A pessimistic forecast.
Go Switzerland!
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/syndicated.gif){kind=small}
July 9th, 2009
Engineers like to tinker. So let them tinker. Then when they bring you whatever it is they've made, first you say you're too busy to meet with them. Then you say you've changed your mind and you will meet with them after all. Then you wait until they're all in the conference room with everything set up, and you send Katie down to tell them that you're going to be a little bit late. You make them wait an hour. Then two hours. Then, at six in the afternoon, you send Katie down to tell them that you've changed your mind again and now you can't make it. Then, finally, you set up another appointment and this time you do meet with them -- but before they can even speak you just look at whatever it is they've made and you say, I'm sorry, that's a piece of shit, and you walk out. Trust me, engineers love this. They're all masochists. That's why they became engineers in the first place.—Fake Steve Jobs
July 8th, 2009
Google announces a distro of Linux customized to run webapps in Google Chrome on any machine.
About time. I hope TTC goes through with the report recommendations.:-)
That's right, mixing medium density commercial, residential, and offices lets more people walk and take transit, which reduces the need to drive, which makes roads emptier, so car lovers can have empty roads. Everybody wins.
"What sticks in my craw, though, is that so many people feel that they are incapable of making such mistakes."
via ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
gordonzola
Are there tv shows that are doing insightful commentary like this these days? I need something worth hulu-ing.
gordonzolaAre there tv shows that are doing insightful commentary like this these days? I need something worth hulu-ing.
July 7th, 2009
Ha! The Roseanne episode where they pick up the riot grrrl hitchhiker (Jenna Elfmann) and listen to Bikini Kill. (thanks to kristy_chan
Awesome
kristy_chanAwesome
July 6th, 2009
upstate Vermont is pretty awesome:
Who doesn't enjoy a little taxidermy while grocery shopping?
The cleaning products aisle. You can't tell, but those polaroid photos on the wall are photos of hunters, posing with things they have recently shot.
It's a moose! In the catfood aisle.
The Evansville City Bank is also the gas station and the trading post, offering "guns, ammo, furniture, hardware and footware".
It also doubles as the city jail.
We took some time to hit some golf balls on the mountain top.
This is where we rent our "equipment" (yep, those are cow on the left).
And this is the driving range. None of us really know what we're doing.
Yar sets up...
Swing and a miss!
Who doesn't enjoy a little taxidermy while grocery shopping?
The cleaning products aisle. You can't tell, but those polaroid photos on the wall are photos of hunters, posing with things they have recently shot.
It's a moose! In the catfood aisle.
The Evansville City Bank is also the gas station and the trading post, offering "guns, ammo, furniture, hardware and footware".
It also doubles as the city jail.
We took some time to hit some golf balls on the mountain top.
This is where we rent our "equipment" (yep, those are cow on the left).
And this is the driving range. None of us really know what we're doing.
Yar sets up...
Swing and a miss!
So now I can sit here in a team meeting and blog on my phone.
The tilers are in the kitchen diner today, which is a bit scary. They're stone, quartzite. Popped home to see them earlier but there wasn't any stone down yet.
Fingers crossed.
Posted via LiveJournal.app.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
This makes me more ill than I can say.
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?s
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?s
July 5th, 2009
I think this is so cute that I'm going to post here as well as tweeting it! I've found some nice bits for the house at Ark - bin, mirror - and now this little hook. It has leaves and a bird and a rose.
Posted via LiveJournal.app.
Leading Clerics Defy Ayatollah on Disputed Iran Election
They "called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/w
They "called the disputed presidential election and the new government illegitimate on Saturday."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/05/w
There is a debate at work right now. Granted, it is a bit ideological, but it is one of those classic web developer debates we feel compelled to return to every couple of years:
Should we expect our users to have JavaScript enabled?
Perhaps more importantly, what should we do when they don’t?
Ever since Google Maps ripped open the possibilities of web-based development (with turn-by-turn directions no less), we have been stuck with this bizarre requirement: JavaScript. Sure, it makes the web go round, but I still have nightmares of trying to get the University of Utah labs to upgrade to Flash v7, and our web analytics show a stunningly high level of Netscape v4.
Right now I am building a fancy fan-dangled address widget for the Association (as fancy as an address widget can be), but through this process am also authoring/encoding into existence a fairly large number of front-end standards for our new Java/Spring architecture. Of course we are required to have some “lo-fi” version of what ever Dojo-steroided-monster I create, but when I ask my peers what possible message I could place between some <noscript> tags, they typically respond with a string of expletives.
Leave it to my colleague Patrick to find the perfect solution: A gentle message from mibbit that gets right to the point.
