within

Thomas R. Frieden: Prevention and Primary Care

Speaking of Faith: Seane Corn on Yoga--Meditation in Action

Tom Burgis: Addicted--William Burroughs and a world in heat

Health Beat: Drug Addiction--Let Science Replace Ideology

AlterNet: School Uses Fake Drunk Driving Tragedy to Scare Students

AlterNet: Top Ten Drug War Stories of 2003

Taking Better Aim at Cancer: A Conversation with Gerard Evan

Warlord (Written and Directed by David Garrett): Short Film

Richard Preston: Panic in Level 4

BusinessWeek/Expose/Bill Moyers Journal: The Business of Poverty

Bruce E. Levine: How Teenage Rebellion Has Become a Mental Illness

Voices From the 2008 ACLU Conference: Jessica Yee

NOW on PBS: Toxic Toys?

Young Americans At High Risk of STDs: Emphasis on Abstinence Policy One of the Problems

Robert Scheer: The Pornography of Power

The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America
By Robert Scheer, Twelve
AlterNet

The following is an excerpt from Robert Scheer's new book, The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America (Twelve, 2008).



War doesn't pay, nor does imperial ambition. That should be self-evident to anyone who has paid attention to the successful trajectory of the American experience, both politically and commercially, since the Republic's founding. It is a statement neither liberal nor conservative in orientation, and until recently it would have been accepted as a commonsense proposition by leading politicians of both political parties.

Although some leaders took us to war, they always claimed to do so reluctantly, as is reflected in the doubts expressed in their memoirs and those of their closest confidants. Lyndon Johnson, musing about the indefensibility of sacrificing even a single young American to die in Vietnam but sacrificing 59,000 of them in order to emerge victorious in his forthcoming election battle with Barry Goldwater, is all too typical. What that evidence reveals is just how intense is the political pressure to reject common sense when the specter of an enemy is raised. Those pressures have always been with us, and to the extent that they derive from national insecurities, political demagogues, economic avarice, overzealous patriotism, and religious or ideological fervor, they are a constant of the human experience in just about any given society.

The amazing thing about the American political experiment is that our system is the one most consciously designed to limit those risks of foreign military adventure, and for most of our history, it has worked out quite well. I don't intend to minimize the expansionist, indeed rapacious conquest of our own continent, or the occasional colonial adventures abroad, as in the Philippines and other outposts from Hawaii to Alaska, but in the main, with few lapses, the public remained properly suspicious of its leaders' intentions. The dominant assumption was the importance of avoiding foreign "entanglements," to use Thomas Jefferson's words of warning about the risks of intervening in the affairs of others. Indeed, that policy of nonintervention was thought by our nation's founders to be a basic demarcation between the politics of the old and new worlds.

By nonintervention, they did not intend indifference to events in the outside world or a narrow protectionist view of trade accompanied by a fortress American military posture. Such a stance, often described as isolationism, obviously is not only out of joint with our current, highly interconnected world, but it didn't make sense at the time of the nation's founding, even when the distance of oceans afforded far more secure borders than today. What nonintervention meant, as was commonly understood even on the tavern bar level, was don't go sticking your nose into other people's business, and certainly don't pick fights that you can't finish. That is a posture that has nothing to do with limiting charitable concern for others beyond your borders, missionary work abroad, humanitarian aid, and everything to do with avoiding the military expeditions that bankrupted the most pretentious and at times successful of empires. Not being like those empires was a driving force in the thinking of the nation's founders, who were in wide agreement on extreme caution as to military intervention.

That guiding idea of nonintervention -- developed by the colonists in rebellion, espoused to great effect by the brilliant pamphleteer Thomas Paine, and crystallized as a national treasure in the final speech to the nation of George Washington -- is as fresh and viable a construct as any of the great ideas that have guided our governance. Washington's Farewell Address, actually a carefully considered letter to the American people crafted in close consultation with Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, is one of our great treasures, but although read each year in the U.S. Senate to mark Washington's legacy, it contains a caution largely ignored by those same senators as they gleefully approve massive spending to enable international meddling of every sort. Their failed responsibility to limit the president's declaration of war has become a farce that as much as anything mocks Congress' obligations as laid out in the Constitution.

Explaining why he, as our first president, followed "our true policy to steer clear of permanent Alliances, with any portion of the foreign World ... Taking care always to keep ourselves, by suitable establishments, on a respectably defensive posture," Washington shunned isolation, and instead held out a vision of peaceful international relations: "Harmony, liberal intercourse with all Nations, are recommended by policy, humanity and interest. But even our Commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce but forcing nothing."

