Nina Burleigh: Desperately Seeking Sanity

A review of the new ABC television show "Desperate Housewives." Nina Burleigh responds to it from her own relationship to the "horror" of domestic life. I've seen two episodes and it is one of the better network offerings of the new season (that's right I refuse to pay for cable and I never see those shows until they come out on DVD):

Desperately Seeking Sanity

Enjoy the Draft!

Making the rounds at our campus:

Enjoy the Draft

Instant Runoff Voting Bill (IRV)

This is a very important bill that needs to be adopted by congress--learn more about the IRV bill by visiting MouseMusing's post and decide for yourself if this is the change that we need.

The Civil Rights Struggle of Our Generation?

Here is one of the best stories that clearly demonstrates the insanity of our current laws banning or preventing same-sex marriage. Read this story about to grieving spouses in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and think about it--what is justice in this situation (or will people keep with their motto of freedom means "just-us"?):

For Richer, For Poorer: Same-Sex Couples and the Freedom to Marry as a Civil Right

Swaying Voters Through Sex: Social Libertarian Move to Defeat Bush

(Courtesy of JM who is a middle-level cog-in-the-machine and thus must remain anonymous)

Getting out the vote by putting out: Groups like Votergasm.org and FTheVote are appealing to youthful lust to schwing the election

On another note:

Sex Transports One in 12 into Mystical State

What about the other 11? Wait, no, I don't want to know...

Confused About Who You Should Vote For?: This Will Help You Decide!

Remember what will happen if you vote for Bush. He is planning on passing a series of laws designed to punish us free-loving humans. Here is the first proposed punishment designed to alter your freedom to express yourself


If you like this picture check out the Pinko Feminist Hellcat from which it originated and the Progressive Blog Alliance (don't forget the secret password!)

The Institute For Politics & Democracy On the Internet

(courtesy of Tim Peyton, My Brother-in-Arms)

THE INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS & DEMOCRACY ON THE INTERNET
Put together by the Graduate School of Political Management at the George Washington University, the institute has 3 main goals:

1. The establishment of a research base for the study of online politics, especially with respect to American campaigns and elections.

2. The design, testing, refinement, and promotion of appropriate standards of practice for the conduct of online campaigning.

3. The creation and public promotion of an online public space where good campaign practices and democratic values may thrive.

WHAT IS MOST INTERESTING:
The site includes an archive of Bush & Kerry (both for and against) films and animations in three categories: created by individuals, created by the campaigns themselves, created by 527 and other political action groups.

There is some GREAT stuff. These films/animations are great studies of how the Internet is used to spread grass roots and organized political messages.

THE INSTITUTE FOR POLITICS & DEMOCRACY ON THE INTERNET

After Searching, Reading, Laughing, Crying and Pissing Themselves, Wal-Mart Executives Finally Find a Reason to Ban Jon Stewart's New Book

Yahoo

Wal-Mart canceled an order for a best-selling book by Jon Stewart and the writers of "The Daily Show" after executives learned that it contained a photo of nine naked, aged bodies, each with the superimposed head of a Supreme Court justice.

"America (The Book)," a mock school text that lampoons the American government in much the same way the Comedy Central show spoofs the news, includes cutouts of the justices' robes and a caption asking readers to "restore their dignity by matching each justice with his or her respective robe."


Executives for the Bentonville-based retail giant deemed the book inappropriate for its shelves this week.


"We were not aware of the image that was in the book (when Wal-Mart ordered it) and we felt the majority of our customers would not be comfortable with it," said Wal-Mart Stores Inc. spokeswoman Karen Burk. "We offer what we think our customers want to buy. That just makes good business sense."

Jamie Raab, a publisher for Warner Books, which produced "America," said the naked justice joke fits perfectly with the book's theme.

"It's not gratuitous and it's very much in tune with the rest of the book," Raab said. "It's funny, yet to the point. When you undress the Supreme Court justices, they're just men and women and you have to judge them on who they are and what they do. It makes you look and think and laugh."

