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Linkfest: October 3rd – October 9th

Shaun CG — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 19:09:43 +0000

Del.icio.us links for October 3rd - October 9th. I’m still having to add these manually since the new Chrome extension worked for two bookmarks, and now hangs when sending the links to delicious.com. Good work team!

Why Does It Matter That Game Designers Are Evil? – Surely, when engaging with a piece of art, the only thing that really matters is the effect that it has upon you as a thinking individual? Far from sounding the death knell for video games, Rogers’ piece is describing the beginnings of a gaming golden age. An age in which difficulty curves and XP progression are shaped by the contours of our brains, an age in which games achieve the capacity to reward and punish with absolute precision and absolute conviction, an age in which entertainment becomes a branch of neuroscience. If evil game designers means better games then I shall be the first to fall to my knees and praise the Dark Ones for they are truly the source of our deliverance from a world both boringly cruel and cruelly boring. Evil is not the death of games design… it is its logical end point.
Tags: games gamedesign writing ethics
a closed mind – the games press has been really excited about this game called a closed world, a game about the experience of being “LGBTQ” and dealing with oppression! of course, christine love, robert yang, stephen lavelle and i have been making games about being queer for YEARS. why does a closed world get the big press? because it’s not challenging. i’m not referring to the game’s difficulty, although you can’t ever lose the game. what i’m talking about is that in a closed world, homophobia is an rpg monster that you defeat using skills like ETHICS and PASSION. it’s not a complex system of interwoven and often subtle oppressions. it’s not the reason most of the trans women i know are on food stamps. it’s a bad guy, and you kill it, and you win.
Tags: queer gamedesign gaming writing characters laziness
Interview: How GAMBIT’s A Closed World Tackles Sexuality, Identity – One common criticism of video games — often levied by those most passionate about them — is that the range of experiences they represent is too narrow. These players are tired of games that all seem to tell the story of the archetypal, male “bald space marine, and are looking for more diversity on the frontiers of gender, race and sexual identity.
Tags: sexuality identity gamedesign queerness
The Life-Changing $20 Rightward-Facing Cow – The past year has been one of the strangest ever in the life of game designer, lecturer and author Ian Bogost. It started with the launch of the most successful game he’s ever developed, and ended with him bringing it to a strange, cathartic end. That game was Facebook title Cow Clicker, a now-infamous satire against social games. For its creator, though, it’s been more complicated than that. As his friend, I confess to being a little relieved it’s over with. This is the story of a person whose joke project became more successful than the one on which he lavished love and intellect, the climate that caused that to happen and how ultimately he decided to learn from it instead of becoming upset.
Tags: facebook games videogames socialmedia gamedesign satire
Tiger Beatdown › In the name of safety: the multi-national anti immigration industry and their billionaire profits – That’s what undocumented immigrants are: a bit of political change. Except that the security guards working for the company that Mr. Buckles represents had a big degree of responsibility for the gruesome death of eleven asylum seekers who were awaiting deportation in a detention center at Schiphol Airport in The Netherlands on Thursday, October 27thof 2005. Apparently, the kind of change Mr. Buckles aims for does not include preserving the wellbeing of people whose only crime was to seek an opportunity to better their lives. When detainees raised the alarm and cried for help, when flames were taking over the detention center, the guards working for Mr. Buckles’ corporation ignored them. They were left to die. Nine men and two women. Their bodies now an “opportunity for corporate growth”.
Tags: corporatism capitalism disastercapitalism pmc security immigration racism
Surprised the BBC is ignoring #occupywallstreet? You shouldn’t be – To get an idea of just how many people there are currently protesting in New York one could do better than to watch the BBC. Despite the fact that thousands have rallied in recent weeks against what has become known in the popular lexicon as the ‘feral rich’, the Corporation has dedicated little time to this mass protest.
Tags: bbc media news journalism objectivity selectionbias
New Statesman – Occupying Wall Street – The ’99 percent’ statistic has become emblematic of the American wing of what is phrasing itself as a global protest movement, taking its inspiration from square occupations in Egypt, Greece, Spain and Great Britain. Another statistic you can see daubed on placards around the Plaza is that the wealthiest 400 Americans have more combined wealth than the poorest 150 million. Later in the day, the United Steelworkers union becomes the latest in a growing list of labour organisations and non-profit groups to throw its support behind Occupy Wall Street, ahead of a united march next Wednesday.
Tags: usa protest resistance occupation bailouts classwar
Book Review: Political Discourse and National Identity in Scotland – After the “historic” victory in Scotland for the Scottish National Party (SNP), it was inevitable that the question of Scottish nationalism would re-emerge. Little attention has so far been given to analysing attitudes of nationalist sentiment, making Political Discourse and National Identity in Scotland both timely and necessary, addressing both “elite” and “non-elite” perceptions.
Tags: scotland nationalism politics surveys statistics research
Ludwig II… Stripp’d – If the goal of politics is to create happiness on Earth, then it follows that escapism, much like religion, is a bad thing because people who escape the realities of life are not only failing to improve the world, they are tacitly supporting the status quo. Clearly, all that time we spent levelling up in World of Warcraft should have been spent fighting The Man and films involving giant robots hitting each other are nothing more than a narcotic that Capitalism uses to keep us docile and ignorant. For many critics, the purpose of art is to draw the people’s attention to their plight [...]. Never mind that the intricacies of academic theory and cultural discourse are just as much of a distraction from changing the world as giant robots.
Tags: escapism realism fiction genre manga yaoi romance politics
Saturday Soapbox: Horrible Bosses – Article – So bosses aren’t on the way out. Sorry about all that: it was just a cheap starting point to build a discussion around. But, as with any game mechanic like traversal, levelling, or even health, it’s worth taking a look at bosses every now and then just to make sure that they’re still fit for purpose. Pinky Roader, after all, deserves nothing less.
Tags: gaming bosses gamedesign

Linkfest: September 12th – September 19th

Shaun CG — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 19:37:11 +0000

Del.icio.us links for September 12th through September 19th:

PC Gamers Save The World, A Bit | Rock, Paper, Shotgun – “Foldit players leverage human three-dimensional problem-solving skills to interact with protein structures using direct manipulation tools and algorithms from the Rosetta structure prediction methodology. Players collaborate with teammates while competing with other players to obtain the highest-scoring (lowest-energy) models. In proof-of-concept tests, Foldit players—most of whom have little or no background in biochemistry—were able to solve protein structure refinement problems in which backbone rearrangement was necessary to correctly bury hydrophobic residues. Here we report Foldit player successes in real-world modeling problems with more complex deviations from native structures, leading to the solution of a long-standing protein crystal structure problem.” Living in the fucking future.
Tags: gaming science research problemsolving crowdsourcing
Keith Stuart: Do game reviewers really understand innovation? | Technology | guardian.co.uk – The ‘better sequel’ mentality is damaging both to the games industry and to the quality of games journalism. It is a deferral of critical responsibility, a patronising pat on the head for the developer who dared to dream and fell short in some mythically vital way. I don’t want to be frustrated by dodgy controls either, but then I’m willing to blunder through if I’m going to get an experience I never had before. I felt the same about Killer 7 and Shenmue and the mobile game, Nom – flawed every one of them, but I don’t begrudge the creators a single second of the time I spent toiling with imperfections.
Tags: games criticism reviewing gamesjournalism
FightingFantasist: The British OSR Starts Here… – Right then, let’s out with it. Form ranks, King’s Colour to the fore. We don’t recognise much of the American-led OSR. The Brit experience looked something like this…
Tags: gaming rpgs britain history 1980s
COD XP: The Bug and the Windscreen Article – - Page 1 | Eurogamer.net – While nobody will say how much this all cost, one spokesman admits the two-day event has a budget comparable to a US television advertising campaign. A conservative estimate would put that at $15 million. So this is an event, a game, that is all about establishing hierarchy. Sometimes you’re the bug and sometimes you’re the windscreen. COD: XP is a 28-acre, $15 million windscreen.
Tags: gamesindustry activision callofduty hierarchy
BMJ – A Blot on the Profession – Interesting BMJ article about institutionalised prejudice in the assessing of applications at a medical school.
Tags: discrimination prejudice institutionalracism medicine study statistics system:filetype:pdf system:media:document
Optimizing WordPress – Tips for Speed | Three Wise Men – Handy.
Tags: wordpress web
Massive Unemployment: Proof That Global Capitalism Doesn’t Work | Economy | AlterNet – We have a choice: Americans can continue to accept large-scale unemployment as “natural” and permanent, even — a truly grotesque development — as a basic feature on a bipartisan road to “recovery” via austerity. Or we can follow the lead of the jobless young in the Arab Spring and of protestors beginning to demonstrate en masse in Europe. Even the newly minted proletarians of Ventura, California, sleeping in their cars, may decide that they have had enough of a political and economic order of things so bankrupt it can find no use for them at any price.
Tags: history usa unemployment reservearmyoflabor government publicworks protest uprising
The health reform Bill moves one step closer – Telegraph – It is worthwhile remembering that the Commonwealth Fund report last year placed the NHS top for equity, efficiency, safety, effectiveness and patient satisfaction. It was also cheaper than France, Germany and the US. That is not to say that there is not room for improvement. It seems utterly perverse, however, to open up our system to providers in other countries, such as American and German health-care companies, which, as shown by the Commonwealth Fund report, have a track record of providing a more expensive and inferior services in their own countries.