What more powerful though gentle warning could be offered against the instincts to the imperial adventures that have destroyed all great empires? Washington knew this record of imperial folly well, and he was well aware that his countrymen could fall as had others for that siren song of military power coupled with economic greed that had humbled the powers of Europe: "In offering you, my Countrymen, these counsels of an old and affectionate friend ... to moderate the fury of party spirit, to warn against the mischiefs of foreign Intrigue, to guard against the Impostures of pretended patriotism ..."

To Read the Rest of the Excerpt

CFP: Exploding Genre (Deadline: December 20th, 2008)

CFP: Exploding Genre

Call for Papers
Exploding Genre
Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture
Deadline: 20th December 2008
Submission Guidelines

Genre has undergone radical transformations since the advent of a media society, in which popular texts are not so much literary but visual. Narrative studies of genre, such as John Cawelti's Six-Gun Mystique (1970) and Darko Suvin's Metamorphoses of Science-Fiction (1979), were quickly overturned by an increasing interest in cinematic, televisual, visual and digital textualities. Studies of different and interrelated media superceded the structuralist interest in narrative. Increasingly generic identity was conceived of as modal, or adaptable between media, consumed and produced by differently situated groups of readers, cultures and audiences.

Genre became differentiated from within itself, no longer identical but constituted at the interface of various media and readers. It was assembled from other genres, a combination of overlapping, discontinuous tropes that played ironically with its own established forms. Postmodernism had broken with both the neo-classicism of the New Criticism and with a historically minded structuralism to produce a new critical view of genre, one that fostered the emergence of hybrid and self-conscious fictions between media. Its readers were no longer seen as isolated but, in their engagement with multiple practices of interpretation, were recognized in distinct communities. Studies like Janice Radway's Reading the Romance: Women, Romance and Popular Fiction (1991) and Henry Jenkins' Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (1992) explored new ways of looking at popular texts within their contexts.

It is with a view to addressing these changes that this issue of Reconstruction will investigate the function of genre in theory and fictions alike. Papers are sought that address the fragmented state of genre theory, spread as it is across studies of new and old media, fan and reading communities, narrative and visual theory. We are interested in the function of genre in different medias, such as comics and games. Why has genre persisted in this age of multi-modal expressions? What makes it tick, travel across media, to return and coalesce in new and old forms of narrative, visuality and intertextuality?

We envisage papers covering a variety of theoretical / discursive positions, including:
- feminist theory
- queer theory
- postcolonial theory
- convergent/transformative media
- new cultural histories
- ludology

Please send completed essays, multimedial performances, etc. to Helen Merrick and Darren Jorgensen at exp.genre_at_gmail.com by 20th December, 2008. We are happy to consider abstracts and proposals prior to this date. Publication is expected in the third quarter of 2009.

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture (ISSN: 1547-4348) is an innovative online cultural studies journal dedicated to fostering an intellectual community composed of scholars and their audience, granting them all the ability to share thoughts and opinions on the most important and influential work in contemporary interdisciplinary studies. Reconstruction publishes one open issue and three themed issues quarterly. Reconstruction is indexed in the MLA International Bibliography.

Simon Winchester: 'The Black Death,' John Hatcher's Remarkable History of the Plague

'The Black Death,' John Hatcher's Remarkable History of the Plague
by Simon Winchester
The New York Sun



This totally absorbing book presents the best account ever written about the worst event to have ever befallen the British Isles. In the hands of John Hatcher, an English medievalist of sober and steady reputation who has for decades been squirreled away in one of the smaller, older, and least obtrusive of Cambridge colleges, the extraordinary tragedy of the great plague — which wiped out as much as 60% of the population of 14th-century Europe and killed an estimated 75 million worldwide — has been brought to life in a manner rarely attempted, and with a level of success even more rarely achieved.

To Read the Review

Friday, June 27, 2008

From Political Prisoner to Cabinet Minister: Legendary Brazilian Musician Gilberto Gil on His Life, His Music and the Digital Divide

From Political Prisoner to Cabinet Minister: Legendary Brazilian Musician Gilberto Gil on His Life, His Music and the Digital Divide
Democracy Now
Host: Amy Goodman



Forty years ago, the legendary Brazilian musician Gilberto Gil was a political prisoner. Today, he is a cabinet official in the Brazilian government. As protests raged across the globe in 1968, Gil was at the center of a cultural and political revolution in Brazil known as Tropicalia. The movement was seen as such a threat to Brazil’s military dictatorship that Gil was jailed, then forced into exile, where he would become one of the world’s most celebrated musicians as well as a spokesperson for Brazil’s emerging black consciousness movement. Today, Gil remains one of Brazil’s best known artists, as well as the country’s Minister of Culture. He is now spearheading a different kind of anti-establishment revolution. This time it’s about democratizing the distribution of intellectual property rights. We spend the hour with Gilberto Gil in a wide-ranging interview on his life, his music, the black consciousness movement and the future of the internet.

