Filed under: Interesting | Tags: american dream, consumerism, jay shafer, small houses
“Since 1997 I have been living in a house smaller than some people’s closets. I call the first of my little hand built houses Tumbleweed. My decision to inhabit just 89 square feet arose from some concerns I had about the impact a larger house would have on the environment, and because I do not want to maintain a lot of unused or unusable space. My houses have met all of my domestic needs without demanding much in return. The simple, slower lifestyle my homes have afforded is a luxury for which I am continually grateful.”
That is the philosophy of Jay Shafer, as lifted straight from his website for Tumbleweed Tiny House Company. His company builds houses that range in size from 65 to 837 sq ft and he and his company have been in the news and media lately as well as the entire niche industry of small houses.
. . . . .
Whenever I hear the term ‘American dream’ I cringe as my mind brings a singular picture to my head. That picture is an aerial view of perfectly sculpted rows of frighteningly similar, huge suburban houses with over-sized garages, and variously shaped swimming pools dotting ultra green, chemical laden lawns. It’s very similar to the view in American Beauty, maybe my picture came straight from American Beauty, who knows.
It’s similar to this, or this:
Honestly, I have developed a very negative connotation to the term or idea of the American dream.
[I just deleted six paragraphs exploring the term American dream because I will save it for some other blog post and also because as I set about searching for a few articles to cherry-pick quotes from, I came across an article by David Kamp of Vanity Fair entitled Rethinking the American Dream that (while his closing paragraph was very different than how I would have closed) was very well-written and contained many of the ideas I was thinking about.]
I think for most people, they loosely connect the American Dream to their desire to have a good (high-paying, steady) job, a nice house, 2.5 kids, picket fence, etc.
In essence, the American Dream usually always involves some accepted level of accumulated wealth, comfort, and material possessions and therefore a high value is placed on the intended achievement of said level.
That level always involves a house, particularly a large lavish house. In the American Dream… people just don’t rent. And they definitely don’t dream of living small.
Because the housing bubble was a direct contributor to our current economic problems, it’s easy to criticize, but deep down we should all be able to admit that things were getting out of control.
Now in this economic climate, the story of Jay Shafer and his Tumbleweed Tiny House Company is getting more play, and it is a nice, interesting story for Oprah and her legions of Oprah-bots. Just as little as five years ago, it would have been a comedy bit to most Americans.
Aside from all of the obvious reasons for this story to be interesting, I’m interested because it strikes at themes like minimalism, conservation, and efficiency that run directly against what had become the overwhelming abundances of housing in the American Dream like space, excess, consumption, and waste.
Check out one of his houses:
Now I’m a tall guy, so I might need one of his slightly larger models, but seriously, I love, love, love this idea.
Filed under: Current Events, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bob Graham, Bush legacy, CIA briefings, Nancy Pelosi, torture
How is Nancy Pelosi suddenly the ‘fall-guy’ for torture during the Bush administration? It seems that nobody in the media is laying out the full story, they are content to simply finger point, blame, and misdirect attention to the wrong people. It takes some hardcore ideological blindfolds and some seriously tortured logic to jumble this story so badly.
“We don’t torture.” “We do not torture.”
That’s what we were told multiple times by George Bush and Dick Cheney in and around 2005. They may have thought they were telling the truth, but only because they had changed the definition of torture inside their own minds. According to the 1984 Convention Against Torture (which the U.S. signed) torture is defined as the “cruel, inhumane, or degrading” infliction of severe pain or suffering, physical or mental, on a prisoner to obtain information or a confession, or to determine a punishment for a suspected crime. We now know that the United States did in fact torture prisoners back in 2002, using secret prisons overseas which were also covered up.
Photo credit: AP Photo // Pablo Martinez Monsiva
At best, Cheney and Bush lied to the country, at worst… well nobody really wants to ‘go there.’ They’d rather blame Nancy Pelosi for allegedly knowing about torture, but not speaking out or doing anything to stop it. It’s a baffling switch from rightfully blaming those who planned, implemented and approved of torture at the highest level to blaming someone who might have known about that torture.
So now the media has framed the debate into a ‘what did Nancy Pelosi know and when did she know it’ blame game revolving around the dates, and content of CIA briefings to Pelosi and other members of Congress regarding these ‘enhanced interrogation’ processes. In this witch-hunt to demonize Nancy Pelosi, people aren’t mentioning that by the earliest date of briefing, the CIA had ALREADY waterboarded al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah as many as 83 times.