The Bill now passes to the House of Lords, where it will be debated. We can only hope that they have the sense and independence of mind to put the interests of the electorate first and put right this tragic wrong that has been done to our health-care system.
Tags: nhs britain healthcare privatisation coalition toryscum
How the Murdoch press uses misogyny to attack Julia Gillard – He’s right: News Limited is picking a tacky, misogynistic, and utterly transparent fight with the Prime Minister, and they’re doing it so that the very wealthiest people in the country can stay so. She may not be making the sort of moves that appeal to the left, or being the sort of person who appeals to the right, but her party won the election fair and square. There’s something else going on. I’ll put it bluntly: if Gillard were a man, the media landscape in Australia would be looking vastly different right now.
Tags: australia politics newsinternational media misogyny
Debate: GOP Crowd Cheers Dying Uninsured Man, Ben Bernanke Treason Claim | Mother Jones – A round-up of recent Tea Party / GOP scummery.
Tags: usa rightwingbullshit
A Legal Defense Fund for Climate Scientists | Mother Jones – A pair of scientists is trying to rally public support—and funding—to help other scientists fend off attacks from climate deniers. They’ve launched a legal defense fund to help individual scientists like Pennsylvania State University’s Michael Mann deal with the sizable legal fees that have resulted from attempts to gain access to their emails and other correspondence.
Tags: climatechange capitalism legalfunds science
Mad Men, and the new crop of retro sexist TV shows – In a show where everyone is a bigot, you end up liking some of the bigots. A smart show will use this against you; I’m of the opinion that Mad Men is a very smart show, luring you in with its beautiful surfaces and pretty people, then making you scream when you see the horror they take for granted. But very few shows have that sort of scalpel-like grace; in fact, this new breed looks to use mainly blunt implements, battering us relentlessly with awfulness toward women and other living things. And if people can watch a show as finely calibrated as Mad Men and come away with the message that it is somehow desirable to act like Roger Sterling, it’s foolish to think that these other shows aren’t attracting a viewership that is more turned on by the awfulness than the “critique.”
Tags: television criticism retro sexism racism
Scary Monsters (and Super-Creeps) – Charlie’s Diary – My take on horror is that it’s a tone; you can add a tint of horror to any other genre. Horror goes well with SF (“Alien”), with fantasy, with crime, with thriller, with romance, with literary realism, with just about every flavour. It’s the monosodium glutamate of fiction. We add it because it’s a contrast-enhancer.
Tags: horror genre fiction writing criticism
Ex-MI5 chief says Tony Blair got it wrong…a lot | Liberal Conspiracy – The Guardian reports today on a speech yesterday by the former MI5 Chief Lady Eliza Manningham-Buller. In earlier lectures she criticised the invasion of Iraq, said the term “war on terror” was unhelpful and said 9/11 was “a crime, not an act of war”. Yesterday she said it was important “to try and reduce terrorism by talking to its advocates” and that many anti-terrorist laws passed by the Labour government were “unnecessary” and “unproductive”.
Tags: intelligence mi5 waronterror iraq britain foreignpolicy newlabour
NHS ‘watchdog’ will be a “bloated monster” | Liberal Conspiracy – Monitor – the government’s revamped organisation to regulate competition in the NHS – is set to become ‘a bloated bureaucratic monster’, Unite, the largest union in the country, has warned.
Unite said that Monitor’s running costs were set to soar from £72 million-a-year to £82 million – with a 600-strong staff being paid twice the national average wage of £26,000.
Unite said that ministers were creating a bloated, old fashioned bureaucracy which would be responsible for handing over lucrative NHS contracts to the ‘government’s friends’ in the private healthcare sector.
Tags: nhs privatisation britain corruption
Book Review: Consuming the Congo – WSJ.com – Those seeking to distill this morass into a less murky essence risk oversimplification. It is true that minerals have played a crucial enabling role in the conflict, making it easier to finance the fighting and at times forming a strong motive for individual actors. But politics, even in the Congo, cannot be reduced to profit maximization. Nor would removing minerals from the equation quell all of the fighting—some groups are fighting for more than money and some have diversified into timber, cannabis and palm oil.
Tags: resourceconflict conflictminerals congo DRC africa analysis
Tiger Beatdown › With Dim Lights: On Feminism and Virtue – It was her insistence on my opinions being somehow “anti-feminist” that stuck with me; it was being presented with a choice between my core beliefs and my unrelated opinions about subcultures and Internet behavior. Being told that I could be myself and be cast out, or conform and find acceptance. Being told that there were some things I just wasn’t allowed to think, and that my identity could be stripped from me if I disobeyed. Starting with the desire to punish, and then working backward to find the sins; I clearly wasn’t “anti-feminist,” but it was the most effective thing she could think to say, to shame me. I couldn’t figure out why this was so familiar, why it pissed me off and hurt me in such an old way. And then I got there, figured out where I’d been there before, hearing “love” and “compassion” preached to me by someone who reserved the right to be hurtful and cold, hearing the language of my beliefs used against my being, all in the name of a greater good.
Tags: identity goodness morality ethics
Tiger Beatdown › With Dim Lights: On Feminism and Virtue – It was her insistence on my opinions being somehow “anti-feminist” that stuck with me; it was being presented with a choice between my core beliefs and my unrelated opinions about subcultures and Internet behavior. Being told that I could be myself and be cast out, or conform and find acceptance. Being told that there were some things I just wasn’t allowed to think, and that my identity could be stripped from me if I disobeyed. Starting with the desire to punish, and then working backward to find the sins; I clearly wasn’t “anti-feminist,” but it was the most effective thing she could think to say, to shame me. I couldn’t figure out why this was so familiar, why it pissed me off and hurt me in such an old way. And then I got there, figured out where I’d been there before, hearing “love” and “compassion” preached to me by someone who reserved the right to be hurtful and cold, hearing the language of my beliefs used against my being, all in the name of a greater good.
Tags: identity goodness morality ethics

Linkfest: August 8th – August 21st

Shaun CG — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 16:56:50 +0000

Del.icio.us links for August 8th through August 21st:

Infamous 2: Mindless Fun and the Basis of Aesthetic Judgement | Blasphemous Geometries | Futurismic – As my opening reviews suggested, whether a work constitutes mindless or mindful fun is largely a matter of individual perception and predisposition. One can play Infamous 2 and be uplifted by the political allegory just as easily as one can play the game and hate the fact that it manipulates us at every turn. Similarly, there are times (as with the work of Haneke and Eisenstein) when the manipulative character of a work is a source of prestige rather than animosity.
Tags: psychology consumption subjectivity entertainment brain
LENIN’S TOMB: The sadistic state – The criminal justice system is engaged in a demonstration of the state’s ability to control the territory, because that very ability is just what has recently been in doubt. The moral and ideological pedagogy behind this disciplining and consumption of bodies teaches us that the party of order is in control, because its claim to rule hinges considerably on its ability to rule. This is, of course, the hallmark of a very brittle social order.
Tags: britain justice police power authority violence force
LENIN’S TOMB: The competing common senses of the riots – In light of this, the repressive responses have to be seen as ranging from the delusional to the obscene. Among the delusional, bring back national service. A simple point: Greece has national service. You work it out. Equally delusional are the hopes invested in using bigger and better weapons. The policing breakdown here was not military – the gun that apparently killed Mark Duggan was not a toy. Look at it. That gun is a beast. It’s designed to decimate flesh. Police use these weapons on citizens. The idea that they haven’t got enough weapons or powers is fuelled by a juvenile revenge fantasy, not reality. What happened was a breakdown of leadership and legitimacy. Resorting to more repression as a way of ironing out these problems will both intensify them in the long run and hurt and damage a lot of people along the way
Tags: riots britain police rightwingbullshit
New Statesman – Demonising the young won’t heal our cities – As panicked politicians with little understanding of social disorder fight to reclaim the narrative, it is vital that we resist the easy story of “us”