To Read/Listen/Watch

History/Social Sciences (Archive)

Ongoing:

Annenberg Media

Bill Moyers Journal (PBS)

Book TV on CSPAN: Top Nonfiction Authors

Borderlands: New Spaces in the Humanities

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History

Democracy Now

Facing History and Ourselves: Helping Communities and Classrooms Worldwide Link the Past to Moral Choices Today

John Taylor Gatto: Challenging the Myths of Modern Schooling

Fora TV (The World is Thinking)

Fora TV: History

Fora TV: Law

History is a Weapon

H-NET: Humanities and Social Sciences Online

Howard Zinn

MIT World

Open Source (The Watson Institute for International Studies)

Psyche, Science and Society

Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice

Snag Films (Free Documentaries Online)

Tapestry of the Times (Smithsonian Folkway Recordings/WYPR: Baltimore)

Time Tube

UChannel: Access to a World of Ideas

UChannel: History

2008:

Democracy Now: Ron Howard on His New Film Frost/Nixon

Michael T. Klare: The Fall of Triumphalism; GLOBAL TRENDS 2025: THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL'S 2025 PROJECT

Democracy Now: US Interrogator in Iraq Says Torture Policy Has Led to Deaths of Thousands of American Soldiers

Point of Inquiry: Jennifer Michael Hecht - Doubt

HUM 220: Peace/Conflict Studies (Historical) Supplement Pt. 6

Open Source: Douglas Blackmon - Neo-Slavery in Our Times

Excerpt from the 5th supplement for HUM 220: Peace/Conflict Studies (Historical Perspectives) course

Annenberg Media: Inside the Global Economy

Fora TV: Journalist Naomi Klein speaks with economists Joseph Stiglitz and Hernando de Soto in a conversation moderated by Anthropologist David Harvey

Tapestry of the Times #1: Leadbelly; Grupo Changui de Guantanamo; Hassan Kassayi; Woody Guthrie; Mary Lou Williams; John Cage/David Tudor; et al

Michael Wesch: A Portal to Media Literacy

Progressive Radio: Stephen Pimpare - A People’s History of Poverty in America

Point of Inquiry: Point of Inquiry: Susan Jacoby - The Age of Unreason

This Pariah-to-Messiah Moment: Anthropologist John Comaroff on the Obama Moment

Sylvère Lotringer on Paulo Virno's A Grammar of the Multitude

Bill Moyers Journal: Fred Harris on The Kerner Commission--40 Years Later

Bill Moyers Journal: International Lawyer Phillippe Sands on TORTURE TEAM: RUMSFELD'S MEMO AND THE BETRAYAL OF AMERICAN VALUES

Bill Moyers Journal: Historian Eric Foner and Legal Scholar Patricia J. Williams on the Significance of the 2008 Presidential Election

Naomi Wolf in the Documentary "The End of America" Directed by Rick Stern and Annie Sundberg

Radio West: Daniel Levitin - The World in Six Songs

MIT World: Eric Foner - “The Story of American Freedom: 1776-2005.”

Film School: PETER GALISON and ROBB MOSS co-directors of SECRECY

Sean Wilentz: The Worst President in History

BBC Documentaries: America's First Principles

Mona Domosh: On Nationalism

Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker: The Hidden Labor of Capitalism

Alma Guillermoprieto: How To Be a Mexican

Science Talk: Saddle Up That Stegosaurus--A Visit to the Creation Museum

Susan Jacoby - American Freethought Heritage

Virtual JFK: Vietnam (and us) if Kennedy had lived

H.L. Goodall: Writing the New Ethnography; Allan Irving/Ken Moffatt: The Professor as Poet; Gary Snyder: The Etiquette of Freedom

Tim Weiner: Setting the Record Straight on the CIA

American Constitution Society for Law and Policy: Philip Zimbardo on The Lucifer Effect

We the People Stories: Howard Fineman--The Thirteen American Arguments

Jane Mayer: The Dark Side/Extraordinary Rendition/Outsourcing Torture; Canadian Citizen Imprisoned By U.S. Speaks Out

M. Buck: Searching For A Primate Quintessence

Michael Benton: Why I Listen to "Common Sense with Dan Carlin"

Q and A: Peter Wallison--The History and Background of Fannie Ma and Freddie Mac

Bill Moyers Special Report: Buying the War: How Did the Mainstream Press Get it So Wrong?