The briefings were not to get input from members of Congress, and the torture was already taking place. Pelosi has argued that the CIA misled her by not telling her the full story including the use of waterboarding. So now the debate has turned into a CIA vs Nancy Pelosi battle, but some revealing information from Bob Graham puts the CIA’s credibility further into doubt.
According to NPR:
Graham is known as a meticulous note-taker and has maintained a daily log that fills hundreds of spiral notebooks, which now reside at the University of Florida Library of Florida History.
“Several weeks ago, when this issue started to bubble up, I called the CIA and asked for the dates in which I had been briefed,” Graham tells Robert Siegel. “They gave me four: two in April of ‘02, two in September.”
Graham says he consulted his logs “and determined that on three of the four dates there was no briefing held.”
He adds: “On one date, Sept. 27, ‘02, there was a briefing held and, according to my notes, it was on the topic of detainee interrogation.”
He claims, like Pelosi claims that,
“There was no discussion of waterboarding, other excessive techniques or that they had applied these against any particular detainees.”
He also notes that because two or more staff officers were present in the briefing that their presence is very strong evidence that the methods of interrogation in question including waterboarding were not discussed. Further, according to NPR,
“I’m not impressed with the credibility of the CIA as it was being led in 2002,” Graham says. “I think it had become an agency that instead of following the admonition to speak truth to power, it was trying to speak what it thought power wanted to hear.”
Bob Graham’s input however is being ignored as CIA director Leon Panetta fires back at Nancy Pelosi. House Minority Leader John Boehner is leading the crusade from Congress against Pelosi, saying that she needs to “apologize to our intelligence professionals around the world.” Fox News’ Dick Morris called on Pelosi to “step down” because “it is in the best interest of the American people.” Somehow in all of this, Nancy Pelosi’s integrity is fully in question, yet no one is willing to question the CIA or the Bush administration. It’s ridiculous.
The wing-nut argument has pretty much become: “Well, torture isn’t wrong, especially because we might have gotten useful information from it, but if it IS wrong, then it’s Nancy Pelosi’s fault for knowing about it and doing nothing!”
Recently, Dick Cheney has been making the rounds on the cable news circuit claiming that Barack Obama has made the country less-safe by stopping these practices. However, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the longtime chief of staff to Colin Powell made this point:
“My investigations have revealed to me — vividly and clearly — that once the Abu Ghraib photographs were made public in the spring of 2004, the CIA, its contractors, and everyone else involved in administering “the Cheney methods of interrogation”, simply shut down. Nada. Nothing. No torture or harsh techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator. Period. People were too frightened by what might happen to them if they continued.
What I am saying is that no torture or harsh interrogation techniques were employed by any U.S. interrogator for the entire second term of Cheney-Bush, 2005-2009. So, if we are to believe the protestations of Dick Cheney, that Obama’s having shut down the “Cheney interrogation methods” will endanger the nation, what are we to say to Dick Cheney for having endangered the nation for the last four years of his vice presidency?”
Wilkinson continued on, with the most damning accusation against the Bush administration so far in the torture debate outside of torture itself:
Likewise, what I have learned is that as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002–well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion–its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa’ida.
So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney’s office that their detainee “was compliant” (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP’s office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa’ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, “revealed” such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.
There in fact were no such contacts. (Incidentally, al-Libi just “committed suicide” in Libya. Interestingly, several U.S. lawyers working with tortured detainees were attempting to get the Libyan government to allow them to interview al-Libi….)
Wilkerson’s comments followed the original story that broke last month, entitled “Abusive tactics used to seek Iraq-al Qaida link” in the Washington Bureau of McClatchy Newspapers. According to that story (which you must read!):
A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under “pressure” to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.
“While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq,” Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. “The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.”
So, the torture and waterboarding used by the Bush administration was not in some Jack Bauer-ish hero scenario in which information was needed immediately in order to save untold numbers of innocent civilians lives. No, the torture motives were infinitely darker and more disturbing. Torture was needed in order to attempt to obtain information that would back up and provide reasoning (something… anything) for going to war with Iraq.