and “them”.Because the truth is that it’s all “us”. The disorder will continue until we acknowledge that the young people who rampaged through Manchester, Liverpool, Brixton, Tottenham and 50 boroughs of London are as much a part of the “real Britain” as those who nobly came out the next morning to clear the debris from their trashed high streets. The language of “true Brits” defending themselves against a feral underclass is precisely the language of social division that predicated these riots.
Tags: britain classwar socialdivision riots
SchNEWS 784 – 19th August 2011 – The U.N. Holy Land – The machine-gunning of an Israeli bus and the subsequent air-raids on Gaza represent another dangerous turn of the screw for Palestine. Anxious to rescue themselves from their own domestic discontents (see SchNEWS 781) another border war might be just what the Israeli authorities want.
Tags: israel palestine occupation statemurder resistance protest
Why riot? – The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) – No-one wants to hear social and economic justifications for rioting, least of all anyone in the UK political class. But justification is not what is at stake. The issue is explanation, as that will determine the response.
Tags: britain riots police coalition
Civil disorder and looting hits Britain: We have been here before | The Economist – These are bold claims, amounting to a thesis that Britain has been wrecked and transformed from a familiar, law-abiding spot to an alien hell hole in just three or four decades. But here is an odd thing, surely: go back precisely three decades and you get to the summer of 1981, scene of some of the nastiest riots in modern British history, when racially charged violence saw tracts of Brixton in south London and Toxteth in Liverpool burn for days.
Tags: riots britain moralpanics media lazyjournalism kneejerkreactionaries blametheparents
Your Critic is in Another Castle: The Chatty RPG – But then there is the world of gaming. Or rather, there are the worlds of gaming. When you reach a new location in an RPG, what’s the very first thing you do? (After saving, of course.) You talk to every. single. person. in town. At great length. You ask them their life stories. You perform their tasks and errands, up to and including murder. You ask anyone and everyone you meet if they need help, and if they do, you immediately proffer it. Your sword (or gun — Fallout and Mass Effect are not innocent of this) is at anyone and everyone’s disposal, with small exceptions for not helping members of a problematic alignment, or persons perceived as evil or shady.
Tags: writing gamedesign playeragency npcs worldbuilding
Your Critic is in Another Castle: Beyond the Girl Gamer 2.2: We all live in a… – A game can include female characters galore, and yet still find itself an example of incoherent world-building that doesn’t take gender or sex into account in any way. [...] The first game mainly portrays female NPCs as servants, nobles, locals, or witches — and though not ideal, this is at least theoretically consistent. By the second, nearly all groups, factions, and character types are a fairly hefty gender mix. Men and women both guard town walls, or oppose you with malice (i.e. swords), or are dungeon bosses. And yet women who get lines or quest segments are still mostly there to be plot devices, rather than to be characters with agency. Your player character can be female, and yet nearly the entire game is designed around the responses of a male player character.
Tags: gamedesign writing gender fantasy
Epilogue: Nations as Characters – Too often, historical criticism of games is based on accuracy and realism, something that is difficult to talk about meaningfully in an art that relies on abstraction. (You can ask why some things are abstracted and some are not, of course.) But what historical game analysis really needs sometimes is kicking at the premises. This series is pretty much 25000 words kicking at the idea that we give nations personalities and they are often consistent from game to game, developer to developer, and this says something about how we turn history into a pastime.
Tags: gamedesign history nationstates nationalcharacter abstraction
The Zulu National Character – It’s honestly hard to justify the Zulu as the greatest of the African civilizations. Their migration and warfare did not lead to any great empire; a tiny corner of South Africa along the Indian Ocean. Give Shaka credit for survivability and military insight, but he wasn’t the Napoleon of the Cape. There is no Code of Shaka, after all.
The Zulu were, however, the most obvious of the African. Like the Babylonians, Meier probably used them in the game because, first, he needed an Africa civ that wasn’t Mediterranean Egypt, and second, people knew who the Zulu were. Recognition was the important thing here. The default name for the first Zulu city in Civ 1 and 2 was Zimbabwe – which is not even a Zulu city.
Tags: africa history empire gaming gamedesign eurocentrism
Daily Routines – How writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days.
Tags: interesting writers biography
LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS | Magicland – Beck was still polishing his act in his early days at Fox; does anyone remember when he simulcast a close-up of his own eyes in real time as he sermonized? Immediately, Stephen Colbert was on the story, pretend-praising Beck, saying, “Glenn has climbed into his genius cannon and lit the fuse.” He pegged Beck as a personage whose eyes offered “a wormhole to another world,” and it wasn’t long before Jon Stewart and the South Park boys were feeding on Beck’s performances; it was fertile ground. This kind of attention of course brought out Beck’s petulance, which is never far from the surface. Unlike Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh, or, as far as anyone can tell, Michele Bachmann, Beck fancies himself a comedian.
Tags: glennbeck usa rightwingbullshit funny media foxnews
Socialism and/or barbarism: An open letter to those who condemn looting (Part one) – Lastly, we disagree that “what we’re witnessing now has absolutely nothing to do with” that shooting. And that is the real difference, the tiny crack between us that widens into a yawning gulf, a division that cannot be squared.
For we want to understand the world in its historical particularity, how and why it has gotten to be the way that it is, and why that is insupportable. You, however, simply want to make sure that it goes on as long as possible. Regardless of the quality, regardless of the consequences, regardless of anything other than your collected capacity to declare that it’s a nasty world out there, but at least we have our decency. At least we sit high enough to look out over the killing fields. At least we got here by legal measures. And how dare they. How dare they.
Tags: riots britain rightwingbullshit analysis
New drug could cure nearly any viral infection – MIT News Office – Most bacterial infections can be treated with antibiotics such as penicillin, discovered decades ago. However, such drugs are useless against viral infections, including influenza, the common cold, and deadly hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola.
Now, in a development that could transform how viral infections are treated, a team of researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory has designed a drug that can identify cells that have been infected by any type of virus, then kill those cells to terminate the infection.
Tags: medicine research science future health
S.F. gay married couple loses immigration battle – “Citing the Defense of Marriage Act, the Obama administration denied immigration benefits to a married gay couple from San Francisco and ordered the expulsion of a man who is the primary caregiver to his AIDS-afflicted spouse.”
Tags: homophobia usa immigration law
An Open Letter to David Cameron’s Parents « Nathaniel Tapley – Dear Mr & Mrs Cameron, Why did you never take the time to teach your child basic morality?
Tags: politicians riots hypocrisy tories davidcameron
Marechera’s Poetry – Dambudzo Marechera was a performer. Throughout his life, he continuously reinvented himself by putting on roles, donning costumes, and creating myths about his person. This was what he saw as both the inescapable effect of colonization, and a reaction against it. To Marechera, being colonized meant being a ‘mimic man’ destined to imitate the colonizer. Yet he believed that liberation from colonization could happen through making self-reinvention a way of life, adopting a fluid identity that resisted being defined, categorized, and spoken for.
Tags: poetry
New Left Project | NLP Blog | Democracy BBC Style – John Reith, the founding father of the BBC, made much of the democratic potential of broadcasting. His concept of democracy however was rather unconventional. In May 1933 he told an audience at Manchester University that in his view: ‘A man may be as good a democrat as any other and yet reject, in the light of philosophy, history or experience, democratic process to accomplish democratic ends’ [1] Two years later he made a similar remark praising Mussolini for his pursuit of ‘high democratic purpose by means which though not democratic, were the only possible ones.’ [2] Reith’s fascist sympathies did not end there. Like many other British elites of that period he was quite open about his admiration for Hitler, and according to his daughter Marista Leishman, having been effectively ousted from the BBC, he came to believe that his personal calling was for dictatorship.
Tags: democracy fascism bbc britain history
The Smart Set: Paperback Politics – August 5, 2011 – If the zeitgeist has a face, it supposedly belongs to Ayn Rand and her capitalist philosophy of Objectivism. Talk radio hosts adore the author’s demands for limited government; Congressman Paul Ryan insists that his staffers read her overstuffed opus Atlas Shrugged; picket signs at Tea Party rallies suggest that we all “READ AYN RAND.”
[...]
There is another writer whose political and philosophical influence is finally being felt in the public sphere. You may have read one of his books as a child. His name is Robert A. Heinlein, and he wrote science fiction.He was a libertarian enamored of military might, a conservative who championed free love. His heroes are certainly competent. They’re also folks who hack the systems in which they live, not elitists who abandon a corrupt world full of moochers and looters to worship the dollar as an end unto itself. And unlike Rand, most of Heinlein’s work is actually readable.
Tags: robertheinlein libertarianism usa politics aynrand objectivism capitalism individualism books sciencefiction
LENIN’S TOMB: A crisis of ideology and political leadership. – The truth is that riots almost always hurt poor, working class people. There’s no riot that embodies a pure struggle for justice, that is not also partly a self-inflicted wound. There is no riot without looting, without anti-social behaviour, without a mixture of bad motives and bad politics. That still doesn’t mean that the riot doesn’t have a certain political focus; that it doesn’t have consequences for the ability of the ruling class to keep control; that the contest with the police is somehow taking place outside of its usual context of suspicion borne of institutional racism and brutality. The rioters here, whenever they’ve been asked, have made it more than abundantly clear what their motives are – most basically, repaying years of police mistreatment.
Tags: riots london violence rebellion vandalism looting capitalism
LENIN’S TOMB: Reactionary birdsong – While we await a pronunciamento from Cameron (ie not from his butler), there is a seam of political reaction already in the post in response to the riots. The right-wing is going stir crazy over these events. You need only follow the Tweets relating to each new hotspot and the Twitterers who express, far more concisely than the ‘vox pops’ on the news, the instapundits, the right-wing blogs, and those politicians who have so far been dragged out their hangovers by the media, where this is all going. Here’s a brief songsheet.
Tags: riots britain language media journalism punditry
Penny Red: Panic on the streets of London. – Riots are about power, and they are about catharsis. They are not about poor parenting, or youth services being cut, or any of the other snap explanations that media pundits have been trotting out: structural inequalities, as a friend of mine remarked today, are not solved by a few pool tables. People riot because it makes them feel powerful, even if only for a night. People riot because they have spent their whole lives being told that they are good for nothing, and they realise that together they can do anything – literally, anything at all. People to whom respect has never been shown riot because they feel they have little reason to show respect themselves, and it spreads like fire on a warm summer night. And now people have lost their homes, and the country is tearing itself apart.
Tags: london riot inequality capitalism recession cuts
Top Gear’s electric car shows pour petrol over the BBC’s standards – So how does it get away with it? It’s simple. It makes the BBC a fortune. Both the 15th and 16th series of Top Gear were among the top five TV programmes sold internationally by BBC Worldwide over the last financial year. Another section of the editorial guidelines tells us that “our audiences should be confident that our decisions are not influenced by outside interests, political or commercial pressures”. But in this case we can’t be. I suggest that it is purely because of commercial pressures that Top Gear is allowed to rig the evidence, fake its trials, pour petrol over the BBC’s standards and put a match to them. The money drives all before it.
Tags: television bbc hypocrisy drivers cars
Liz’s blog » In which I join the 21st century – List of neato places for acquiring ebooks and other Kindle-friendly gubbins.
Tags: books ebooks reading
Kill Screen – Review: Duke Nukem Forever – There is a tendency to think of modern games as acontextual—to ignore their past. We trick ourselves into ignoring those previous iterations, such as the gap between Metal Gear and Metal Gear Solid, because frankly they do not matter so much. This is the future. We are beyond those childish days, and their constraints no longer shackle us.
Tags: games criticism reviews
nihilistic_kid: Who’s Pulling Your Strings – Of course, in the creative sphere, it’s actually fine to use someone else’s thoughts. They’re only interesting though, when the creator is aware of the other people in his or her head, and the many things they have left there. Attempting some endeavor—whether writing or overthrowing a country’s government—without first being aware of the puppetmasters and their plans for you, and for history, is doomed to the clichés of repetition and ultimate defeat.
Tags: writing thought cliche imagination creativity preconceptions psychology
Chris Christie slams fearmongering over Sharia law – New Jersey Republican Gov. Chris Christie defended his decision to nominate a Muslim judge to the state Superior Court against conservative critics who warned that the new judge will implement Sharia law. The notoriously blunt-spoken Christie calling their fears “crap” and “crazy.”
Tags: usa islamophobia crazy
Polygamist leader convicted of child sex abuse – Yahoo! News – SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) — A jury convicted polygamist sect leader Warren Jeffs of child sexual assault, in a case stemming from two young followers he took as brides in what his church calls “spiritual marriages.”
Tags: religion mormonism sects polygamy weirdmotherfuckers