Raab said she doesn't fault Wal-Mart for its decision, but added that she didn't see the point in banning something that isn't intentionally sexually explicit.

Wal-Mart has a well-known policy of refusing to carry magazines with racy covers or CDs with explicit lyrics.

The chain is offering the book on its Web site. Burk said the store's online customers are a "different audience" and that the company wanted to give an option to people looking to buy the book from Wal-Mart.

Article Link

Faith Against Reason: A War of Two Worldviews

(Courtesy of Jules Marshall at MediaSquatters)

Faith against reason: The US election has exposed a growing conflict between two world views. Can they co-exist in one country? by Jonathan Freedland

Political Sign Thief Arrested After Knocking Himself Out

Rocky Mountain News

For sign pilferer, politicians aren't only ones falling flat on their face
By Lynn Bartels

A Lakewood Republican stealing campaign signs late one night got nabbed when he ran across a low- hanging driveway chain, fell face first onto a pilfered sign and the concrete and knocked himself unconscious.

Randal Wagner, 50, was loaded into an ambulance, treated at Lutheran Medical Center for abrasions and facial cuts and issued a summons.

Wagner, who unsuccessfully tried to steal a "Dave Thomas" congressional sign that evening, had signs for other Democratic candidates in his Toyota pickup, Wheat Ridge police reported.

"I did a very stupid thing," Wagner said Monday, admitting theft of the signs. "I got caught up in the political passions of this highly contested election."

Wagner said that he and his wife, Jan, who was driving their pickup that night, "want to apologize to the people" they have offended.

"Everybody has a right to express their political opinions," Randal Wagner said.

Jan Wagner, who was not cited, said she did not want to discuss what happened. She also is a Republican.

The incident with the Wagners comes at a time when a record number of Democrats and Republicans are complaining that their signs are disappearing or being vandalized.

Wheat Ridge resident Pete Klammer, whose 911 call last Wednesday eventually led police to the Wagners, said his frustration is that people mistakenly believe only their party is the victim.

He said a Republican neighbor who lost two yard signs insisted, "It's not happening to Democrats."

Klammer said that late last Wednesday, shortly after the last presidential debate had ended, his wife heard a noise outside.

Klammer said when he walked outside with his cell phone, he saw a pickup parked at the curb and someone using a box-cutter to try to take the "Dave Thomas" sign he had bolted to his fence, clearly on his property.

Thomas is the Democratic candidate in the 7th District. Klammer said an earlier Thomas sign had been vandalized.

Klammer said he and the stranger tussled over the sign. As Klammer relayed the plate number on the pickup to police, he said the man hopped into the passenger side and the pickup fled west on West 32nd Avenue past Simms Street.

Police said the pickup was registered to Jan and Randal Wagner, but they were not home.

Later that night, the officer heard Jan Wagner's name on the police radio and investigated. It turns out that other officers had discovered a man, identified as Randal Wagner, down in front of an office building at West 42nd and Kipling streets.

Police said Randal Wagner had been stealing a campaign sign that promotes the Jefferson County school district's tax and bond election when he fell and hurt himself.

Police said Jan Wagner was parked across the street and had about two dozen campaign signs in the pickup. They include signs for U.S. Senate candidate Ken Salazar and district attorney candidate Mary Malatesta.

"Jan said she and her husband have never done anything like this (taking signs) before," according to the police report.

Collective Memory: Remembrance and Representation

Cultural Memory

This reading list is designed to indicate some key texts in the new and ever-growing field of Cultural Memory. If you wish to do some background reading, this would be a good place to start.

Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe and Leo Spitzer (eds), Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present (Hanover, NH & London: University Press of New England, 1999)

Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge, 1995)

J. Candau, Anthropologie de la mire (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996) [unfortunately only available in French]

Paul Connerton, How Societies Remember (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)

Sigmund Freud, ?Mourning and melancholia?, in On Metapsychology, vol 11 Penguin Freud Library (London: Penguin, 1984)

Reesa Greenberg, Bruce W. Ferguson and Sandy Nairne (eds), Thinking about Exhibitions (London: Routledge, 1996)

Maurice Halbwachs, The Collective Memory (New York: Harper and Row, 1980); French original La Mire collective (Paris, 1950)

Marianne Hirsch, Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory (Cambridge, Mass: & London: Harvard University Press, 1997)

Andreas Huyssen, Twilight Memories: Marking Time in a Culture of Amnesia (London: Routledge, 1995)

Marius Kwint, Christopher Breward and Jeremy Aynsley (eds), Material Memories: Design and Evocation (Oxford: Berg, 1999) (gives some useful models for writing about different kinds of cultural artefect in relation to memory)

Laura Marcus (ed.), Sigmund Freud?s ?The Interpretation of Dreams? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999) (especially Marcus?s introductory chapter, pp. 1-65)

Pierre Nora, Realms of Memory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996-8); French original Les Lieux de mire (Paris: Gallimard, 1984)

Robert Perks and A. Thomson (eds), The Oral History Reader (London: Routledge, 1997)

Susannah Radstone (ed.), Memory and Methodology (Oxford: Berg, 2000) (read especially Radstone's introduction)

Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory (London: Verso, 1994)

Carolyn Steedman, Landscape for a Good Woman (London: Viking, 1986)

Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the AIDS epidemic and the Politics of Remembering (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1997)

James E. Young, The Texture of Memory: Holocaust Memorials and Meaning (London: Yale University Press, 1993)

More links for thinking about Collective Memory:

Collective Memory

Hunting and Gathering in the Information Society

The Difference Between Remembering and Analyzing the Past

The White House Has Disinvited the Poets: Politics of Poetics

Memory Hole: Rescuing Knowledge, Freeing Information

What is So Threatening About Reading Out Loud the Names of US Military Killed in Iraq

Making the Myth, Forgetting the Man

How Do You Reach The Truth If Lying Has Become a Habit

What World Events Are Remembered and Why?: On the 10th Anniversary of the Rwandan Genocide

What People Are Remembered—What People are Forgotten?: The Architect of Black Power

How Are Our Busy Lives Making Remembering More Difficult

Human Ecology of Memory

Tropical America: Can a Video Game Teach Us About Traumatic History?

The Social Mind

Cleveland Memory Project

Race and Collective Memory Bibliography

H-Museum’s Online 9/11 Memorial: Memory—Remembrance—Museum

The Educational System Was Designed to Keep Us Docile: Institutionalized Forgetting

How To Access Readings From My Electronic Reserves

Go to this Website

Click on "Access Electronic Reserves"

Read warning and click on "I Have Understood"

Locate the "Instructor" box and click on "Benton-Eng 104"

Go down to number #7 "ELECTRONIC RESERVE READINGS FOR BENTON: ENG 104" and click on it

Find "CLICK HERE TO ACCESS ELECTRONIC RESERVES" and click on it

User name: beeng104
Password: Democracy1

(the D must be capitalized--all other letters are lower case)

Click on the reading you want (they are all PDF files)--here are the readings:

1.) BENNETT. "FREEDOM FROM THE PRESS (PART 1)"
2.) BENNETT. "FREEDOM FROM THE PRESS (PART 2)"
3.) BENNETT. "NEWS ABOUT DEMOCRACY (PART 1)"
4.) BENNETT. "NEWS ABOUT DEMOCRACY (PART 2)"
5.) COLES. "TRADITION: FACT AND FICTION" (PGS 210-235)
6.) COLES. "TRADITION: FACT AND FICTION" (PGS.236-258)
7.) GRAFF. "HOW TO WRITE AN ARGUMENT"
8.) LAKOFF. "DON'T THINK OF AN ELEPHANT"
9.) NEW LONDON GROUP. "CHANGING PRESENT AND NEAR FUTURES"
10.) PALMER. "COMMUNITY OF TRUTH"
11.) RUSHKOFF. "THEY SAY"
12.) SOLLORS. "IDEA OF ETHNICITY"
13.) TERKEL. "C.P. ELLIS"
14.) WILSON. "AVANT GARDENING"
15.) ZERUBAVEL. "SOCIAL MEMORIES"

Benjamin Barber: Global Citizen or Global Consumer?