If that doesn’t make you sick in your stomach, then you must be in the camp that still thinks that there is nothing inherently morally wrong with torture or that the U.S. methods do not merit ‘torture.’ If that’s the case then I really have nothing to say except, if the U.S. supported war crimes trials after WWII that prosecuted those Japanese who waterboarded, why was it was a capital offense then, and not now?
Torture is immoral. Despite Dick Cheney’s push to release memos regarding torture’s efficacy in obtaining information, even if information was obtained, torture is still wrong. Plus, it has been revealed to have failed in most instances. Even John McCain admitted during the recent presidential campaign that he provided false information when he was being tortured as a POW. Going back to WWII, in the aftermath we killed the Japanese who tortured our soldiers, yet now somehow, it is ok and justifiable for the U.S. to torture in this new ‘war on terror?’ No. No, no, no. As a country, the U.S. failed on torture. I have no patience for anyone who continues to justify torture. As Nancy Pelosi maintains, we need a truth commission. We can’t move into the future while ignoring the past and letting torture remain hovering.
Filed under: Sports | Tags: Major League Baseball, Manny Ramirez, steroids
My earliest recollections of baseball are of Cecil Fielder. Cecil was my favorite baseball player when I was six years old. I remember being in the left field bleachers under the overhang and after a crack of the bat, watching 
a Cecil Fielder home run heading right for my glove. It curved and was a foul ball. The Tigers generally stunk when I was a kid and now Tiger Stadium, the stadium that contained my first baseball memory, lies in ruin, half destroyed (last I checked).
In the mid-90’s I was fascinated by the Cleveland Indians. Yes I know it was ’sports bigamy’ for a kid born and raised a Detroit sports fan, but I loved those Indians teams. Besides, I was in grade school and middle school and the Tigers stunk, remember. But the Indians, that was a team. Charlie Nagy, Jim Thome, Omar Vizquel, Kenny Lofton, Manny Ramirez, Sandy Alomar… Jacobs field was perpetually sold-out. I would listen to their games in my room as I did homework. I was absolutely crushed when they lost the World Series to the Marlins in 1997 when Edgar-freaking-Renteria singled in the winning run in the 11th inning of game 7. Heartbreak city.
The next season was the Mark McGwire/Sammy Sosa home run chase in the summer of ‘98 that supposedly ’saved baseball.’ I was watching live when McGwire borke Maris’ record with his line-drive home run against the Cubs. (Seriously, why was nobody questioning steriods in ‘98, when guys were thrashing the record books and hitting line drive and off-the-end-of-the-bat home runs?)
After the run of those Indians teams, and the home-run hysteria of 98, I basically was baseball apathetic and simply rooted for whoever was playing the Yankees (if I happened to watch baseball). I only remember three times where I was even remotely interested in baseball since 2000:
In 2001, I was happy for the Diamondbacks with Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson when they upset the Yankees in the World Series. That was an epic series.
In 2004, I was pulling for the Cubs with Mark Pryor and Kerry Wood in the NLCS before everything derailed with the Steve Bartman incident. Talk about unbelievable. I still remember the mini-tantrum that Moises Alou threw out there in left field at Wrigley because I simultaneously did the very same thing across the living room.
And in 2006, I was again rooting for the Tigers, as Magglio Ordonez led them all the way to the World Series.
I can honestly say that I’ve never been a huge fan of baseball. But it is supposedly America’s past-time, right? In theory yes, the baseball of history was America’s favorite past-time but today’s Major League Baseball is not the same game. Nobody knows who was, is, or will be cheating. The players are obscenely overpaid and the true fans have been priced out of most corporate-named stadiums. Wrigley Field and Fenway Park are all that baseball has left. Yankee stadium is no more, and as much as I disliked the Yankees, I loved that place.
Major League Baseball is now completely dead to me. I guess I was a vegetable on life support (I can’t remember the last game I was at in person or watched on tv) and Manny Ramirez pulled the metaphorical plug. This news about Manny Ramirez failing the drug test doesn’t really do anything for me except make me sad. For most of the steroid scandal the players found guilty have been easy to revile or have been mediocre. Now, with an eminently lovable player being found guilty, it’s a game changer.
Photo: Robert Benson / US Presswire
Manny’s statement was:
“Recently, I saw a physician for a personal health issue. He gave me a medication, not a steroid, which he thought was okay to give me.”