Open Source: Douglas Blackmon on Neo-Slavery in Our Times

Point of Inquiry: Barbara Oakley - Social Psychology, Genes and Human Evil

Hearsay Culture: Alex Wright on Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages

After Words: Thomas Frank, author of The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule

Roy Wagner: The Invention of Culture

Irkaly Areshidze: Democracy and Autocracy in Eurasia--Georgia in Transition

Brian Holmes: Imaginary Maps, Global Solidarities

Sandra Steingraber: Environmental Amnesia

BBC Radio Documentary: Pirates

Douglas Blackmon: The Truth About Jim Crow

Simon Winchester: 'The Black Death,' John Hatcher's Remarkable History of the Plague

Eric Hobsbawm: The Post-Imperial Historian

United States of Amnesia

2004:

Race and Collective Memory Bibliography

Science/Technology (Archive)

Ongoing:

ACLU: Privacy and Technology

American Constitution Society for Law and Policy: IP and Tech Law

Boing Boing

Center for Inquiry: A Global Federation Committed to Science, Reason, Free Inquiry, Secularism, and Planetary Ethics

Chris Mooney: The Intersection

Craphound

Creative Commons

The Eclectic Review: Where Science and Science Fiction Collide

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Expose: America's Investigative Reports

First Monday: Peer-Reviewed Journal on the Internet

Fora TV: Technology and Science

Framing Science (Matthew Nisbet)

Health Beat (The Century Foundation)

Hearsay Culture (Center for Internet and Society)

Living on Earth: Sound Journalism for the Whole Planet

Media Shift: Your Guide to the Digital Media Revolution (PBS)

Neurophilosophy

New York Times: Technology

Point of Inquiry

Save the Internet: Fighting for Internet Freedom

Science Blogs

Science Cafe (University of California-San Francisco)

Science Friday (NPR)

Science Talk (Scientific American)

Tech President

Time Tube

UChannel: Science

UChannel: Technology

Wikidgame

Wikiscanner

Wired News

2008:

Counterspin: Kali Akuno, Andy Worthington and Francesca Grifo on the Bush legacy

Science Talk: Kayaking Antarctica with Jon Bowermaster

Wikidgame/Wikiscanner: Tracking Self-Interested Edits on Wikipedia

Michael Wesch: A Portal to Media Literacy

Tara Parker Pope: News Keeps Getting Worse for Vitamins

A.O. Scott: The Way We Live Now--The Screening of America

Science Friday: Primatologist/Anthropologist Jane Goodall

Nancy Scola: Obama Puts Well-Known Internet Advocate in Charge of FCC Review

Radio West: Daniel Levitin - The World in Six Songs

Open Court Books: Regina Arnold - "Podcrastination"

FCC to Vote on Opening Up “White Spaces” on TV Spectrum To Expand Broadband Access

Science Talk: Saddle Up That Stegosaurus--A Visit to the Creation Museum

James Bamford: “The Shadow Factory -- The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America”

Joan Hamilton: The Electronic Activist

Laurence Krauss: The Fear of Physics

Bernard Lowns' Prescription for Survival

Eddy Ramírez: Blogging from the Classroom, Teachers Seek Influence, Risk Trouble

The Farm Bill: Understanding the Political, Agricultural, and Nutritional Impact

Paul Kurtz: The New Atheism and Secular Humanism

M. Buck: Searching For A Primate Quintessence

Taking Better Aim at Cancer: A Conversation with Gerard Evan

In Our Time: Materialism

Point of Inquiry: Barbara Oakley - Social Psychology, Genes and Human Evil

On the Media: One for the Books

James Der Derian: Virtuous War

Jay Rosen: The News About the News

Richard Preston: Panic in Level 4

Science Friday: Higher-Res Eye in the Sky

The Eclectic Review: Electronic Voting and Voter Fraud

Hearsay Culture: Alex Wright on Glut: Mastering Information Through the Ages

Mathhew Nisbet: What is Framing?/Popular Science vs Framing

Living On Earth: Ah, Wilderness; Endangered Again; Invasion of the Invasives; Wireless Science; Amazing Rare Things; Spider Conversations

Annenberg Media: Environmental Science

Annenberg Media: Mathematics Illuminated

NOW on PBS: Toxic Toys?