My students are reading Barber's "The Educated Student: Global Citizen or Global Consumer?" so I decided to find some good links to supplement the readings:

Barber, Benjamin R. The Educated Student: Global Citizen or Global Consumer? Liberal Education (Spring 2002)

Benjamin Barber's Website

Biography, Beware of Cheesy Photo

Benjamin Barber on The Four Myths of Democracy

Jihad vs McWorld

Beyond Jihad vs. McWorld

The Politics of Education

Time, Work and Leisure in a Civil Society

The Future of Civil Society

The Truth of Power

Commonwealth Speeches Available online

Video: Changing Character of Democracy in Suburbia

Fear's Empire

France Honors Barber

Declare Our Interdependence

Review of Fear's Empire

Barber on the 1st Aniversary of 9/11

McWorld: Consequences of Economic Globalization

The Search for Civil Society

A PLace for Us

War, Terrorism, and Democracy in an Age of Interdependence

Barry Lopez: A Literature of Place

(excerpt--from Envirolink)

An excerpt:

My imagination was shaped by the exotic nature of water in a dry southern California valley; by the sound of wind in the crowns of eucalyptus trees; by the tactile sensation of sheened earth, turned in furrows by a gang plow; by banks of saffron, mahogany and scarlet cloud piled above a field of alfalfa at dusk; by encountering the musk from orange blossoms at the edge of an orchard; by the aftermath of a Pacific storm crashing a hot, flat beach.

Added to the nudge of these sensations were an awareness of the height and breadth of the sky, and of the geometry and force of the wind. Both perceptions grew directly out of my efforts to raise pigeons and from the awe I felt before them as they maneuvered in the air. They gave me permanently a sense of the vertical component of life.

I became intimate with the elements of that particular universe. They fashioned me. I return to them regularly in essays and stories in order to clarify or explain abstractions or to strike contrasts. I find the myriad relationships in that universe comforting. They form a "coherence" of which I once was a part.

If I were to try to explain the process of becoming a writer, I could begin by saying that the comforting intimacy I knew in that California valley erected in me a kind of story I wanted to tell, a pattern I wanted to evoke in countless ways. And I would add to this two things that were profoundly magical to me as a boy: animals and language. It's relatively easy to say why animals might seem magical. Spiders and birds are bound differently than we are by gravity. Many wild creatures travel unerringly through the dark. And animals regularly respond to what we, even at our most attentive, cannot discern.

It is harder to say why language seemed magical, but I can be precise about this. The first book I read was The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. I still have the book. Underlined in it in pen are the first words I could recognize: the, a, stop, to go, to see. I pick up the book today and recall the expansion of my first feelings, a slow, silent detonation: words I heard people speak I could now perceive as marks on a page. I myself was learning to make these same marks on ruled paper. It seemed as glorious and mysterious as a swift flock of tumbler pigeons exploiting the invisible wind.

I can understand my life as prefigured in those two kinds of magic, the uncanny lives of creatures different from me (and, later, of cultures different from my own); and the twinned desires--to go, to see. I became a writer who travels and one who focuses, to be concise, mostly on what logical positivists sweep aside.

My travel is often to remote places--Antarctica, the Tanami Desert in central Australia, northern Kenya. In these places I depend on my own wits and resources, but heavily and more often on the knowledge of interpreters--archeologists, field scientists, anthropologists. Eminent among such helpers are indigenous people; and I can quickly give you three reasons for my dependence on their insights. As a rule, indigenous people pay much closer attention to nuance in the physical world. They see more. And from only a handful of evidence, thoroughly observed, they can deduce more. Second, their history in a place, a combination of tribal and personal history, is typically deep. This history creates a temporal dimension in what is otherwise only a spatial landscape. Third, indigenous people tend to occupy the same moral universe as the land they sense. Their bonds with the earth are as much moral and biological.