I kid you not. They are that awesome. I would tell you to go check it out yourself, but you would have to disable your JavaScript to see the message and I don’t want to be responsible for any more frogs. Consider this a public service.
July 3rd, 2009
I know a lot of people are throwing hope around, and emotions and tensions are high. This thing will take time, the efforts so far have caused great change in the world's view of Iranians and has brought out the worst of the Iranian regime.
It may get worse before it gets better, but be patient. Keep your spirits high and try to spread awareness of Iran and what is happening among friends, both Iranian and American (or wherever else you live).
Be optimistic.
It may get worse before it gets better, but be patient. Keep your spirits high and try to spread awareness of Iran and what is happening among friends, both Iranian and American (or wherever else you live).
Be optimistic.
I don't really know much about what's going on there. When I first heard the story, the idea of a military coup sounded pretty bad. But when I actually read the story, I'm less sure what to think. The president was ousted because he was pushing for a referendum that had been declared illegal by both the supreme court and the legislature independently. He managed to get the referendum conducted anyway, and I believe the military ousted him to stop him from declaring the referendum legal and victorious. (The referendum was one of these Hugo Chavez/Robert Mugabe/Michael Bloomberg things that extends the term limits of the person pushing it. I trust Bloomberg not to try to make himself mayor for life (though extending your own term in the middle of it is definitely distasteful), but I don't trust the others any more than I trust Disney with the copyright extension laws.)
I suspect there was a much better option than a military coup though. If the military had just confiscated the ballots, that seems like it would have been sufficient.
I suppose it depends on what the people of Honduras think. The coup that took Hugo Chavez out of power for a few days back in 2002 or so seemed to have some popular support, but apparently not enough to stop him from getting his referenda passed.
I suspect there was a much better option than a military coup though. If the military had just confiscated the ballots, that seems like it would have been sufficient.
I suppose it depends on what the people of Honduras think. The coup that took Hugo Chavez out of power for a few days back in 2002 or so seemed to have some popular support, but apparently not enough to stop him from getting his referenda passed.
I cannot stop listening to this song. So weird and good.
Thanks dude from Fantastic Plastic Machine for recommending it.
Thanks dude from Fantastic Plastic Machine for recommending it.
My latest article for LWN explains (!) soft updates. The "(!)" is because soft updates are notoriously difficult to understand. If you go to a file systems conference and get people drunk, they will eventually confide to you that they don't really understand soft updates either.
Soft updates, hard problems
This is a free link; if you like the article, please consider subscribing to LWN. You'll still need an account if you want to make snide comments on the article. :)
Soft updates, hard problems
This is a free link; if you like the article, please consider subscribing to LWN. You'll still need an account if you want to make snide comments on the article. :)
Well, moving day is finally here. I'm only moving 4 blocks, but the chaos of not having all your stuff upended from its usual location is proving stressful.
Ongoing analysis of Canadian electoral polls.
Группа WINE SHOP представляет вашему вниманию свою дебютную пластинку. Отправляя альбом в свободное распространение по интернету мы хотели бы, чтобы как можно больше людей послушали нашу музыку и написали свое мнение, это очень важно для нас. На альбоме представлено десять композиций, которые по нашему мнению наиболее точно отображают музыкальную концепцию группы за почти что трехлетний период существования.
Стилистически пластинка не выдержана строго в каком-либо определенном стиле. Если говорить обобщающим термином, то это инди-рок. Если разбирать все по кусочкам, то это микс из хлесткого гитарного рока, дэнс-рока и пост-панка. Не ориентируясь на какую то определенную публику, мы надеемся что эта работа заинтересует абсолютно разную аудиторию. Как тех кто любит потанцевальнее, так и любителей отдохнуть под спокойные мелодии. Enjoy!!!
Artist...............: Wine Shop
Album................: s/t
Genre................: indie-rock
Source...............: LP
Year.................: 2009
Information..........: http://www.myspace.com/wineshop
----------------------------------------
Tracklisting
----------------------------------------
1. (00:02:52) - Trains
2. (00:02:00) - Wrong Song
3. (00:03:03) - Death In Summer
4. (00:02:44) - Riding A Cloud
5. (00:01:34) - I'm Afraid
6. (00:01:49) - Shit Song
7. (00:02:34) - Cure me
8. (00:03:44) - Someday
9. (00:02:44) - Summer Is Broken
10. (00:02:53) - Anyway We Die
Playing Time.........: 00:27,09
Total Size...........: 64,1 MB
Ссылка:
narod.ru/disk/7420175000/2009%20-%20Wine%2
or
Ссылка:
prg.ifolder.ru/11457245
or
Ссылка:
www.sendspace.com/file/9ttkxq
or
Ссылка:
www.mediafire.com/download.php
or
Ссылка:
rapidshare.com/files/218213015/2009_-_Wi
I can't remember if I linked to it earlier, but the NYTimes had a good article about the possibility of high speed rail in the US, and around the world. Since Matt's going to Europe in August (for the first time), I said he should check out the high speed trains there, since we may get one in California in about 10 years or so. (Apparently there are also some vague plans for a line connecting the Canberra airport to Sydney, so that it can be the second international airport for the metro area.) However, when Matt looked into things, it turned out that by flying within Europe instead of taking the trains, he could save money and also add Rome to his itinerary.