Linkfest: July 4th – July 10th

Shaun CG — Sun, 10 Jul 2011 17:22:32 +0000

Del.icio.us links for July 4th through July 10th:

LENIN’S TOMB: Let it bleed – The Star’s offices have been raided, so both the Murdoch and Desmond group – the most vile, degraded end of the capitalist media – are implicated thus far. I doubt it can stop there. And the relationships between police, politicians and press executives – comprising a potent combination of state, capitalist and ideological power – are under scrutiny now. David Cameron looks in a very precarious position over this. In this light, I think any socialist who sees this purely or mainly as a jobs issue has seriously lost perspective. The situation is rich with materials for socialists to operate on, presenting a set of wide open opportunities.
Tags: media journalism tabloids capitalism britain
New Statesman – The momentum of the Murdoch backlash must not slow – For years, the Murdoch press has manipulated a particular type of moral outrage in order to peddle its propaganda of war and hate. Now, with the scandal of Milly Dowler, the murdered schoolgirl whose phone was reportedly hacked by a detective employed by News of the World, that very same moral outrage has been turned back against News International. It’s like an attack-dog finally turning around to savage its abusive master.
Tags: media government oligarchiccapitalism corruption
Artificial Stupids | Orbit Books | Science Fiction, Fantasy, Urban Fantasy – One of the hoariest of science fictional archetypes is the idea of the artificial intelligence — be it the tin man robot servant, or the murderous artificial brain in a box that is HAL 9000. And it’s not hard to see the attraction of AI to the jobbing SF writer. It’s a wonderful tool for exploring ideas about the nature of identity. It’s a great adversary or threat (‘War Games’, ‘The Forbin Project’), it’s a cheap stand-in for alien intelligences — it is the Other of the mind.
The only trouble is, it doesn’t make sense.
Tags: ai artificialintelligence sf sciencefiction research computing
New Left Project | Patriotism – A Dead-End Solution to a Non-Problem – Don’t open the door, and definitely don’t answer the phone: it’s probably someone trying to sell you some ‘new patriotism’. Its salespeople are Labour politicians. Its purpose is to enable Labour to ‘re-connect’ with lost voters.
Tags: labourparty britain politics nationalism
L.A. Noire: The Team Bondi Emails Article | Eurogamer.net – At the story heart’s were eleven testimonials – delivered by former Team Bondi employees interviewed under the condition of anonymity – which detailed the oppressive work conditions that hundreds of staff endured throughout those seven years. Among their complaints were an “ominous crunch” period of development which continually shifted year to year; a studio-wide expectation that staff would work overtime and weekends; a praise-free working environment; and a boss named Brendan McNamara, who one of the sources called “the angriest person I’ve ever met”.
Tags: gamesindustry crunchtime management
Cheryl’s Mewsings » Anthologies: Some Data – On Saturday I mentioned that I had been sent some data about gender splits in anthologies. I have since been taking a close look at it and want to present some of the data.
Tags: sf fiction books anthologies gender
Turning The Page « Electron Dance – We’re actually skirting around a more fundamental issue, the real elephant in the room. The loss of the printed manual is a signal from the future. It is an omen not of the death of print, but the death of product. We all see the writing on the Facebook wall.
Tags: gamesindustry production digitaldistribution
Smart Casual? Article – Eurogamer – His games have been played by in excess of 200 million people, but he is neither famous nor revered. Such are the new economies of scale in the casual gaming boom that a Dutch designer in his early twenties can entertain an audience twice the size of that enjoyed by the best-selling video game of all time, and remain almost entirely anonymous.
Tags: casualgaming gamesindustry socialnetworks
LENIN’S TOMB: Predator – I consider this story sinister down to the last detail. Not just the hacking of Milly Dowler’s voicemails; not just listening in to every word spoken by a distressed relative; not just deleting messages when the inbox was full, to make space for more messages; but actually profiting from the brief moment of false hope when people thought that Milly Dowler must have deleted the messages herself and thus be alive, by sending hacks round to conduct an exclusive interview with the unaware family about their hopes. In a depraved way, they circled around the vulnerable, knowingly, cynically awaiting a moment of weakness, brazenly bleeding them dry when the opportunity presented itself, creating some of the torment that they then exploited.
Tags: tabloids media capitalism
Chasing the Orgy: Good Reviews or Good Friends? « Ruthless Culture – One of the reasons why reviews are always in crisis is because they are born of an attempt to free intellectual culture from the need for geographical proximity. The book review was born not of the retreat of patronage as a means of funding artistic lifestyles but of the tragic fact that many people wanted to sit in the same coffee shop as Dr. Johnson than was entirely practical.
Tags: reviews criticism writing academia
I live sweat… – “Critical self-awareness should cause people to realise their actions restrict others…” – Amy Greer casts a sociological eye over the pit – I don’t wish to use something as reductivist as the female/male dichotomy card to explain what I think is happening when people, mostly males, mosh. Rather than a basic gendered distinction, I would rather argue that a complex interplay of social norms, performance, ritual and also cultural specificities intersect in an interesting way that is both generalisable to many experiences of popular music and culture and specific to my specific experiences of specific types of hardcore. I feel anxious writing this; too often the words of individuals are taken as representative opinions of entire groups. It is not my intent to represent any broad group, any ‘gender’ or experience, I am merely articulating my own opinions, as based on personal experience.
Tags: moshing hardcore punk sociology
There’s more to the Facebook generation than the odd poke – If the male leader of an Islamic charity were to advise the government on how girls should dress and consume popular culture, there would be uproar. Instead, the Prime Minister congratulates Bailey in an obsequious letter for voicing “an issue that concerns so many parents”. It is reassuring to know that, in this decadent modern world, there are still powerful, middle-aged men on hand to manage and censor the sexuality of young women.
Tags: sexism sexuality youth teenagers britain