SciFiDimensions: Cory Doctorow on Little Brother

Jeff Vandermeer Interview of Paul Barnett aka John Grant: Science Has Been Corrupted

Speaking of Faith: Einstein and the Mind of God

The World of Chemistry

Earth Revealed: Geology

The Habitable Planet: A Systems Approach to Environmental Science

To the Best of Our Knowledge: Boredom

Mike Davis: Living on the Ice Shelf--Humanity's Meltdown

NPR: 'Doomsday' Seed Vault Opens in the Arctic

Digital DIY: Web Helps Do-It-Yourselfers Share Ethic

Nicholas Carr: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains

In Our Time: The Multiverse

In Our Time: Ada Lovelace

Speaking of Faith: Einstein's God; Einstein's Ethics

Point of Inquiry: Chris Mooney on The Republican War on Science

Michael Benton/Lauren Elkin: Theories/Practices of Blogging

Into the Blogosphere: Rhetoric, Community and Culture of Weblogs

Eric Hobsbawm: The Post-Imperial Historian

Eric Hobsbawm: The Post-Imperial Historian
Open Source
Host: Christopher Lydon



An historian of ever widening scope, Eric Hobsbawm has been taking the long view for a very long time. His definition of the historian’s trade is: “how and why Homo sapiens got from the paleolithic to the nuclear age.” Born in 1917, the year of the Russian Revolution, Hobsbawm is 90 now, but in his pungent writing and talk, the species is young, and the future is everything.

To Listen to the Episode

Jay Rosen: The News About the News

The News About the News
Jay Rosen of PressThink
Open Source
Host: Christopher Lydon

Jay Rosen was the prophet of people-first “civic journalism” twenty years ago, before the Web gave citizen-bloggers the tools to be press lords, or at least publishers, on the cheap. In our first podcast nearly five years ago, Jay was among the first to see the breadth of the upheaval. “The terms of authority are changing,” he put it then. His website PressThink has become the real Press Club of thinking practitioners in this drawn-out existential crisis. In James Der Derian’s Global Media class at Brown last week, Jay Rosen gave his account of the Web stars becoming institutions: Instapundit, the first distributed newsroom; DailyKos, “by far the most vibrant community I know”; The Huffington Post, rising on the power of aggregation; and “the first Web-born media company,” Joshua Micah Marshall’s Talking Points Memo and its offspring. But Jay was at his most compelling on the bad news: what feels like the inexorable, personal, cosmic, professional, civic tragedy unfolding in front of our eyes at the New York Times.

To Listen to the Episode

Talk of the Nation: 'Doomsday' Seed Vault Opens in the Arctic

'Doomsday' Seed Vault Opens in the Arctic
Talk of the Nation (NPR)



The Svalbard Global Seed Vault, nicknamed "the doomsday seed vault" by some, aims to preserve samples of seeds from around the world to protect the planet's crop diversity. The frozen vault has begun accepting seeds for storage.

The structure is located near the village of Longyearbyen, Svalbard, a group of islands nearly 1,000 kilometers north of mainland Norway. The vault was dug into the side of a mountain and is surrounded by permafrost and thick rock.

Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Crop Diversity Trust, says the opening of the seed vault "marks a historic turning point in safeguarding the world's crop diversity."

To Listen to the Episode

Jon Kalish: Digital DIY

Digital DIY: Web Helps Do-It-Yourselfers Share Ethic
by Jon Kalish
NPR

There's a corner of the Internet now that functions like an old-fashioned general store, where farmers might swap advice on how to fix an ailing tractor. A host of highly interactive Web sites cater to a growing number of do-it-yourselfers who want to do everything from hack cell phones to make their own furniture.

Take 35-year-old Joel Sprayberry. His kitchen countertops are made from granite he salvaged from discarded billiard tables. When Sprayberry's beloved dachshund became disabled, the Dallas musician gathered some aluminum tent poles, some webbing and some wheels, and made a mini-chariot to immobilize the dog's hind legs.

"It was less than $50 that I spent," Sprayberry says, estimating that the doggy-wheelchair took him two hours to build. "And it didn't really take any special tools other than a drill and some normal tools you have around the house."

...

to read/listen to the rest

Richard Dawkins: An Argument for Atheism

Richard Dawkins: An Argument for Atheism
Fresh Air (NPR)
Host: Terry Gross



Evolutionary biologist and Oxford professor Richard Dawkins sets out an argument for atheism in his book, The God Delusion.