A pretty decent article in the LATimes about organic food, and how it really doesn't mean quite what you might hope. I don't think I've ever known people who are like the ones the author describes, that refuse anything if it doesn't have the organic label. But it would be pretty crazy, given that there are some non-organic fertilizers and pesticides that are much more environmentally friendly than many of the relevant organic alternatives. Also, the author points out that the taste doesn't always match up the way you want either, though I know much less about that. (I suppose that's ironic, given that I eat much more often than I use fertilizer or pesticide, but I've read more about the latter, and haven't paid enough attention to the former to figure out which produce tastes best.)
Also, same-sex sex is finally legal in Delhi (NYTimes, Times of London). This ruling can still be appealed to a higher court, so it only applies in Delhi for now, but it could well apply nationwide soon. I think Illinois legalized same-sex sex back in 1961, but all other states waited at least until 1970, with the last such laws being wiped out in the US only in 2003.
Wordnik - a new crowdsourcing dictionary. I don't quite understand how Urban Dictionary works, but this looks like competition.
A pretty decent article in the LATimes about organic food, and how it really doesn't mean quite what you might hope. I don't think I've ever known people who are like the ones the author describes, that refuse anything if it doesn't have the organic label. But it would be pretty crazy, given that there are some non-organic fertilizers and pesticides that are much more environmentally friendly than many of the relevant organic alternatives. Also, the author points out that the taste doesn't always match up the way you want either, though I know much less about that. (I suppose that's ironic, given that I eat much more often than I use fertilizer or pesticide, but I've read more about the latter, and haven't paid enough attention to the former to figure out which produce tastes best.)
Also, same-sex sex is finally legal in Delhi (NYTimes, Times of London). This ruling can still be appealed to a higher court, so it only applies in Delhi for now, but it could well apply nationwide soon. I think Illinois legalized same-sex sex back in 1961, but all other states waited at least until 1970, with the last such laws being wiped out in the US only in 2003.
Wordnik - a new crowdsourcing dictionary. I don't quite understand how Urban Dictionary works, but this looks like competition.
July 2nd, 2009
I will be leaving the internets for a temporary holiday in reality over Thursday-Monday. Enjoy your weekend!
Not related to the linked articles, but this is why it is very important we move away from oil and natural gas before we hit Peak Oil Extraction Throughput and Peak Natural Gas Extraction Throughput. The industrial revolution freed us from the malthusian trap by progressively increasing the available energy per capita. A reduction in average energy per capita, even temporarily, would be very bad news.
I know what you're thinking: "Yellowstone has some of the most magnificent scenery ever, up there with the Golden Gate and the Swiss Alps? Isn't that exaggerating a little bit?"
This steam tornado forming over a geothermal hot spring proves otherwise.
Many more pics to come, I'm still working through them all. Some quick words: buffalo, buffalo walking on the road, elk, pronghorn antelope, deer, black bears, moose, bighorn sheep, osprey, golden eagles, herons, marmots, chipmunks; geysers, hot springs, waterfalls, mountains, lakes; snow, hail, rain, wind, sunburn.
The weather we've been having here in Canberra the past day or so is the sort of weather I associate with Santa Cruz, though I think most people probably don't, since they've probably been there at times with better weather. It's the slightly dreary, windy, dripping weather that tends to occur in cool climates near the ocean, where you get sea spray in the wind. Not really what you expect from the mountainous inland region of the world's second-dryest continent (not that it's actually very mountainous, inland, or dry in Canberra).
When I was looking on a colleague's blog for a video from the dinner on Tuesday night, I discovered that she had recently written a blog post on food tongue, creating yet another independent intersection between my philosophy and mathcamp lives. (Others include the fact that the outside member of my dissertation defense committee was a student of Josh Tenenbaum, than in 2006 I was able to conveniently visit Tacoma and Bellingham in quick succession, and that Jeff Russell has been a part of both communities. My math connection to Sarah Moss is just through Budapest, not Mathcamp.)