Linkfest: November 21st – November 28th

Shaun CG — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 21:42:22 +0000

Del.icio.us links for November 21st through November 28th:

LENIN’S TOMB: Students lead, NUS follows – As the occupations continue across the country, we’ve started to see a shift in the political leadership of the labour movement in this country in response to student militancy. Trade unionists have openly endorsed direct action, and Ed Miliband has already felt the need to declare that he was ‘tempted’ to speak at the student protests – which, lame as it is, makes a change from the ‘invisible man’ act he’s being doing amid all this. But far more notably NUS president Aaron Porter has apologised to students at the UCL occupation for being “too spineless”, supported occupations, and pledged the NUS’ support for this Tuesday’s action.
Tags: students protest militancy resistance youth coalition cuts recession
Radiator Blog: Gay (But Not “Gay”) Characters in Video Games – The argument that [all] gay video game characters should downplay their sexuality might be well intentioned, but is ultimately representative of the most dangerous kind of homophobia — a homophobia wrapped in intellectualism, appearing “tolerant.”
Tags: sexuality homophobia games writing criticism
Case Study – Love – Almost everything in Love is generative. The world, AI, player interaction and objectives are all driven by a growing number of complex rulesets that constantly drive emergent gameplay. One of the key features of this approach is the construction of procedurally generated worlds for each game server. These landscapes are procedurally generated and then slowly rebuilt over time via ongoing algorithmic remodelling. Radical shifts in tectonic type or altitude give the game a fantastic almost ‘prog rock’ aesthetic where new regions overwrite previous terrain with new outcrops or plateaus.
Tags: games proceduralgeneration
day9tv on blip.tv – More StarCraft 2 matches with commentary.
Tags: none
The Escapist : Wussy RPG Girls – If you’ve ever played a JRPG, particularly one from before the early 2000′s, chances are you’ve encountered the Wussy RPG Girl. Meek and doe-eyed, these healer characters double as the love interest and are usually billed as the “heroine,” though they seem to possess little power of their own. In fact, it’s rare that they do anything more heroic than grappling with low self-esteem or getting kidnapped – which tends to happen a minimum of twice.
Tags: sexism writing jrpgs games
Every RPG Ever – Chart poking fun at formulaic RPG plots.
Tags: games rpgs system:filetype:jpg system:media:image
A cure for the common cold may finally be achieved as a result of a remarkable discovery in a Cambridge laboratory – In a dramatic breakthrough that could affect millions of lives, scientists have been able to show for the first time that the body’s immune defences can destroy the common cold virus after it has actually invaded the inner sanctum of a human cell, a feat that was believed until now to be impossible.
Tags: medicine science research illness
18 essential Dragon Age mods – Another great list of mods.
Tags: mods games
commute til we die – Radicalisation always represents the attempt to bring about a condition that can actually be described as life.
Radicalism opposes itself to the swaddling, coddling, tunnel-vision of life as defined by the culture you live in. It questions the factuality of social, political and economic “fact”.
To call a McJob a fact–as in “facing the facts of life” –to call the Debt a fact–as in “facing the facts of the economy” –to call a career at Price Waterhouse a fact–as in “it’s a fact that you have to get on in life to get the things you want” –is the most grotesque distortion of the facts. These processes are as artificial as the malls & offices in which they take place.
Tags: coalition cuts radicalisation resistance life
YouTube – HuskyStarcraft’s Channel – StarCraft 2 match commentary
Tags: starcraft esports games
Biggest student rebellion since ’68 – Several fires burn on the tarmac, someone gives an impromptu speech from atop a concrete wall, and a chant goes up: “Let us out! Let us out! Let us out!”. I am in the middle of Britain’s student revolt, and I am amazed by the high spirits of thousands of kettled children and teenagers. For my part, I can only think how cold it is. Things keep “kicking off” on the frontlines between police and protesters. Further up Whitehall, a huge crowd of kids has gathered outside the kettle. I’m told the younger kids are walking around telling the police to go fuck themselves. They’re so angry, more than I can explain, about being kettled in. When asked, the sheer righteous fury they express is impressive.
Tags: activism protest youth cuts kettling london britain students police coalition
New Statesman – Inside the Whitehall kettle – Before we go any further, let’s remind ourselves precisely what kettling is, and what it’s for.
Take a protest, one whose premise is uncomfortable for the administration – say, yesterday’s protest, with thousands of teenagers from all over London walking out of lessons and marching spontaneously on Westminster to voice their anger at government cuts to education funding which will prevent thousands from attending college and university. Toss in hundreds of police officers with riot shields, batons, dogs, armoured horses and meat wagons, then block the protesters into an area of open space with no toilets, food or shelter, for hours. If anyone tries to leave, shout at them and hit them with sticks. It doesn’t sound like much, but it’s effective.
Tags: kettling protest london britain recession cuts coalition youth
Why I Write Reviews « Torque Control – The most irritating sentence in the paragraph, however, is the third. “Reviewers who want attention should instead write their own stories.” What’s objectionable here is not just the too-common canard that reviewers are frustrated fiction writers; it’s the suggestion that reviewers should want to write fiction, that fiction is in some undefined way inherently the superior activity, the true end-point of the urge to write, the only form of writing worthy of attention, that reviewing is but a stepping stone to that goal.
Tags: reviews criticism literature writing
Simon Gane – Comics artist Simon Gane’s blog.
Tags: comics art punk
FarmVille: they reap what you sow | Laurie Penny – There can be no more elegant example of the alienation of the modern workplace than the fact that hundreds of millions of employees across the globe spend their lunch hours pretending to be farmers on the internet. With all the breathtaking and transformative power of the web at their fingertips, armies of workers and young people still choose to spend their online hours growing virtual potatoes on badly animated digital fields.
One of the biggest forums for this activity is FarmVille, the online role-playing game made popular through Facebook, whose players tend and trade digital crops and livestock. Almost 100 million people subscribe to the game, which has just announced profits of $500m (£300m) for 2010. I have an account myself, and have spent many happy hours playing on my virtual farm, although my attempts to grow virtual opium were swiftly curtailed by the virtual CIA.
Tags: facebook webgames zynga gaming
The Battle For StarCraft II | Edge Magazine – It wasn’t meant to be like this. Not at all. Blizzard’s long-anticipated launch of StarCraft II was meant to be a dream –a triumphant return to the RTS genre that made the company’s name in 1997, when the first StarCraft revolutionised realtime strategy gaming. The centrepiece of the game’s launch? South Korea, the epicentre of world competitive gaming, where the low-specs original spread like a virus, hopping from the gamer fringe to become a mainstream sport within five years. Of the ten-million-plus copies of the original game sold worldwide, half were in South Korea. Two television channels sprang up to broadcast matches between the 12 Proleague teams, and fans flocked to see elite players face off against their rivals. The best players pulled in big money, earning up to £200k a year.
With so many players and fans still playing the original, with dedicated television channels running constant promotion, with an entire sport evolving from a single game, what could possibly go wrong?
Tags: esports korea starcraft gaming
Life Lessons from Nerdy Gamers – My youngest son is a serious gamer. It is a label that invokes judgment from even the most liberal adults. Gamers are viewed as lazy, unmotivated, and self-absorbed. I always suspected that something magic was happening in the gaming communities–the joy on my son’s face told me that it was serving some great purpose, and I’d understand it in time. Psychiatrists believe that the gamers are programming their minds for war. I once asked my son about this, knowing that he probably knew more than most therapists. His answer set me straight, “Mom, don’t you think we know the difference between pretend and real.” Of course, he did. It is the adults that don’t know the difference between pretend and real.
[...] They are watching their minds as they play, and discriminating true from false at a very high level.
Tags: games gaming esports starcraft intergenerationalrelationships