Innocent victim? Manny just being Manny? Turns out the physician wasn’t a team doctor, was located on the other side of the country, and prescribed Manny a female fertility drug which happened to be banned. So that reasoning just doesn’t hold up, even for a lovable airhead like Manny. According to ESPN’s Mike Fish:
It is not an anabolic steroid but rather a fertility drug that is widely considered to be part of the chemical enhancement game played by athletes. The hormone is produced naturally by women during pregnancy and often is used by steroid users to reboot their body’s natural testosterone production coming off a steroid cycle. It is also associated in the sports and the bodybuilding communities with serious and prolonged steroid use.
All signs point to Manny abusing steroids for a looong time. Which makes me incedibly sad. And officially done with Major League Baseball.
In fact, I don’t see why anyone would pony up the cash to go to a major league game (unless it were at Fenway or Wrigley) when you can go watch your local baseball team play like the West Michigan Whitecaps or the Toledo Mud Hens. I argue that you can get a better experience, watch a purer product and get the same peripheral (greasy food, sunburn) pleasures at the minor league level. Why pay the extra money? The old argument would have been, “well, they are the best in the world.” But how good would any of these guys be without banned substances? For better or worse, we’ll never know.
Filed under: Envrionment | Tags: 'spaceship earth', Adlai Stevenson, dominion, post-human
“And how human is it to be the most successful biologic animal on the planet, devouring its way to the extinction of everything that isn’t human? Frankly, I think that it would be nice to be a wolf or a bear in a place never frequented by humans, but since I don’t have that luxury, I’ll stick with “post-human,” which means, at least to me, that I’m transitioning to a new kind of animal, a wired, connected and, hopefully, less arrogant creature that might use its successful tools to rejoin the nature humans have nearly eliminated.”
I heard this quote yesterday while listening to NPR’s All Things Considered. It’s from a piece called Looking To A Post-Human Future by Andrei Codrescu, in which he discussed the term ‘post-human.’ Obviously I think that humans are more than biologic animals, but his notion and longing for human integration with nature was what stuck in my head. It reminded me of the ’spaceship earth’ quote by Adlai E. Stevenson from his speech to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations in 1965 shortly before his death:
“We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave—to the ancient enemies of man—half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all.”
I’m currently reading two books, Bush Versus The Environment by Robert S. Devine and Crimes Against Nature by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. which document extensively the myriad policies, strategies, appointments, and decisions of the recent past that have seriously endangered ‘our craft.’ Habitats, wildlife, endangered species, wilderness preservation, pollution reduction and many other important environmental factors were considered less important than industrial and economic advancement even though environmental benefit vs. economic benefit is a false choice; they CAN coincide. Regardless, environmental concerns most often were of no concern to the previous administration.
And the point isn’t nearly limited to President Bush (although he will go down in history as one, if not the worst environmental Presidents in US history), because the mindset of consumption and domination towards environmental resources by the richest segments of people on the planet has been fairly widespread.
The term ‘dominion’ in Christian circles has often been perverted to mean a license for ‘desolation’ and a permit for freedom to use and abuse the planet in any way seen fit. ‘Use it before it burns up’ or something like that. But as Matthew Sleeth points out in his book, Serve God, Save The Planet:
“Dominion comes from a Hebrew term meaning “higher on the root of a plant.” Dominion does not mean ownership or even unrestricted use. Implied in our dominion is our dependency on everything under us. Cut the root out from under a plant and the fruit above it will perish, despite its superior position.”
As followers of Jesus, we are invited to partner with God in the reconciliation of all things to Him.
As humans have strayed so far and become so disintegrated with our surrounding natural world, I think I like the sentiment that ‘post-human’ can refer to a fresh chance at renewed intergration with the environment.
Without this change in mindset we are doomed to a cycle of pain. Pope John Paul II, who had tons of amazing things to say regarding environmental care, crystalizes the thought well:
“When concern for economic and technological progress is not accompanied by concern for the balance of the ecosytem, our earth is inevitably exposed to serious environmental damage, with consequent harm to human beings. Blatant disrespect for the environment will continue as long as the earth and its potential are seen merely as objects for immediate use and consumption, to be manipulated by an unbridled desire for profit.”
Filed under: Music | Tags: andrew mcmahon, jack's mannequin, matt nathanson, Set List
Last Monday, Michelle and I went to see Jack’s Mannequin perform at the Orbit Room. Low vs Diamond opened, followed by Matt Nathanson, who I will get to in a moment.