When I was looking on a colleague's blog for a video from the dinner on Tuesday night, I discovered that she had recently written a blog post on food tongue, creating yet another independent intersection between my philosophy and mathcamp lives. (Others include the fact that the outside member of my dissertation defense committee was a student of Josh Tenenbaum, than in 2006 I was able to conveniently visit Tacoma and Bellingham in quick succession, and that Jeff Russell has been a part of both communities. My math connection to Sarah Moss is just through Budapest, not Mathcamp.)
July 1st, 2009
Paint rollers were out covering up the graffiti I photographed earlier this week. It's a never ending battle of paint. Makes me wonder which is uglier the tags or the grey/beige dishwater they paint over them with.
Sent from my iPhone
It's weird how much patriotism I feel towards Timmy Hos.
Hey there! There's a new band in Miami working on a myspace right now but if you like experimental indie music check it out. The band is called Hippocrypt & The Metro Gnomes. Check them out at
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/HIPPOCRYPTANDTHEMETROGNO
Feel free to leave a comment! Thanks!
WWW.MYSPACE.COM/HIPPOCRYPTANDTHEMETROGNO
Feel free to leave a comment! Thanks!
I'm not sure if this has been posted already and if yes then sorry!
http://www.spreadpersepolis.com/
a comic made about what is currently happening is gaining a lot of interesting and being shared all over.
please read and pass the comic on through things like myspace and facebook if you can.
http://www.spreadpersepolis.com/
a comic made about what is currently happening is gaining a lot of interesting and being shared all over.
please read and pass the comic on through things like myspace and facebook if you can.
June 30th, 2009
Anyone know a cheap place to buy underbust corsets? The closer to Huntington Beach the better.
Well, we've seen a few waves of important news breaking on social media just in the last week. Most notably the Iran election, but there was also the Honduras coup. Both were stories that happened to a lot of people at once, where even the central narrative was highly disputed, and the 'official' sources of information were all interested parties.
It would have really helped if there were clearinghouses that could determine what was true and what wasn't. Some tireless bloggers like Andrew Sullivan have tried. But I know of no one who is really succeeding with any kind of nearly-real-time truth verification system.
The mainstream media, particularly television, is basically an entertainment system now, and can only live off of predigested food. If it is not already in a press release they cannot process it. There are wonderful exceptions, but they are just that, exceptions. Forget about them. They're gone.
So what can take on the truth verification role?
Suspend practicality for a moment. Is it even theoretically possible that we can distribute this work? Might there be ways to break down a small unit of data -- say, a tweet -- into component claims, and then assemble evidence and confidence levels for each, finally producing a summary percentage of how likely the original statement is to be true? This might require also producing some reliable confidence score for every person who adds data to the system, too.
A generalized system of credentials might have side benefits for sites like Wikipedia, or distributed identity systems in general.
Or, if you think the work can't be distributed, is there some way to get the right expert skeptics (on whatever topic) to sift through the data?
Some people think prediction markets are the way to go, since people are willing to bet money in proportion to their own confidence. I doubt it. There have been protests against the use of such markets in relation to facts about human misery (it feels wrong to have people betting "for" wars or climate catastrophes). But more importantly, such markets only work when there is some crisp outcome to test in the short term. A question like "were the 2009 Iranian election results falsified" may not reach a conclusion for a decade, if ever, so the prediction market would be dominated by speculation -- guessing what other people are currently guessing.
It would have really helped if there were clearinghouses that could determine what was true and what wasn't. Some tireless bloggers like Andrew Sullivan have tried. But I know of no one who is really succeeding with any kind of nearly-real-time truth verification system.
The mainstream media, particularly television, is basically an entertainment system now, and can only live off of predigested food. If it is not already in a press release they cannot process it. There are wonderful exceptions, but they are just that, exceptions. Forget about them. They're gone.
So what can take on the truth verification role?
Suspend practicality for a moment. Is it even theoretically possible that we can distribute this work? Might there be ways to break down a small unit of data -- say, a tweet -- into component claims, and then assemble evidence and confidence levels for each, finally producing a summary percentage of how likely the original statement is to be true? This might require also producing some reliable confidence score for every person who adds data to the system, too.
A generalized system of credentials might have side benefits for sites like Wikipedia, or distributed identity systems in general.
Or, if you think the work can't be distributed, is there some way to get the right expert skeptics (on whatever topic) to sift through the data?
Some people think prediction markets are the way to go, since people are willing to bet money in proportion to their own confidence. I doubt it. There have been protests against the use of such markets in relation to facts about human misery (it feels wrong to have people betting "for" wars or climate catastrophes). But more importantly, such markets only work when there is some crisp outcome to test in the short term. A question like "were the 2009 Iranian election results falsified" may not reach a conclusion for a decade, if ever, so the prediction market would be dominated by speculation -- guessing what other people are currently guessing.