Linkfest: June 7th – June 13th

Shaun CG — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 18:00:59 +0000

Del.icio.us links for June 7th through June 11th:

Suspended-animation cold sleep achieved in lab – Top boffins in the States believe that they may be on the track of a way to place living human beings into suspended animation, allowing them to survive long periods effectively frozen before being “reanimated” with no ill effects.
Tags: science sciencefiction suspendedanimation research
rejectamentalist manifesto – A century ago it was already clear that international law was ‘a maze of plausibilities’. Ask a landscape gardener: the point of a maze is not to get out, but to get lost.
So what if, in the face of Israel’s cruel flaunting, we scythe through the hedges? Refuse to bicker over precedent, interpretation, custom, & all the rest of the endless pantomime?
What if, instead, we pursue other strategies to isolate the hijack state, & in response to its jurisprudes of murder, simply say: ‘Fuck your law’?
Tags: internationallaw israel palestine activism protest justice
Dance, Fight, Push People Over! | Red Wine Panther – Alec’s produced stuff.
Tags: band music
Hark! An Interview with Kate Beaton – Kate Beaton is the artist behind Hark! A Vagrant, the weekly webcomic whose popularity has exploded over the last year. Her clever mix of irreverence, literary references, and detailed historical mockery obviously strikes a chord with many readers, from the hundreds that lined up for hours at TCAF to get her new book signed to her admirers at the New Yorker. Be warned: visiting the archives of her website will cost you many hours in productivity—and, strangely, create a yearning to learn a little more about history, Beaton’s favourite subject. Beaton spoke with Torontoist’s comics columnist Dave Howard a couple of weeks ago about comic delivery, Canadian history, her own history, and her creative process.
Tags: interview comics history art katebeaton
Gideon’s trumpet – In short, the deficit is not the cause of weak private sector demand and investment, but the result of it. An attack on the public sector is an attack on one of the few sources of economic growth, and thus on the basis for future taxable income and profits. It may make the deficit larger. It may tip the UK into another recession, or depression. Moreover, there is no great urgency in the UK paying off the deficit, despite the sabre-rattling of the financiers
Tags: conservativeparty liberaldemocrats coalition recession economics futurism
Are Cameras the New Guns? – In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer. Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists.
Tags: privacy surveillance law USA police justice copwatch
The 6 Most Insane Moral Panics in American History – What’s wrong with kids these days? Not enough, apparently, since grown-ups seem to feel the need to just make shit up. Even the flimsiest evidence can convince parents and lazy journalists alike that there is some new, horrible threat to our moral character.
Often these turn out to be grossly exaggerated. Or, as in cases like the ones below, completely fucking retarded.
Tags: funny stupid moralcrusaders usa history
Ilan Pappé: The deadly closing of the Israeli mind – Nothing is further from the truth than this optimistic scenario. The only version of this solution that is acceptable to Israel is the one that both the tamed Palestine Authority in Ramallah and the more assertive Hamas in Gaza could never ever accept. It is an offer to imprison the Palestinians in stateless enclaves in return for ending their struggle. Thus even before one discusses either an alternative solution – a single democratic state for all, which I support – or explores a more plausible, two-state settlement, one has to transform fundamentally the Israeli official and public mindset. This mentality is the principal barrier to a peaceful reconciliation in the torn land of Israel and Palestine.
Tags: israel palestine peace society oppression mindset socialisation
Rooks on MySpace Music – New Brighton punk band, supporting OWTH later in the year.
Tags: band music
Overachiever For a Day – I noticed recently that Xbox 360 Achievements were starting to encroach on my gaming worldview. I have no interest in PS3 Trophies or the medals they hand out on Flash-game sites, but I’m a sucker for the allure of the Gamerscore. I found myself returning to mediocre games to scrimp an extra 50 points, or wasting time on joyless tasks like feather-hunting in Assassin’s Creed II.
I intended to break myself of this predilection. (Let’s not call it an “addiction.”) I like Achievements, but I wanted them to be a sideshow rather than the main event. I figured that if I could boost my Gamerscore in one insane, all-out blaze of glory, maybe the points wouldn’t have such a hold on me anymore. It would be like smoking a whole pack of cigarettes at once to break your nicotine habit.
Look, I didn’t say it was a good plan. Just a plan.
Tags: gaming achievements psychology funny
Rebel Frequencies: M.I.A. is right, NYT is wrong – “Lately it seems like the only thing following M.I.A. around more than controversy is bad journalism.” Interesting and spirited defence of M.I.A’s spat with the NYT.
Tags: music journalism popstars protest controversy provocation media
The Brothers Bloom (2009) – The Failed Re-Enchantment of the Postmodern World – …while cinephiles speak of the truth and beauty of film, the reality of the modern cinema is a gauntlet of bad faith and protective cynicism. A cynicism born of the fact that, before you even decide what film to see or what screen to go to, you are assailed by empty promises. Promises of new technologies and more comfortable seats. Promises made by aggressive marketing campaigns and trailers designed to raise expectations to the point where no human-made work of art could ever possibly satisfy them. Arrived at the cinema you must then navigate a flood of yet more adverts and yet more trailers for yet more films demanding yet more money and yet more of your time. To face such an onslaught without cynical detachment would surely be to go mad but this protective detachment is also the enemy of art as it seeks to protect us from that which defines a great work of art: emotional transport.
Tags: culture cinema art psychology

Linkfest: May 10th – May 19th

Shaun CG — Wed, 19 May 2010 12:09:19 +0000

Del.icio.us links for May 10th through May 19th:

