October 2010
Chris Faraone at The Boston Phoenix: Music Hack... →
Music Hack Day is the hardest topic that I’ve ever had to write on. I think my editor and I covered the conference somewhat competently last year, when we noted that none of the five major labels came to Microsoft N.E.R.D. in Cambridge for the first stateside meeting of the greatest minds in music technology. But even though our feature Boston Phoenix summary, “Hacking Pact”, won a...
ATT Still Sucks
I still have no phone and Internet service at home! Just in case anyone was wondering.
FWD/Forward: A Victory for Deinstitutionalisation... →
This case was filed in part to respond to a series of revelations about horrific abuses in Georgia’s institutions, with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution playing a key role in the unmasking of systemic abuse and other problems. What this case represents, in addition to victory for people with disabilities, is also a victory for the free press. The paper’s decision to cover this issue led directly...
this ain't livin': A Multiplicity of Needs:... →
No one organisation can be all things to all people. I don’t think it would be reasonable to expect organisations working on cancer to address every single issue related to cancer, it’s simply not possible. But I do think we can ask for a more interconnected network of organisations, each focusing on different facets of the issue and each supporting the other rather than regarding it as...
Michael Alan Goldberg at Philadelphia Weekly:... →
Both Chakejian and Bates insist they’ve made a significant, good-faith effort to divorce the Pennhurst Asylum from any notion that they’re making fun of disabled people or exploiting Pennhurst’s history. Chakejian—who notes that no one, not preservationists, disability groups or anyone else, so much as put a bid on the property, which had been on the market since 1991 with no takers—says he...
Alex Baca at Washington City Paper: Media Matters... →
Conservative-correcting non-profit Media Matters for America wants you to “Drop Fox”—and they’re launching their campaign from the bottom up. As in, the bottom of a subway tunnel.
A bevy of advertisements for the campaign against Fox News Channel hit stations across the Metro system last night. Picking up on the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert rally rhetoric, the ads proclaim that “Fox Keeps...
Chris Haire at Charleston City Paper: The Case... →
2010 gubernatorial race comes down to one thing and one thing only: Did Nikki Haley have an affair with Will Folks? It’s an issue the Haley camp has addressed poorly.
Shortly after Folks made his claim on May 24 on FITSNews that he had an inappropriate physical relationship with Haley, the candidate took a page out of the Sarah Palin playbook, saying that a mysterious and malicious...
Marisa Demarco at Alibi: It Ain’t Easy Being Green →
“There’s no state with a worse record this year,” says Richard Winger, who edits Ballot Access News, a national publication based in San Francisco. He writes about independent candidates and third parties, and he keeps track of developing laws state by state.
Since the mid-1960s—his entire adult life—Winger’s been following the struggles of non-Dems and...
Willamette Week Editorial Board: Save Our State! →
But here’s the beauty of the flawed system we call democracy: There’s an election coming up Nov. 2, and there are a batch of candidates who want you to hire them to fix all that.
We’ve spent the past six-plus weeks interviewing candidates in contested races for governor, treasurer, the Legislature, Metro, Multnomah County’s Board of Commissioners and Congress. We looked for candidates...
Hart Van Denburg at City Pages: Michele Bachmann... →
The Center for Public Integrity and MinnPost have published her letters to U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and other federal agency leads, supporting stimulus funding for projects in her district, including $300 million for a new bridge over the St. Croix river near Stillwater.
Letters from other Minnesota lawmakers were published, including from GOP Reps. and stimulus critics...
this ain't livin': The Crossdresser's Holiday →
What do we mean, when we say that Halloween is ‘the crossdresser’s holiday’? Do we mean that it’s awesome to have a day of the year where people can be themselves? Do we mean that those people should only beallowed one day a year? Does Halloween help, or hurt, when it comes to full integration into society for people with variant gender expression and identities? These aren’t necessarily...
The ATT Saga, Day Seven
Let’s Recap:
Day One, Friday 22 October: I call to schedule a service transfer for Wednesday, 27 October. They promptly disconnect my service.
Day Two, Saturday 23 October: I spend all day on the (cell)phone trying to figure out why my Internet/landline aren’t working. I get the runaround until someone finally says ‘oh, we disconnected your service, oops, no one will be in to...
Matt Coker at OC Weekly: Meg Whitman, Direct From... →
From California Voter Guide: a red, white, blue and light blue flier that reminds me of Whitman because she is NOT among the dozen GOP members endorsed in this “Voter Guide for Republicans.” Torrance-based California Voter Guide is “not an official political party organization.” From Meg Whitman for Governor 2010: a slick, glossy, full-color flier with what appear to...