June 29th, 2009
I believe that the purpose of the judicial system is rehabilitation to the exclusion of deterrent, punishment, or vengeance.
In cases of the incorrigible, this implies indefinite detention.
I don't know enough about Bernie Madoff to comment on whether 150 years for fraud is excessive or not.
In cases of the incorrigible, this implies indefinite detention.
I don't know enough about Bernie Madoff to comment on whether 150 years for fraud is excessive or not.
I saw “Maggots and Men” last week at Frameline. It was amazing. Like seriously amazing.
When I go to see art produced by people I know, and starring people I know, my expectations are low. I don’t mean that my friends aren’t talented. I mean that I’m already on their side and pre-disposed to be positive. I’ll laugh at the in-jokes. I’ll forgive hammy behavior. I’ll wince with them at hard moments, not be thinking “someone else might have done this better”.
“Maggots…” however, exceeded every expectation I had.
When I moved out of my apartment on Valencia St. 15 years ago, Cary (the Director) moved in. We had known each other through Epicenter and the punk scene. Indeed, the house I was moving out of, and that he was moving into back then in 1994, was a hub of the queer punk scene. My housemates had helped found Q-TIP (Queers Together in Punkness) and also produced shows under the name “House of Failure” (our phone number was 552-FAIL… what a happy coincidence for the “beautiful loser” generation). I’m not aware of any touring queer punk bands of that era didn’t drop by at some point, even if just to change outfits or use the bathroom before the show since we were only a half block from Epicenter.
When I saw that his movie was finally finished I knew that it was the one thing I couldn’t miss in this year’s film festival, even if it was just to see what an old friend had done over the last 5 years. “Maggots…” is the re-telling of the Kronstadt Uprising of 1921. The last hope of the real Russian Revolution, sailors at the Kronstadt naval base made 15 demands to the revolutionary Bolshevik government, which might have altered history and prevent the Soviet Union from becoming the tyrannical, farce of a revolution that it became. After a few minor victories, the sailors -- many of whom had fired on the Winter Palace during the 1917 revolution -- were killed, jailed, or forced to flee over ice to Finland. (Kronstadt, like the Spanish Revolution of 1936, has always been an anarchist talking point.)
“Maggots…” certainly owes a debt to Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin”. While I don’t know if anyone has every been a better visual filmmaker than Eisenstein, “Maggots..” is a beautiful, beautiful film. And brilliantly scored.
Cary also made the incredibly smart decision to make the film narrated by a rebel sailor in Russian, with English subtitles.* In this way, the film could be made with its mostly transgender/gender queer cast of friends and not have the varying levels of acting ability affect the final product. ** I was overjoyed to see lots of people I knew on the big screen of the Castro, (including House of Failure housemates) but this film rose above the art-of-friends category and is seriously a film I would recommend to anyone. It’s gripping, assumption-challenging, and, in the end, tearfully sad. Of course, the place to see it is at a film festival because it’s only a 50 minute movie and it deserves to be seen on the big screen. Watch for it! Request it from your local festivals!
While the movie does not have much humor, the funniest part of the screening was when asked a question about the maggots filmed in the movie, Cary told how they had to grow them for the film a number of times. He said that his relationship to them really changed after all that. After all, they’re really only “going through their own transition”.
The film doesn’t over-polemicize. With its mostly trans cast, it draws out questions between revolutionary moments in history and a time when gender can be revolutionary transformed, but doesn’t try and make them direct parallels. It’s a beautiful look at the potential of revolutionary moments to be beautiful, perhaps even challenging folks to appreciate that beauty before stronger social forces can organize to take back control. It's also a love letter to rebels who have the courage to take up these fights.
*There is an agitprop retelling of the history of Kronstadt by a theater troupe in English as well
**An example of this is the Bratt Brothers’ early film “Follow Me Home”. It’s a masterpiece in some ways, painful to watch in others. The Rainbow Grocery joke was hilarious though.
When I go to see art produced by people I know, and starring people I know, my expectations are low. I don’t mean that my friends aren’t talented. I mean that I’m already on their side and pre-disposed to be positive. I’ll laugh at the in-jokes. I’ll forgive hammy behavior. I’ll wince with them at hard moments, not be thinking “someone else might have done this better”.
“Maggots…” however, exceeded every expectation I had.