To Listen

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Remembering Utah Phillips (May 15, 1935 - May 23, 2008)



Independent Media Center Memorial

Free Radio Santa Monica: Amy Goodman Interviews Utah Phillips (This is an amazing interview that sent chills through me--a very wise and generous person!)

Democracy Now: Supreme Court Slashes Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Fine to One-Tenth of Original $5 Billion Ruling



Supreme Court Slashes Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Fine to One-Tenth of Original $5 Billion Ruling
Democracy Now
Hosts: Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez



The Supreme Court handed corporate America a major victory this week when it sharply reduced the amount of money Exxon Mobil has to pay in punitive damages for the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska. An Alaskan jury had initially ruled Exxon should pay five billion dollars in punitive damages but in 2006, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court cut the award of punitive damages in half. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court cut the amount of punitive damages again and ordered Exxon Mobil to pay just $500 million in punitive damages – one tenth of the original jury’s ruling.

To Watch/Listen/Read

"The Supreme Court ruled that in maritime cases punitive damages should be no more than the actual damages. 32,000 Alaskan plaintiffs have been waiting for their compensation since 1994. The Supreme Court’s action will reduce the average award from $75,000 to about $15,000.

Last year Exxon Mobil made just over $40 billion in profits. This means the oil company will be able to pay the punitive damages in about four days. Sen. Patrick Leahy, chair of the Judiciary Committee, accused the court of giving Exxon Mobil a $2billion windfall."

More:

Conservation GIS Center: Exxon Valdez Oil Spill - Affected Area

Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Trustee Council: History

AlterNet: Shocking: 18 Years on and Exxon Still Won't Pay $2.5 Billion for Valdez Oil Spill

15 Year Anniversary of the Exxon Valdez Environmental Disaster

Every Third Bite (short film)



The Independent



Link for the Video

Part of Documentary 2.0: Making Media That Matters

NOW on PBS: Torture Tactics--Interview with Alex Gibney

Torture Tactics: Interview with Alex Gibney
Host: David Branccacio
NOW (PBS)



This year's Oscar-winning feature documentary, "Taxi to the Dark Side," tells the story of an innocent Afghan taxi driver who died while being interrogated and tortured by U.S. soldiers. NOW interviews the film's director, Alex Gibney, about torture practices of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantánamo Bay, and how the issue is playing out in the presidential race. At the intersection of human rights, civil liberties, and national security, how should America respond?

To Listen/Watch the Episode

More on Taxi to the Dark Side:

Bluegrass Film Society Archive

10th Anniversary Screening of 100 Proof



Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to invite you to the re-release premiere of the independent film 100 PROOF, by George Maranville and Jeremy Horton. Please take a look at the write-up at the link below.

Herald-Leader Article

THURSDAY JUNE 26
5:30 - 7:30 AND 9:30 showings

All the best,

Arthur Rouse
BCTC Filmmaking Certificate Program

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Business/Labor/Economics (archive)

Ongoing:

16 Beaver Group

American Constitution Society for Law and Policy: Economic, Workplace and Environment

AlterNet: Corporate Accountability and the Workplace

The American Conservative

American Rights at Work

Audio Anarchy

Big Vision: Interviews with Individuals & Organizations Creating Positive Change

Bill Moyers Journal

The Business (Film)

Business and Financial News (New York Times)

BusinessWeek

Columbia Journalism Review

Crimethinc.: Ex-Workers Collective

Democracy Now

Economic Policy Institute

The Epoch Times

Ethics Bites (Open University)

Expose: America's Investigative Reports (PBS)

Fora TV: Business

Fora TV: Giving

Have Fun, Do Good

Institute for Policy Studies

Institute for Policy Studies: Reports

Job Watch: Tracking Jobs and Wages

Jobs With Justice

Labor Notes

Landscapes of Global Capital: Representing Time, Space, & Globalization in Corporate Advertising

Lenin's Tomb

Libr.org: Supporting Progressive Librarians Since 1998

LRIS: Labor Relations Information System (Police/Firefighters)

Multinational Monitor

The Nation

NPR: Economy

Provoke Radio: Where Faith and Social Justice Meet

Reason Magazine: Free Minds and Free Markets

The Street: The Real Story with Frank Curzio

Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality

UChannel: Economy

United Auto Workers

United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE)

Wall Street Journal

Washington Babylon (Ken Silverstein/Harper's)

Who Owns What: Media

Worldview (WBEZ: Chicago Public Radio)

2008:

Robert Weissman: The 10 Worst Corporations of 2008

Bill Moyers Journal: Ken Silverstein on Influence Peddling in Washington DC

Michael T. Klare: The Fall of Triumphalism; GLOBAL TRENDS 2025: THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL'S 2025 PROJECT