Smallpox Vaccine May Protect Against HIV – Vaccination with the smallpox vaccine called “vaccinia” may boost a person’s ability to resist infection with HIV, new research suggests.
If true, the finding could link the rapid, late 20th-century spread of HIV to the simultaneous vanquishing of smallpox disease and the removal of the smallpox vaccine — and possible HIV firewall– from worldwide distribution.
Tags: medicine studies vaccination hiv disease research
Saudi woman beats up virtue cop – It was a scene Saudi women’s rights activists have dreamt of for years.
When a Saudi religious policeman sauntered about an amusement park in the eastern Saudi Arabian city of Al-Mubarraz looking for unmarried couples illegally socializing, he probably wasn’t expecting much opposition.
But when he approached a young, 20-something couple meandering through the park together, he received an unprecedented whooping.
Tags: feminism gender patriarchy religion islam saudiarabia despotism resistance
we are the public option – The super hard core right wing takeover of the Texas State School Board has been completed. Under the guise of eradicating liberal bias, the school board created a set of standards that require schools to teach factually incorrect right wing propaganda in lieu of history.
Tags: texas usa rightwingbullshit christianfundamentalism crazies stupid education
Why neoliberalism persists – “There is an obvious question that arises here: in what way are these cuts good for capitalism? After all, what is being proposed here is that approximately £150bn should be taken from the public sector over the next four or five years, and redistributed to the financial sector. This could be regarded as an example of what David Harvey has called “accumulation by dispossession”, since the assumption of the government is that reduced public sector investment will be matched by increased private sector investment. In an economic landscape increasingly marked by the dearth of profitable investment opportunities, the privatization of public wealth and industries have facilitated some of the few growth. But this particular act of redistribution is different in the sense that it does not of itself produce the investment opportunities that, say, the privatization of the utilities and public transport did.”
Tags: economics neoliberalism britain recession publicspending capitalism analysis
I Feel Sick To My Stomach: I Was A Teenage Anarchist – I got into radical politics when I was 15 years old, shortly after discovering punk music. At first I thought punk was just nihilism, misanthropy, self destruction, Sid Vicious. Then when I was 15 I got beat up by the cops; the experience changed my life. [...] The experience politicized me. I dropped out of high school. I started doing a zine. I started a distro of political pamphlets and Anarcho-punk records. I started a Food Not Bombs chapter with a group of friends. We met other like minded people across Florida and started a radical activist network. We organized protests, we organized gatherings, workshops, participated in direct action.
Tags: againstme punk anarchism activism radicalism autonomy
Ghosts Of The Future: Borrowing Architecture From The Zone Of Alienation – Even now, when cities can be raised procedurally from the blank canvas of a game engine, perhaps it’s worth taking a look at the real world and the mythology that has been strewn around it. If borrowing architecture from the zone proves anything, it’s that simulation should not exist in a vacuum.
Tags: gaming design stalker architecture urbanenvironments urbandecay
Ascii Dreams: No Aliens Allowed – The reason I’m asking is that telling a single player story about the near future demands a certain level of rigour in game design and narrative which a far future or apocalyptic story does not. You are held to higher standards, because the story you’re telling is so close to the real world that you risk future events invalidating it, you can’t invent as much handwavium to make combat play fun when the weapons are close to real world standards, you certainly can’t insert the level of variety of enemies when you’re restricted to the dull human chromosome.
Tags: gaming sf futurism gamedesign writing
BBC News – Cameron’s government: A guide to who’s who -
Tags: electoralpolitics britain coalition liberaldemocrats conservativeparty
What the coalition means. – Cameron is not a progressive. He is an old school Thatcherite whose record on economic as on social issues is reactionary – from demanding tax cuts for the rich to support for homophobic legislation. He and his party spent the 2010 general election race-baiting on immigration. Cameron himself is an opponent of multiculturalism, and he was quite happy to participate in the Muslim-bashing fiasco when it reached a nasty crescendo in 2006. His foreign policy is impeccably neoconservative, and William Hague is already sending out the policy signals [...] On the whole, Cameron is a man who instinctively identifies with wealth and privilege, and oozes disdain in every nuance of his speech and comportment for the poor and oppressed. If Cameron’s policy record, rather than his broken record PR spin, is what is at issue here, then calling him a progressive is as perverse as labelling the Pope a member of the Saviours Sect.
Tags: coalition electoralpolitics conservativeparty liberaldemocrats recession publicservices cuts
Lib Dem tax policy “fails the fairness test” – Nick Clegg’s planned policy of “tax cuts for people and families on low and middle incomes” would be deeply regressive according to a detailed analysis by Tim Horton and Howard Reed for Left Foot Forward.
Tags: economics liberaldemocrats coalition electoralpolitics
Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss … not. – “So we have a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government (those words, I think, throw the difference between the British and American political weltanschaung into stark relief).” Charlie Stross’s initial thoughts on the coalition govt.
Tags: uk britain politics electoralpolitics coalition
How to screen-print T-shirts at home | Life and style | guardian.co.uk -
Tags: screenprinting tshirts clothing diy tutorial crafts
The 5 Kinds Of Music That Teens Are Into – Oldz like to think that Kids These Days are completely different from the way oldz were back in the day. When oldz are exposed to new developments in youth culture, they usually get angry and confused, and say things like “[CURRENT BAND] fucking sucks, what’s wrong with kids these days? Ugh. They should listen to [OLD BAND THAT NOBODY UNDER 30 CARES ABOUT], that’s what’s up.” But the truth is that the more things change, the more they stay the same: the stuff kids like today is the same stuff we liked, just with slightly different clothes and haircuts (and flagrant autotune abuse). In fact, there are basically only 5 kinds of music that teens like, and they are THE SAME ONES that us oldz liked when we were teens. I will provide examples, then map the current version of each kind against the version for oldz to illustrate my point.
Tags: popculture music alternative youth teens funny

Linkfest: October 19th – January 3rd

Shaun CG — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 22:43:56 +0000

Del.icio.us links for October 19th through January 3rd… sorry, I forgot to do these posts for AGES AND AGES. It’s a huge morass of links o’ interest; sorry for not sorting them.