Over time I have come to think of these three qualities--paying intimate attention; a storied relationship to a place rather than a solely sensory awareness of it; and living in some sort of ethical unity with a place--as a fundamental human defense against loneliness. If you're intimate with a place, a place with whose history you're familiar, and you establish an ethical conversation with it, the implication that follows is this: the place knows you're there. It feels you. You will not be forgotten, cut off, abandoned.

As a writer I want to ask on behalf of the reader: How can a person obtain this? How can you occupy a place and also have it occupy you? How can you find such a reciprocity?

The key, I think, is to become vulnerable to a place. If you open yourself up, you can build intimacy. Out of such intimacy may come a sense of belonging, a sense of not being isolated in the universe.

My question--how to secure this--is not meant to be idle. How does one actually enter a local geography? (Many of us daydream, I think, about re-entering childhood landscapes that might dispel a current anxiety. We often court such feelings for a few moments in a park or sometimes during an afternoon in the woods.) To respond explicitly and practicably, my first suggestion would be to be silent. Put aside the bird book, the analytic state of mind, any compulsion to identify, and sit still. Concentrate instead on feeling a place, on deliberately using the sense of proprioception. Where in this volume of space are you situated? The space behind you is as important as what you see before you. What lies beneath you is as relevant as what stands on the far horizon. Actively use your ears to imagine the acoustical hemisphere you occupy. How does birdsong ramify here? Through what kind of air is it moving? Concentrate on smells in the belief you can smell water and stone. Use your hands to get the heft and texture of a place--the tensile strength in a willow branch, the moisture in a pinch of soil, the different nap of leaves. Open a vertical line to the place by joining the color and form of the sky to what you see out across the ground. Look away from what you want to scrutinize in order to gain a sense of its scale and proportion. Be wary of any obvious explanation for the existence of color, a movement. Cultivate a sense of complexity, the sense that another landscape exists beyond the one you can subject to analysis.

The purpose of such attentiveness is to gain intimacy, to rid yourself of assumption. It should be like a conversation with someone you're attracted to, a person you don't want to send away by having made too much of yourself. Such conversations, of course, can take place simultaneously on several levels. And they may easily be driven by more than simple curiosity. The compelling desire, as in human conversation, might be to institute a sustaining or informing relationship.

To Read the Entire Essay

How to Orientate Oneself in the World: A General Outline of Flusser's Theory of Media

(courtesy of وب‌لوگ)

Excerpt:

Although nowadays the "most important German philosopher of the seventies and eighties" (Flusser 2002: 8) is widely acknowledged to be one of the founding fathers of media theory, his fame still does not reach much further than the borders of the discipline which he helped to shape. Many of his books are not yet available in translation and many of the uncountable essays he wrote during his lifetime are still to be published.

The objective of this essay is to provide the reader with a general introduction in Flusser's theoretical insights. Flusser's distinction between different media will serve as a guideline. We will attempt to analyse Flusser's concept of "traditional images." In doing so, we will inquire into Flusser's view on the origins of media. We will describe the specific characteristics of each medium and the possibilities it creates. We will illustrate the confrontation between the medium of traditional images and the new medium of text. This will allow us to make a comparative analysis between the "universe" of the medium of the traditional images and that of the medium of text – as Flusser seems to believe that each medium generates a new kind of universe. According to Flusser the medium of text has recently been replaced by new technical media (first photography, later followed by digital images). The final paragraphs will deal with this paradigm change from text to technical images and Flusser's suggestions for gaining control over these new media.

Entire Essay

If you like this essay you should track back to its home:

Image and Narrative

Continuing Adventures of Operation Clark County

Earlier I posted about the UK newspaper Guardian's attempt to bring a European voice into the American presidential campaign by interacting with the citizens of Clark County, Ohio. I thought to myself what a great idea--if only we could do this across the nation, interacting with different parts of the world, taking the time to listen to their opinions and concerns.