John Nichols: Hands off the United Auto Workers (UAW)

Open Source: Douglas Blackmon - Neo-Slavery in Our Times

Institute For Policy Studies: Executive Excess 2008 (report)

Institute for Policy Studies: Understanding the Economic Crisis

Associated Press: Laid-off workers occupy Chicago factory; Jobs With Justice: Hold Bank of America Accountable; UE Updates on the Occupation

On the Media: Money Talks/Gateway Drugs (Pharmaceutical Industry)

David Moltz: Tenure on the Chopping Block in the Kentucky Community and Technical College System

Annenberg Media: Inside the Global Economy

Fora TV: Journalist Naomi Klein speaks with economists Joseph Stiglitz and Hernando de Soto in a conversation moderated by David Harvey

Democracy Now: Naomi Klein, Robert Kuttner and Michael Hudson Dissect Obama’s New Economic Team & Stimulus Plan

Democracy Now: Naomi Klein on the Bailout Profiteers and the Multi-Trillion-Dollar Crime Scene

Barack Obama Considering Eric Holder for Attorney General: Why We Should Be Concerned About His Role Defending Chiquita Brands in Columbia?

Provoke Radio #87: The Spiritual Lessons of the Financial Crisis

Margaret Trost - On That Day Everybody Ate: One Woman’s Story of Hope and Possibility in Haiti

Progressive Radio: Naomi Klein, the author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Progressive Radio: Stephen Pimpare - A People’s History of Poverty in America

London Review of Books: Slavoj Žižek - Use Your Illusions

NOW on PBS: Prisons for Profit

Sylvère Lotringer on Paulo Virno's A Grammar of the Multitude

Chi-Yun Shin: Art of branding--Tartan "Asia Extreme" films

Health Director for the Veterans Administration: Average of 18 War Veteran Suicides a Day and 200,000 Sleep Homeless On the Streets On Any Given Night

Bill Moyers Journal: Fred Harris on The Kerner Commission--40 Years Later

Bill Moyers Journal: The fight the California Nurses Association (CNA) has been waging over universal healthcare

Economic Question: Who Is Abusing Government Welfare?

Institute for Policy Studies: Understanding the Economic Crisis

Sam Pizzigati: A Whole Lot of CEO Pay Shaking Going On

BBC World Service Documnetaries: Failure or Fraud?

Democracy Now: Academy Award-Winning Filmmaker Michael Moore on the Election, the Bailout, Healthcare, and 10 Proposed Decrees for the New President’s

BBC Documentaries: The Lost Veterans

Bill Moyers Journal: George Soros

Bill Moyers Journal: James K. Galbraith

50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World

Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker: The Hidden Labor of Capitalism

Ex-Asst. Treasury Sec. Paul Craig Roberts on Wall St. Bailout: “Has Deregulation Sired Fascism?”

Eamonn Fingleton: Getting the American economy back on solid ground will require new financial regulations.

Democracy Now: European, Asian Markets Plunge as Recession Fears Spread Worldwide

Martial Law Threatened to Politicians If They Did Not Pass the Bailout Bill

Naomi Klein: Naomi Klein: On Milton Friedman's Links to the Current Economic Crisis

Linda Blimes and Joseph Stiglitz - The Iraq War in dollars and cents

Fora TV: The Future of Health Care--The Candidates' Plans

Sara Robinson: 11 Racist Lies Conservatives Tell to Avoid Blaming Wall Street for the Financial Crisis

Days of War, Nights of Love: Crimethink for Beginners

Word for Word: David Cay Johnston--How the Rich Get Richer

Bernie Sanders: A Voice of Reason in the Economic Panic

Stephen Power and Gary Fields: How Voter Fury Stopped Bailout

University of Illinois: THE AAUP REAFFIRMS GRAD EMPLOYEE AND STAFF RIGHTS

Katrina vanden Heuvel & Eric Schlosser: America Needs a New New Deal

John R. MacArthur, the author of You Can't Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America

The Farm Bill: Understanding the Political, Agricultural, and Nutritional Impact

We the People Stories: The Legacy of 1808--Modern-Day Slavery

Mark Achbar's The Corporation Available for Free Online

James s. Henry: Socialism for Bankers, Savage Capitalism for Everyone Else?