When I moved out of my apartment on Valencia St. 15 years ago, Cary (the Director) moved in. We had known each other through Epicenter and the punk scene. Indeed, the house I was moving out of, and that he was moving into back then in 1994, was a hub of the queer punk scene. My housemates had helped found Q-TIP (Queers Together in Punkness) and also produced shows under the name “House of Failure” (our phone number was 552-FAIL… what a happy coincidence for the “beautiful loser” generation). I’m not aware of any touring queer punk bands of that era didn’t drop by at some point, even if just to change outfits or use the bathroom before the show since we were only a half block from Epicenter.
When I saw that his movie was finally finished I knew that it was the one thing I couldn’t miss in this year’s film festival, even if it was just to see what an old friend had done over the last 5 years. “Maggots…” is the re-telling of the Kronstadt Uprising of 1921. The last hope of the real Russian Revolution, sailors at the Kronstadt naval base made 15 demands to the revolutionary Bolshevik government, which might have altered history and prevent the Soviet Union from becoming the tyrannical, farce of a revolution that it became. After a few minor victories, the sailors -- many of whom had fired on the Winter Palace during the 1917 revolution -- were killed, jailed, or forced to flee over ice to Finland. (Kronstadt, like the Spanish Revolution of 1936, has always been an anarchist talking point.)
“Maggots…” certainly owes a debt to Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin”. While I don’t know if anyone has every been a better visual filmmaker than Eisenstein, “Maggots..” is a beautiful, beautiful film. And brilliantly scored.
Cary also made the incredibly smart decision to make the film narrated by a rebel sailor in Russian, with English subtitles.* In this way, the film could be made with its mostly transgender/gender queer cast of friends and not have the varying levels of acting ability affect the final product. ** I was overjoyed to see lots of people I knew on the big screen of the Castro, (including House of Failure housemates) but this film rose above the art-of-friends category and is seriously a film I would recommend to anyone. It’s gripping, assumption-challenging, and, in the end, tearfully sad. Of course, the place to see it is at a film festival because it’s only a 50 minute movie and it deserves to be seen on the big screen. Watch for it! Request it from your local festivals!
While the movie does not have much humor, the funniest part of the screening was when asked a question about the maggots filmed in the movie, Cary told how they had to grow them for the film a number of times. He said that his relationship to them really changed after all that. After all, they’re really only “going through their own transition”.
The film doesn’t over-polemicize. With its mostly trans cast, it draws out questions between revolutionary moments in history and a time when gender can be revolutionary transformed, but doesn’t try and make them direct parallels. It’s a beautiful look at the potential of revolutionary moments to be beautiful, perhaps even challenging folks to appreciate that beauty before stronger social forces can organize to take back control. It's also a love letter to rebels who have the courage to take up these fights.
*There is an agitprop retelling of the history of Kronstadt by a theater troupe in English as well
**An example of this is the Bratt Brothers’ early film “Follow Me Home”. It’s a masterpiece in some ways, painful to watch in others. The Rainbow Grocery joke was hilarious though.
http://www.demotix.com/news/election-pr
EDIT:// and I just got this "Iran president election Petition"
http://www.petitiononline.com/923561/pe
EDIT:// and I just got this "Iran president election Petition"
http://www.petitiononline.com/923561/pe
Ahmadinejad has called for an investigation into the "suspicious" death of Neda Agha-Soltan by the government. How "nice" of him...grr.
Here's a clue, look in the mirror, you can wrap it up in mere seconds! I think I especially like the lame reasoning that the Basij could not have been responsible because "the bullet used was a different type".
The desperate attempts to spin this away from the galvanizing force it has become are almost amusing if not so tragically disgusting.
Freedom for Iran.
Here's a clue, look in the mirror, you can wrap it up in mere seconds! I think I especially like the lame reasoning that the Basij could not have been responsible because "the bullet used was a different type".
The desperate attempts to spin this away from the galvanizing force it has become are almost amusing if not so tragically disgusting.
Freedom for Iran.
I recently visited the National Museum of Nuclear Science and History - or, as I knew it growing up in Albuquerque, the Atomic Museum. The museum has a brand new full size building, with enough room to display most of their catalog for the first time, but not quite enough money to do so professionally. The result is a brief, magic window in which rare artifacts are finally out on display, but you can touch them and bang on them and crawl around in them. Many of the larger items, including a disassembled B-52 bomber and many rocket engines, are simply dumped in rows in a dirt courtyard in back.
Somehow, I expected that I would traipse through the museum, looking at old photographs and brushing up on my nuclear weapons trivia, with perhaps some solemn moments of reflection in front of the reproductions of Fat Man and Little Boy. Instead, I found myself oscillating between uncontrollable sobbing and open-mouthed technological awe. It went something like this: "Wow, a cyclotron! Holy crap, the Potsdam declaration. (Muffled sob.) A real nose-cone from an ICBM, cool! Whoa, photos of ground zero at Hiroshima. (Fountain of tears.)" I went back the next day to take some original photographs with the intention of writing a thoughtful, well-researched article on my personal experience.