Jefferson Dodge at Boulder Weekly: Tea party... →
The tight races for governor and U.S. Senate have some wondering what effect the Tea Party movement in Colorado will have on those contests and certain ballot initiatives.
Rasmussen Reports released survey results last week showing that Tom Tancredo is now in a statistical dead heat with Democrat John Hickenlooper, when just a couple of months ago it looked as if Hickenlooper would win...
this ain't livin': What Are You Supporting,... →
But what is being ‘supported’ here? It’s not like anyone is in doubt that breast cancer is a bad thing. Most people are, I believe, anti-breast cancer. I certainly can’t think of anyone who thinks breast cancer is awesome, and talks about how sweet it is when people die of painful chronic diseases. Thus, it’s not like people need to outwardly display their hatred of breast cancer, or shame...
Michael Roberts at Denver Westword: Ken Buck... →
On Sunday, Ken Buck compared homosexuality to alcoholism during a nationally televised Meet the Press debate with Senator Michael Bennet — and host David Gregory also brought up Buck’s decision not to file rape charges in a much-debated 2005 case.
Not that it matters much, according to Buck spokesman Owen Loftus, who believes such stories are attempts to distract voters —...
NPR: NY Lawsuit: Citigroup Used Recession To Fire... →
Citigroup was accused in a lawsuit Wednesday of using companywide layoffs during the recent financial turmoil to purge its work force of scores of female employees to save the jobs of less-qualified men.
The lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan accused the company of accepting government bailout money even as it continued a pattern of “pervasive discrimination and...
Hey hey hey guess what the phone company did again
First two guesses don’t count.
See you whenever ATT decides I am worthy of phone service again!
Small town funtime
So I dropped the car off at the mechanic’s this morning to get the oil changed and have him look at the loose engine mount, right?
And apparently as soon as I walked out of the parking lot, some douche hit my car, got out to inspect the damage, and then drove off. This is where living in a small town comes in handy, because my mechanic is right next door to the feed store, and feed store...
this ain't livin': Any Colour, So Long As It's... →
This is a pretty classic example of why intersectionalism is important. It is not enough to say that the environment is broken because of our actions and we need to fix it. Both of these things are true and they are important, but the way we deal with it needs to take place in context. Some injustices involved in the current way we approach things like food production and environmental policy...
Melissa Silverstein at Women and Hollywood: Zero... →
They released a new study: Gender Disparity On Screen and Behind the Camera in Family Films, done by Stacy L. Smith, PhD and Marc Choueiti, at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism which updates their earlier work. The study looked at gender disparity issues in the top 122 grossing domestic family films rated G, PG and PG-13 from 2006-2009.
Here’s what the study...
Seth Freed Wessler at Colorlines: Georgia Bans... →
The state of Georgia today banned undocumented immigrants from attending public colleges and universities. The board of regents voted 16-2 to prohibit public universities from enrolling students without papers in any school that has rejected other qualified applicants for the past two years due to lack of space.
The vote makes Georgia one of three states to bar undocumented immigrants...
ALA: AASL survey results show lagging economy hit... →
According to the results from the American Association of School Librarians’ (AASL) 2010 School Libraries Count! survey, the educational resources of students in high poverty schools have been most affected by last year’s economic downturn. Overall survey results show that school expenditures on information resources were approximately $12,260 in 2010 compared to $13,525 last year. While...
mel's robocalling action plan (for California...
Do you live in California? Did you get a robocall* that was not introduced by a live human being who asked for and obtained verbal consent to play the message? Congratulations, whoever called you just broke the law**. In California robocalls are entirely legal, IF they are introduced by a person, which they are usually not. Electioneering calls and debt collectors, both of whom are allowed to...
T. Ballard Lesemann at Charleston City Paper:... →
Plenty has been written about the punk rock movement of the 1970s, but few books have tied things together so thoroughly as British author and music critic Jon Savage’s England’s Dreaming: Anarchy, Sex Pistols, Punk Rock, and Beyond. When I grabbed a copy in the ’90s, it fired my fascination with the punk rock of the U.K. I’m still into it.
In researching...
David Martin at The Pitch: Sugar Creek turned... →
But today there is no grocery, no Olive Garden, no Sprint store at the corner of Independence and Sterling. Instead, dirt and rock are found, plus a big, screaming liability on the city’s balance sheet. Sugar Creek has spent $5.3 million on the development, mostly to purchase homes standing in the way of “progress.” Thirty-three homeowners and two businesses were pushed...
this ain't livin': In Which ATT Infuriates the... →
‘Inconvenience’ is a temporary and unavoidable outage caused by bad weather and the necessity of repairs to the line. I understand that these things happen, as a rural ATT customer, and that they usually happen without warning. Terminating my services in clear violation of my very plainly worded request to transfer my account is not an ‘inconvenience,’ it is an act of gross incompetence. Tell...