In a post at Comments From Left Field we learn that the isolationist, xenophobic streak in American culture is alive and well:

Dear Limey Assholes

Insurgent Inquiry: The Art of Allora & Calzadilla

"Insurgent Inquiry: The art of Allora & Calzadilla"
Paul Schmelzer
Adbusters

Break the word question down to its root--quest--and you get a sense of the insurgent inquiry practiced by artists Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla. Their poetic and unabashedly activist conceptual art challenges everything from common definitions--they define protest as “proactive testing” and responsibility as “the ability to respond”--to concepts like free speech and historical commemoration. Confronting the assumptions behind everyday terms arises from a state of permanent questioning, says Calzadilla. "We believe that art has much to offer to this task, in its potential to provoke the public into a space of individual questioning about preconceived notions of truth, about forms of representation, participation, and identification."

Read More and View Pictures of the Art/Performances

Gloria Anzaldua: On Writing

Why am I compelled to write? Because the writing saves me from this complacency I fear. Because I have no choice. Because I must keep the spirit of my revolt and myself alive. Because the world I create in the writing compensates for what the real world does not give me. By writing I put order in the world, give it a handle so I can grasp it.

Gloria Anzaldua - "Speaking in Tongues: A Letter to 3rd World Women Writers,"
This Bridge Called My Back


Remembering Gloria Anzaldua

Meth: Its Not Worth It!

There are few things that I caution against trying if you want to know what it is like... Meth (or Crank, or Ice, or Speed) is one of them. This is a particularly nasty drug that has claimed the lives of nearly a dozen close childhood friends of mine (in southern California). It is a drug that heightens whatever disorders or neurosis one suffers from... and it cripples your emotional capacity, causing apathy, detachment from daily life, psychosis, and violent fantasies. It is also a very psychologically addictive drug, that consumes the body, and quickly ages the user. It makes the user physically weak and mentally pathetic--with accompanying delusions of grandeur and power. Last year, here in Kentucky, the police raided over 400 meth labs!

Report that prompted me:

Ice Ain't Nice: A Cautionary Tale

Thoughts Upon Joining the Progressive Alliance of Bloggers

Thanks for the invite and for organizing this important alliance... I'm interested to see where it takes us.

To answer your questions:

1. Who referred you?

No one--I kept running into the image at sites that I visit...

2. What percentage of alliance bloggers were you already familiar with when you joined the alliance.(take a guess)

About 10 bloggers, I believe there were 54 when I signed up, so about 20%

3. Do you have 3 favorite blogs that are in the alliance? If so, who are they?

Net Politiks is where I first saw it

Also, Scratchings, Pooponpolitics, Spontaneous Arisings, Et Alia, Red Harvest, Random Thoughts on Politics, and so on

Optional:
1. What would you like to see an alliance of ideologically aligned blogs do?

Multi-part answer:

A) Provide a welcoming environment to propose, develop and share ideas... reinvigorate the public sphere.

B) Provide a model for communicating built upon the forgotten/ignored ideas of the father of modern journalism: Thomas Paine.

C) Provide opportunities for organizing for change--both, online--to inform, persuade and petition... and, hopefully, moving to IRL where we can start:

D) Gatherings, conferences, convergences, parties---look at how quickly this is coming together... the possibilities could be staggering!

E) Develop reading groups in which we could sharpen our skills in a polylogical environment--posting and responding on common texts that could frame our dialogue...

f) Perhaps start an independent publishing venture--but this could just be our loose federation of blogs and homespace....

g) inspired by situationist and surrealist ancestors we could beging cognitive mapping the real world and dreaming the future

h) ask me tomorrow...


2. Do you have any skills or interests that could help our alliance grow stronger?

What do you need?

I'm a college instructor, writer, activist, provocateur, dreamer, irritant, wanderer, performer--does this qualify me for anything?