First, Jack’s Mannequin. Last time I saw them was in 2005 at the University of Toledo, which was a wild, outdoors show underneath a blanket of pot haze. (I had missed them when they last came to GR in October at the Intersection because I was on my road trip down south.) This time, being indoors, and with a whole new set of songs was a different atmosphere, but they were great nonetheless, including a four song encore in which they played a b-side from The Glass Passenger and also “Me and the Moon”, one of my favorite Something Corporate songs.
Set list:
Crashin
The Mixed Tape
Swim
Spinning
I’m Ready
Drop Out
What Gets You Off
Bruised
Into the Airwaves
Bloodshot
Rescued
Hammers and Strings (A Lullaby)
MFEO: Made for Each Other/You Can Breathe
The Resolution
(encore:)
Caves
Me and the Moon
Doris Day
La La Lie
Andrew’s hair, while awesome as always, seemed noticeably thinner to me– whether from age or because it has never been the same since all of his leukemia treatments, I’m not sure. Either way you can’t blame a man for that, and his struggle and honesty remains one of the reasons I love his music so much. But my point is just that he has come a long was from his long, wild-haired days in Something Corporate. He even made a reference before singing Me and the Moon about how he wrote the song as a young, immature 21 year old to express his thoughts about marriage. All that said, I humorously owe him credit for being the inspiration for me to grow out my hair as a sophomore in college:
Now as for Matt Nathanson, the best I can say for him is that he provided comic relief for the evening. Not exactly laughing with him as he really tried to be humorous, but more laughing at him. Also, his music is decent, but that kind of got pushed to side by a number of things.
The first culprit was his language. I would say that I have a high tolerance for foul language, but Matt Nathanson crossed that line that very few happen to cross. Using the f-word as your main vocabulary crutch and making sure to insert between every other word in your sentences just makes you look stupid… and it annoys me. For a musician who sings slow-ish guitar ballads/sad songs and who never even uses that word in his music? That just made it look like he was compensating for something. And trying way to hard.
Another culprit was his hilariously awkward stage posing and provocative gyrations. Michelle was laughing the hardest at some of more sexually charged movements. My favorite was when he made the ‘guitar rocker’ pose. What I mean by that is when people play Guitar Hero, they will make the crazy classic-rock guitar solo pose, which is basically an exaggerated mock of the original. People *don’t actually ever do that on stage*, just when playing guitar hero. Matt Nathanson was doing the guitar hero pose, and was serious business about it.
So besides being (from what I could see) a bit of a douchebag and complete tool, he also turned out to be pretty creepy as his line of jokes and comments showed a pre-occupation with very young girls. And him stripping after the show.
But to top it all off, from my vantage point he looked like Mel Kiper (minus the hair gel) which had me chuckling throughout his entire set. (Maybe it was just the lighting and the brow?, but still):
I guess lots of people like his “spontaneous, uncensored stage banter” as some review put it. Me, not so much, but hey, to each his own.
Filed under: Current Events, U.S. Politics | Tags: Fox News, hot teabagging action, lunatic fringe, teabag, teabaggers, teabaggery, teabagging
So yesterday was tax day and there were ‘tea parties’ all across the country where supposedly ordinary citizens rallied to demonstrate against the government, taxes, and governmental spending. What fun!
Oh, where to begin.
First, taxes. Obama’s plan on the progressive tax rates brings them back to Bill Clinton levels. Not exactly radical oppression. Also, everyone who makes less than $250,000 is getting a tax cut including most small businesses. So, the only people who went out yesterday to gripe about taxes should have been rich people making over $250,000. Everyone under that number was out yesterday demonstrating about having their taxes CUT, which President Obama pointed out in his speech yesterday.
People like to say ‘Everyone who voted for Obama wanted change, but change is the only thing you’ll have left in your pocket.’ It’s cute, but makes no sense unless you make over $250,000.
Secondly, Fox News has been promoting these tea bag parties for weeks, help plan them and orchestrate them, and relentlessly covered them yesterday on their network (a perfect ironic example of how NOT to be ‘fair and balanced.’ especially in comparison to their coverage of Iraq War protests.) Basically the founding fathers would have laughed in the face of anyone who thought that attending a demonstration that was orchestrated by one of the most influential cable news companies was subversive.