Unfortunately, I have discovered that I seem to know almost nothing about the history of nuclear arms testing and development - and this is from someone whose parents worked on the Strategic Defense Initiative (Reagan's "Star Wars"), who read Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" AND "The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb", who grew up in New Mexico, home of the Manhattan Project. More accurately, I knew some of the relevant facts, but in a vague sort of manner devoid of any connection with everyday life. They were numbers of megatons in a reference book, fictional movie plots involving lost nuclear weapons, and contrived acronyms for arms reduction treaties.
But walking through the museum, I saw brass Nazi goggles and notebooks, the car that carried the Trinity bomb to the test site, a copy of the Potsdam Declaration, movies of ordinary Japanese citizens clearing rubble with hand baskets in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the dented shells of nuclear missiles that were, for reals, lost in a midair collision over Spain and recovered after a multi-million dollar search. (Far more were lost and never found, in or over the ocean.) I saw, and touched, and yet still almost could not believe in, the outer shell of a "Davy Crockett" miniature tactical nuke - a literal "backpack nuke," small enough that I could encircle it in my arms. I thought backpack nukes were only a theoretical possibility, and yet they were manufactured, assembly line style. I was particularly struck by how heavily the shoulder straps of the backpack were padded - a consideration so practical and down-to-earth in the face of the incomprehensible horror of the weapon itself.
And then I really got myself in trouble: I bought a copy of Michael Light's 100 Suns from the book shop. It is a collection of 100 photographs of nuclear explosions from the U.S. nuclear testing program, during the time when nuclear tests were conducted above ground. I knew, intellectually, that Enewetak and Bikini Atolls had been practically obliterated by thermonuclear bomb tests, but seeing a 20"x26" color photograph of the fireball of a 11 megaton explosion is... entirely different. And entirely different than seeing it on the computer screen - the image below has nothing like the power of that in the book.
Each photograph in this book symbolizes and encapsulates the conflicting and overpowering feelings I had in the museum: awe, excitement, and deep grief. My favorite photos are ones of the people watching the tests - most of them are bored, or matter-of-fact, but a few of the faces show the same awe and awareness that I feel when I look at the photos of the explosions, decades after the fact. The photos are accompanied by short footnotes at the end of the book, describing the technical and political circumstances and fallout (literal and figurative) of each test.
And here, yet again, I learned how little I knew: that several of the thermonuclear bombs accidentally exceeded expected yield by several megatons and accidentally sickened people (How!? can something as complex as a thermonuclear bomb go wrong - and result in even greater power?? That's not how computers work!), that we actually exploded nuclear weapons above the atmosphere and were surprised by the resultant EMP (I thought physicists predicted it, not that we knocked out Hawaii's power grid by accident and worked backwards from there), that the largest nuclear explosion ever was a 50-megaton test by the Soviets in the Arctic ("test" - it was entirely for political effect), that we exploded thermonuclear bombs in the continental U.S., that U.S. soldiers were put in trenches close to bomb tests in Nevada so that they could conduct maneuvers within a few hundred feet of the smoking, radioactive craters immediately afterwards.
It never even occurred to me that thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people had witnessed nuclear tests and that I could go talk to one of these people and ask them what it was like. And I never would have guessed that I would be jealous of them, because more than likely, no human will ever witness a nuclear explosion first-hand ever again.
I don't know what to do now. Maybe most people already know these things, in which case it will be difficult to communicate my awe. Maybe they don't know these things, but I won't be able to cross the boundary between intellectual knowledge, like what I knew before I went to the museum, and the intense visceral awareness that the physical objects and photos gave me. Maybe I can't do better than Michael Light's magnificent book and I should just write him a positive Amazon review. Maybe I can do better, if I use all the resources available to me on this here World Wide Web.
Questions for you, dear reader:
Somehow, I expected that I would traipse through the museum, looking at old photographs and brushing up on my nuclear weapons trivia, with perhaps some solemn moments of reflection in front of the reproductions of Fat Man and Little Boy. Instead, I found myself oscillating between uncontrollable sobbing and open-mouthed technological awe. It went something like this: "Wow, a cyclotron! Holy crap, the Potsdam declaration. (Muffled sob.) A real nose-cone from an ICBM, cool! Whoa, photos of ground zero at Hiroshima. (Fountain of tears.)" I went back the next day to take some original photographs with the intention of writing a thoughtful, well-researched article on my personal experience.