FWD/Forward: Creative Work: Circle Stories, by... →
Hooray art!
John Stoehr at Hartford Advocate: Indie... →
Yet the day he asked to enter the seminary was essentially his last day as a Roman Catholic. It changed the course of Smith’s life and it illustrated the puzzling and conflicted place of the Roman Catholic Church in the 21st century, as an ancient institution in a struggle with a fast-changing world. On that day, in the offices of the diocese in Michigan’s remote Upper Peninsula, his bishop...
Deeda Schroeder at Willamette Week: Grow Food,... →
With Laney’s thought, a company was born—Eat Oregon First.
The company has been around for about 16 months, and is filling a critical need for Oregon farmers as well as buyers wanting to purchase artisan-quality goods, says Deborah Kane, Ecotrust’s vice president of food and farms and creator of the food networking site FoodHub. Laney and Greif were first introduced via FoodHub.
...
Joe Eskenazi at SF Weekly: Democratic Candidate... →
It’s a bit odd for a Democratic candidate to use, as a selling point, how little he has in common with the Democratic Party. But, if that’s the chosen route to electoral success, it’s not very surprising that said candidate should portray San Francisco as a den of bizarre, gyrating hippies Enter Jim Marshall, representative of Georgia’s Eighth District, and now...
Stuff What I Wrote This Weekend
That didn’t make it to Tumblr BECAUSE ATT SUCKS.
this ain’t livin’: Stories From My Father: Alexander Snodgrass and the Polite Interlude
‘Alexander William Whitcomb Warrumple Pith Snodgrass the Third,’ he said, in an unruffled tone, the sort of tone that comes from people used to getting their way and used to being accepted wherever they go. The sort of tone that rules...
Sami Grover at Treehugger: Lakota Permaculture... →
From massive solar installations in Nevada to environmental education tours, many Native American communities are implementing innovative and exciting sustainability initiatives. Now one farmer on the Pine Ridge Lakota reservation in South Dakota is hoping to create an ongoing permaculture teaching and demonstration project to promote self-sufficiency and community resilience.
According...
Phillip Longman at Foreign Policy: Think Again:... →
It’s true that the world’s population overall will increase by roughly one-third over the next 40 years, from 6.9 to 9.1 billion, according to the U.N. Population Division. But this will be a very different kind of population growth than ever before — driven not by birth rates, which have plummeted around the world, but primarily by an increase in the number of elderly...
s.e. Hates the Phone Company
Because they broke my phone and claim they didn’t, and now I am sitting in a noisy and smelly coffeehouse trying to catch up on a large pile of crap I have missed. In other words, I probably won’t be around for the next few…uh…somethings. If the queue actually fucking worked, you’d see posts from me anyway, but it doesn’t, so you won’t.
Grand Rounds: Dissecting Grey's Anatomy: Almost... →
Spoilers! But they are so delicious.
I Fry Mine In Butter: Memo to the Makers: Stop... →
…as soon as the creators start telling me how clever they’re being, I start to tune out. The whole point of being clever is that you shouldn’t have to tell me about it. It’s sort of like having to explain the punchline of a joke; if I didn’t get it when I first heard it, you beating me over the head with it isn’t gonna make it funny. That’s the point where you give up and decide it was...
Robert Edwards, Virginia Ironside, and the... →
As people committed to both disability rights and reproductive rights, we believe that respecting women and families in their reproductive decisions requires simultaneously challenging discriminatory attitudes toward people with disabilities. We refuse to accept the bifurcation of women’s rights from disability rights, or the belief that protecting reproductive rights requires accepting ableist...
Tom Philpott at Grist: What Monsanto’s fall from... →
On Tuesday, Forbes publicly lamented its decision to deem Monsanto “company of the year.” The headline was cutting: “Forbes was wrong about Monsanto. Really wrong.” How did Monsanto go from the from Wall Street hero to Wall Street doormat?
According to The Times’ Pollack, Monsanto’s troubles are two-fold: 1) the patent on Roundup, Monsanto’s...
this ain't livin': The Noncompliant Patient →
I hear a lot of people saying that staring is natural and people should just expect it and people mean well and they are just curious and they can’t be blamed for being startled by something they aren’t used to seeing. I don’t see that flipped very often, I don’t see the people making those excuses examining them and wondering what it’s like to have everyone staring...
Steven T. Jones at San Francisco Bay Guardian:... →
Obama opposes same-sex marriage, and when the Democrat’s made a showy legislative move last month to end DADT, they quickly caved in the face of a Republican filibuster, making the whole gesture seem like a meaningless election year gimmick rather than an honest effort to end a policy that has always been unconstitutional, as this judge has now ruled.
So now, it’s gut check...