Third, Obama’s role. Many, many signs were out there against taxes and spending, and the event was supposedy non-partisan and a rally against the entire government and it’s alleged abuses. But, I’m going to go ahead and call b.s. on that because the event was clearly partisan and fueled by outrage against Obama. Signs calling Obama a Nazi, a fascist, (everything else) or people screaming ridiculous claims, such as one my friend Joel overheard in downtown Portsmouth, NH: “Obama marched over to Germany to apologize and 60 years ago, the Germans were marching people into ovens!” The ignorance is just mind-numbing.
If the people out to protest weren’t protesting their taxes being lowered, then they must have been against government action regarding spending and bailouts, right? If that’s the case then why didn’t this ever happen during Republican control?
People are forgetting that W. Bush took a budget surplus in 2001 and then left office with a huge deficit. He was also the one who passed the huge $700 billion financial bailout (giveaway), NOT Obama. Now that we are in a huge recession that wasn’t Obama’s doing, and he is doing his best to get us out of it, using examples from the past (Keynes+FDR), people are going crazy.
Obviously it’s partisan and obviously it’s anti-Obama demonstrations…
As David Waldman at DailyKos pointed out:
So here’s the basic lesson of the teabagging hissy fit. The new Republican “theory” of democracy:
GOP wins: “Mandate! Elections have consequences!”
GOP loses: “Tyranny! Fascism! Revolution! Secession!
Secession, what? Yeah, Texas is talking about secession. Another delightful twist to the story.
Gov Perry of Texas:
QUESTION: What do you think about the idea of secession or sovereignty for your state?
PERRY: Oh, I think there’s a lot of different scenarios. Texas is a unique place. When we came into the Union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that.
My hope is that America, and Washington in particular, pays attention. We’ve got a great Union. There’s absolutely no reason to dissolve it.
But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, who knows what might come out of that.
The ignorance and hypocrisy of this misinformed lunatic-fringe minority was at full display yesterday. I hope you weren’t teabagged.
Poking fun at ignorant teabaggers.
Rob Spence is a Canadian filmmaker who is getting a miniature camera installed into a prosthetic eye which will allow him to film, basically, whatever he wants. 
Spence, who lost his eye in a childhood shooting accident, insists that he is not a ‘lifecaster’ but will “use the eye-cam the same way I use a video camera now – or the same way any filmmaker would use a camera enabled cell phone.”
He is going to use the camera in a documentary about privacy issues and the global rise of surveillance.
He has a blog here. But he has since moved to a different web address here.
I’ve always thought this would be awesome if it was possible. But I would use it more as a ‘Truman Show’-like DVR of my life/day. Haven’t we all wished we had a camera in our eye at some point?
Photo 1: Virginia Mayo | AP Photo
Filed under: G-Rap, Local News | Tags: post-racial society, racism, the city i love
The shooting outside of the downtown YMCA on Tuesday night has brought some latent racism bubbling to the surface here in Grand Rapids. I know it is just ‘teh internets’ but I can’t believe some of the things I just read on mlive in the comment discussion following the story. Story and comments here.
If the dream truly is a post-racial society… We’ve got a lot of work to do. And honestly, where do we start?
Filed under: Sports | Tags: Big Ten, March Madness, Ohio State
Um, yeah about that three game losing streak. Thank goodness it’s over or Thad might have pulled a Chris Brown on somebody. If OSU can finish out the Big Ten with only one loss (most likely to Purdue) to finish at 10-8 in conference and then just win one game in the B10 tourney they should be looking at a #7 seed or in that range. People are saying that MSU and Purdue are the only B10 teams with a chance to make a deep run. I disagree. I think both Illinois and Ohio State because of their high shooting percentages could catch fire and go deep as well. It all will depend on matchups. Because they are so inconsistent I could see OSU losing in the first round too. (Such is the fun of March Madness.) I need to start thinking about how many days I am going to ask off of work…
Photo 1: Nam Y. Huh | AP
Filed under: Equal Rights, People I ♥ | Tags: Harvey Milk, milk, Prop 8, Sean Penn
“…For those who saw the signs of hatred as our cars drove in tonight, I think that it is a good time for those who voted for the ban against gay marriage to sit and reflect, and anticipate their great shame, and the shame in their grandchildren’s eyes if they continue that way of support. We’ve got to have equal rights for everyone.”