Unfortunately, I have discovered that I seem to know almost nothing about the history of nuclear arms testing and development - and this is from someone whose parents worked on the Strategic Defense Initiative (Reagan's "Star Wars"), who read Richard Rhodes' "The Making of the Atomic Bomb" AND "The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb", who grew up in New Mexico, home of the Manhattan Project. More accurately, I knew some of the relevant facts, but in a vague sort of manner devoid of any connection with everyday life. They were numbers of megatons in a reference book, fictional movie plots involving lost nuclear weapons, and contrived acronyms for arms reduction treaties.
But walking through the museum, I saw brass Nazi goggles and notebooks, the car that carried the Trinity bomb to the test site, a copy of the Potsdam Declaration, movies of ordinary Japanese citizens clearing rubble with hand baskets in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the dented shells of nuclear missiles that were, for reals, lost in a midair collision over Spain and recovered after a multi-million dollar search. (Far more were lost and never found, in or over the ocean.) I saw, and touched, and yet still almost could not believe in, the outer shell of a "Davy Crockett" miniature tactical nuke - a literal "backpack nuke," small enough that I could encircle it in my arms. I thought backpack nukes were only a theoretical possibility, and yet they were manufactured, assembly line style. I was particularly struck by how heavily the shoulder straps of the backpack were padded - a consideration so practical and down-to-earth in the face of the incomprehensible horror of the weapon itself.
And then I really got myself in trouble: I bought a copy of Michael Light's 100 Suns from the book shop. It is a collection of 100 photographs of nuclear explosions from the U.S. nuclear testing program, during the time when nuclear tests were conducted above ground. I knew, intellectually, that Enewetak and Bikini Atolls had been practically obliterated by thermonuclear bomb tests, but seeing a 20"x26" color photograph of the fireball of a 11 megaton explosion is... entirely different. And entirely different than seeing it on the computer screen - the image below has nothing like the power of that in the book.
 |
| Castle Romeo test, Bikini Atoll, 1954, 11 megatons |
Each photograph in this book symbolizes and encapsulates the conflicting and overpowering feelings I had in the museum: awe, excitement, and deep grief. My favorite photos are ones of the people watching the tests - most of them are bored, or matter-of-fact, but a few of the faces show the same awe and awareness that I feel when I look at the photos of the explosions, decades after the fact. The photos are accompanied by short footnotes at the end of the book, describing the technical and political circumstances and fallout (literal and figurative) of each test.
And here, yet again, I learned how little I knew: that several of the thermonuclear bombs accidentally exceeded expected yield by several megatons and accidentally sickened people (How!? can something as complex as a thermonuclear bomb go wrong - and result in even greater power?? That's not how computers work!), that we actually exploded nuclear weapons above the atmosphere and were surprised by the resultant EMP (I thought physicists predicted it, not that we knocked out Hawaii's power grid by accident and worked backwards from there), that the largest nuclear explosion ever was a 50-megaton test by the Soviets in the Arctic ("test" - it was entirely for political effect), that we exploded thermonuclear bombs in the continental U.S., that U.S. soldiers were put in trenches close to bomb tests in Nevada so that they could conduct maneuvers within a few hundred feet of the smoking, radioactive craters immediately afterwards.
It never even occurred to me that thousands (hundreds of thousands?) of people had witnessed nuclear tests and that I could go talk to one of these people and ask them what it was like. And I never would have guessed that I would be jealous of them, because more than likely, no human will ever witness a nuclear explosion first-hand ever again.
I don't know what to do now. Maybe most people already know these things, in which case it will be difficult to communicate my awe. Maybe they don't know these things, but I won't be able to cross the boundary between intellectual knowledge, like what I knew before I went to the museum, and the intense visceral awareness that the physical objects and photos gave me. Maybe I can't do better than Michael Light's magnificent book and I should just write him a positive Amazon review. Maybe I can do better, if I use all the resources available to me on this here World Wide Web.
Questions for you, dear reader:
- Which of the above facts surprised you? What is the most shocking thing you know about nuclear weapons and the Cold War?
- Do you know anyone who saw a nuclear explosion in real life? Have you asked them about it? Are they willing to talk about it?
- What is the movie/book/web site/whatever about nuclear weapons that you would recommend the most?
- Any advice for me on what (if anything) to do with this project?
Per my previous post, I'm making bracelets. I'm slightly overwhelmed with the amount of people asking for them, & I'm a little backed up, but I'm hoping to have them all made & shipped out within this week. Sorry for the slight delay, but unfortunately my work schedule only permits me to have so much free time. :(