Adam Fields -- Getting Rid of the (Production) Shingles

Al Ruddy: Shrugging Off Atlas Shrugged

Fora TV: Bill Clinton in conversation with moderator James Fallows at the Aspen Institute's 2006 Aspen Ideas Festival

Film School: Irene Salina on FLOW: FOR LOVE OF WATER

Amy Goodman: The Party Police

Amy Goodman: Wall Street Socialists

Q and A: Peter Wallison--The History and Background of Fannie Ma and Freddie Mac

Frida Berrigan: Military Industrial Complex 2.0; Craig Kielburger, Marc Kielburger and Chris Mallinos: Cheated into Working in a War Zone

Open Source: Douglas Blackmon on Neo-Slavery in Our Times

Worldview: Catholic Priests' Strategy for Peacemaking; Global Activism--Making Rugs and Improving Lives in Pakistan

Worldview: Zimbabwe--Power-sharing Deal Reached?; Burmese Refugees Find Work in Meat-Processing Plants; Resettling Refugees in the U.S.

On the Media: Instruments of War; Cooking the Books

On the Media: Text Me

NPR Economy: How to Know If You're Rich

FilmSchool: Tom Stern on This is a Business

Media Matters: Myths and falsehoods about oil policies

Kirby Dick on This Film Is Not Yet Rated

Richard Posner: Copyright

After Words: Thomas Frank, author of The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule

BusinessWeek/Expose/Bill Moyers Journal: The Business of Poverty

Bill Moyers Journal: Andrew J. Bacevich on The Limits of Power

Bill Moyers' Journal: The Middle Class Squeeze

Online Storytelling & Cause Marketing: An Interview with Jonah Sachs of Free Range Studios

To the Best of Our Knowledge: The New Abolitionists

Annenberg Media: Ethics in America

Steven Wishnia: Both of My Grandfathers Were Illegal Immigrants

ABC News/Feministe/Curvature: Justice for Jamie Leigh Jones

Aditya Chakrabortty: Internal World Bank study delivers blow to plant energy drive

Democracy Now: Groundbreaking Lawsuit Accuses Big Oil of Conspiracy to Deceive Public About Climate Change; "Global Disruption" More Accurately Describes Climate Change, Not "Global Warming" - Leading Scientist John Holdren

Ken Mondschein: Diamond Engagement Rings

Democracy Now: Supreme Court Slashes Exxon Valdez Oil Spill Fine to One-Tenth of Original $5 Billion Ruling

EU To Raise Working Week To 65 Hours

PBS: Mapping the Media Giants

Free Radio Santa Monica: Folksinger/Activist Utah Phillips on the Labor Movement

Mother Jones: Medicare's Hidden Bonanza--After millions in campaign contributions, an insurance magnate's 10-year lobbying campaign finally pays off

AlterNet: Exxon Valdez Disaster 101

Michael Benton: Downloading Music--Serious Crime? Welcome to Bizarro World?

Walmart: Paragon of Freedom and Justice

Jeff Epton: Mainstream Media's Anti-Union Bias

2003:

Kari Lyderson: Bottled Water Blues

Linda Ocasio: Home Girls in the House

AlterNet: Ten Worst Corporations of 2003

Sexuality/Relationships (archive)

Ongoing:

ACLU: HIV/AIDs

ACLU: Lesbian Gay Rights

ACLU: Reproductive Freedom

AlterNet: Sexuality & Relationships

The Carnival of Feminists

Kentucky Fairness Alliance

Nerve: Original Essays and Photography on Sex, Arts and Culture

2008:

Lisa Miller: Our Mutual Joy

Radio West: Responding to Prop 8

Film Couch #93: Kiss of the Spider Woman

Milk (Gus Van Sant)

Republicans Against 8

Voices From the 2008 ACLU Conference: Jessica Yee

Jessica Valenti: The Sexual Double Standard

Rachel Kramer Bussel: Sexual Math

Humanist Network News #13: Sex & Humanism

Marty Klein: The War on Sex

Ken Mondschein: Diamond Engagement Rings

2007:

Michael Benton: Response to I Am a Sexual Addict

2004:

Texas Saleswoman Faces Trial for Selling Sex Toys

Young Americans At High Risk of STDs: Emphasis on Abstinence Policy One of the Problems

1892:

Emma Goldman: Marriage and Love

A Musician's Life: Bob Mould

Bob Mould
A Musician's Life (WXPN: Philadelphia)
Host: Tracey Tannebaum



Bob Mould co-founded Hüsker Dü in 1979 . The punk band paved the way for the rise of 1990's indie rock, and for bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam. His later work with Sugar, as well as his more acoustic solo releases, cemented Mould's reputation as an iconic figure in modern rock. Bob Mould's new album is called "District Line."

To Listen to the Profile