Sumerians Look On In Confusion As God Creates World – “Members of the earth’s earliest known civilization, the Sumerians, looked on in shock and confusion some 6,000 years ago as God, the Lord Almighty, created Heaven and Earth.”
Tags: satire comedy funny creationism youngearthcreationism religion
Aspects of a racist diatribe – What are the precise dimensions of a ‘culture’ that supposedly yields violent crime, for example? No one knows. Something about rappers and absent fathers, possibly. We all know how to use phrases such as ‘culture of dependency’, ‘culture of blame’, ‘culture of violence’, etc., but these are miasmic conceits designed to retail a particular kind of reactionary politics. Their vagueness is their virtue. Indeed, without wishing to dignify the discussion by endowing it with serious theoretical merit, we can at least acknowledge in passing that in understanding crime, both how it is constructed and how and why it is carried out, there are all sorts of issues involved that do not correspond to the bigoted obsessions of the commentariat. So, the point is not violent crime. The aim of such bombast is to resurrect some antique racial stereotypes that hold black people to be, whether by endowment or ‘culture’, rapists, robbers and murderers.
Tags: racism rightwing media journalism journalisticstandards hatespeech language
Dunning–Kruger effect – The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which “people reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices but their incompetence robs them of the metacognitive ability to realize it”.[1] The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average, much higher than actuality; by contrast the highly skilled underrate their abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. This leads to a perverse result where less competent people will rate their own ability higher than more competent people. It also explains why actual competence may weaken self-confidence because competent individuals falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding.
Tags: psychology incompetence competence people studies
My $62.47 Royalty Statement: How Major Labels Cook the Books with Digital Downloads – we all know that major labels are supposed to be venal masters of hiding money from artists, but they’re also supposed to be good at it, right? This figure wasn’t insulting because it was so small, it was insulting because it was so stupid.
Tags: majorlabels musicindustry money accounting transparency bullshit riaa music recordlabels business
What Really Happened in Rwanda? – Halfway into our presentation, a military man in a green uniform stood up and interrupted. The Minister of Internal Affairs, he announced, took great exception to our findings. We were told that our passport numbers had been documented, that we were expected to leave the country the next day and that we would not be welcomed back into Rwanda — ever. Abruptly, our presentation was over, as was, it seemed, our fieldwork in Rwanda.
Tags: rwanda history research studies unpopular+conclusions africa ethnicity civilwar
What happened in Rwanda? – Some statistics and citations from a study of killings in Rwanda.
Tags: statistics rwanda history politics genocide distortion justice
The shade of Labourism – For the last decade or so, much of the far left at any rate has shared a perspective that there needed to be a drastic realignment on the left, and that the window for this was provided by disaffection with New Labour’s right-wing rule.
Tags: labourparty leftism farleft socialism politics UK britain activism strategy electoralpolitics
Because As We All Know, The Green Party Runs the World. – “Science is so powerful that it drags us kicking and screaming towards the truth despite our best efforts to avoid it. And it does that at least partly fueled by our pettiness and our rivalries. Science is alchemy: it turns shit into gold. Keep that in mind the next time some blogger decries the ill manners of a bunch of climate scientists under continual siege by forces with vastly deeper pockets and much louder megaphones.” Paul still wins at pulling out the best quotes.
Tags: peterwatts science academia peerreview climatechange globalwarming politics debate internet bullshit obfuscation
Eco-malthusianism – What is driving ‘climate change’ is a particular kind of economic activity, not population growth. Lifestyles are important too. Those sported by the richest tend to exploit and run down our environmental life support systems the hardest. The carbon footprint of a multi-billionaire philanthropist is certain to be dozens of times higher than that of an African labourer. To put it one way, Bill Gates will emit more CO2 jetting to conferences on population growth than a coltan miner in the DRC will in is entire lifespan. So maybe Bill and Melinda shouldn’t have any fucking kids. And, by the way, Bill needs that coltan miner, and the genocidal armies who ensure that the ore is delivered to western corporations such as Microsoft, so he shouldn’t really get lippy about population growth.
Tags: populationgrowth overpopulation climatechange philanthropism resources poverty classwar capitalism media
Matt Taibbi – Sarah Palin, WWE Star – It doesn’t matter what the argument is about. What’s important is that once the argument starts, the two sides will automatically coalesce around the various instant-cocoa talking points and scream at each other until they’re blue in the face, or until the next argument starts.
Tags: politics personality sarahpalin republicanparty fringepolitics rightwingheroes partisanry
The Bitch is Back: Books: GQ – 2009′s most influential author is a mirthless Russian-American who loves money, hates God, and swings a gigantic dick. She died in 1982, but her spawn soldier on. And the Great Recession is all their fault
Tags: objectivism aynrand USA article philosophy economics humour utopianism ideology
THE FLATLINERS on MySpace Music – Yes yes yes yes yes
Tags: band music hotdamn!
LENIN’S TOMB: The graveyard of the Russian empire – What did the USSR want with Afghanistan? Even some of their supporters had difficulty working it out. Alexander Cockburn ironically extolled the virtues of the invasion as a civilising mission: “I yield to none in my sympathy to those prostrate beneath the Russian jackboot, but if ever a country deserved rape it’s Afghanistan. Nothing but mountains filled with barbarous ethnics with views as medieval as their muskets, and unspeakably cruel too…” Others insisted that Russia was there to defend the gains of the ‘Saur revolution’, support womens’ rights, build schools for the people, overthrow the khans, etc. There is no doubt that this is what the Afghan communists wanted, and had sought to achieve through the disastrous strategy of military dictatorship. But the idea that an exploitative and oppressive bureaucratic state like the USSR approached Afghanistan as modernising revolutionaries is tweaking the nose of credulity.
Tags: history war invasion occupation USA USSR afghanistan communism capitalism
LENIN’S TOMB: A few points about that ‘age of austerity’ – The economic crisis has thrown that ideological hegemony into disarray. In a recent poll, only 11% of people questioned in 27 countries approved of the way that free market capitalism is working. While the majority of people feel that the system can still be saved and made to work with adequate reforms and redistribution of wealth, sizeable minorities say it is totally unworkable and “a different economic system is needed”. That minority is 20% in the UK – smaller than many others, but still a massive number of people questioning the basic running of society. That is the basis for a social movement. If that questioning, and the anger that underlies it, is not articulated by the left then it will be appropriated by the far right. Actually, forget ‘will’ – it is being appropriated by the far right.
Tags: politics leftwing rightwing reformism capitalism polls UK
Noam Chomsky – War, Peace, and Obama’s Nobel – The hopes and prospects for peace aren’t well aligned — not even close. The task is to bring them nearer. Presumably that was the intent of the Nobel Peace Prize committee in choosing President Barack Obama. The prize “seemed a kind of prayer and encouragement by the Nobel committee for future endeavor and more consensual American leadership,” Steven Erlanger and Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote in The New York Times.Silence is often more eloquent than loud clamor, so let us attend to what is unspoken.
Tags: nobelprize politics war nuclearweapons IAEA USA iran afghanistan iraq india pakistan israel middleeast
Pseudo Nippon on MySpace Music – Weird Japanese pop/beat/experimental music, sounds like pretty good fun.
Tags: band music
OX_BOW on MySpace Music – Experimental avant-garde group combining grinding noise with minimalism and throttled screams.
Tags: band music
T ∑ ∑ T H on MySpace Music – Rad noisy punk ‘n spazz throbbing electro thing.
Tags: band music
A Lesson In The Abuse of Information Technology (The Menzingers) – Rad rad rad
Tags: band music hotdamn!
Quantum gravity theories wiped out by a gamma ray burst – One of the awkward aspects of modern physics is that its two most successful fields, relativity and quantum mechanics, are fundamentally incompatible, as things happen in the quantum world that relativity says should not be possible. That’s left physicists looking for a way to harmonize the two, with two primary contenders: string theories, and quantum gravity theories. Testing either of them has been a bit challenging, but researchers have now managed to use a single, intensely powerful photon detected by the Fermi Telescope to significantly limit the number of viable quantum gravity theories.
Tags: astrophysics science research technology space stringtheory quantumtheory theoryofrelativity theory
Xerox develops silver ink to usher in new era of low cost printable electronics – Integrated circuits are made up of three components – a semiconductor, a conductor and a dielectric element – and currently are manufactured in costly silicon chip fabricating factories. Printable electronics promises to make the mass production of thin, cheap and flexible electronic circuits a reality, but researchers have been faced with the difficult challenge of developing conductive electronic inks that work in an ordinary, everyday environment. By creating a silver ink to print the conductor, Xerox has developed all three of the materials necessary for printing plastic circuits.
Tags: technology computing electronics futurism
Crisis and recovery: myths about China – “Any talk of global recovery needs to start by looking at two key places – China and the USA. The two countries are locked together in an unwilling but interdependent dance from which neither can escape. The USA is China’s largest trading partner with 21 percent of China’s exports going to the US and almost eight percent of its imports coming from there. In the US, China is now the USA’s number 1 trading partner, representing up to 19 percent of total trade vs Canada’s 14.5 percent.” Fascinating post about economic policy in China, the US and Europe, the effects of the recession upon strategies being followed, the dangers China’s elite face and what changes there might mean for the rest of the world.
Tags: economics growth development capitalism investment production exports politics china USA europe
Winterval watch: Here we go! – I had been a bit concerned, given that it’s getting towards the end of October. But here we are at last. Hooray! The first “Christmas is being called something else for fear of offending terrorists or something” quote is IN – and it’s been found by the BBC, of all people.
Tags: bullshit idiocy funny christmas holidays britain christianity are+people+really+this+thick?
Noam Chomsky on the Global Economic Crisis, Healthcare, US Foreign Policy and Resistance to American Empire – Today, a conversation with one of the most important dissident intellectuals of our time, Noam Chomsky, on the global economic crisis, healthcare, the media, US foreign policy, the expanding wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and resistance to American empire. Noam Chomsky is a world-renowned linguist, philosopher, social critic, and Institute Professor Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Tags: noamchomsky politics USA geopolitics barackobama afghanistan war southamerica neoliberalism economics capitalism protectionism
Noam Chomsky on US Expansion of Afghan Occupation, the Uses of NATO, and What Obama Should Do in Israel-Palestine – To talk about Afghanistan, NATO and the state of US economic and military power in the world today, we’re joined by one of the world’s most astute thinkers and most important intellectuals of our time: linguist, philosopher, social critic, political dissident, Noam Chomsky.
Tags: noamchomsky politics USA strategy resourceconflict geopolitics barackobama afghanistan nato europe russia history isreal palestine
The Encyclopedia Of Decency: When I Called It “Human Rights Watch,” I Meant “Watch The Baddies, Not The Goodies” – As the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join a militant wingnut circle-jerk with a mealy-mouthed and disingenuous hissy fit of epic proportions.
Tags: amazing funny humanrightswatch israel palestine bias bullshit warcrimes decency
thefuckinEDC on MySpace Music – Pretty rad histrionic punk/indie/emo outfit. Remind me of La Dispute.
Tags: band music
Laura Stevenson – 3 tracks from Laura Stevenson & the Cans. <3
Tags: band music
Corporate Supremacy and the Rape of a Human Girl – We are fast approaching the time of the next great battle over evolution. The Neo-creationists will be corporations, and they will argue that they could not possibly be descended from human beings.This isn’t science fiction. Just the other day 30 Republicans voted in the U.S. Senate to deny justice to a human victim of rape in order to protect the so-called sovereign rights of corporations.
Tags: corporatism law conservatism business rape
Exclusive Interview With Ashok Banker! « The World SF News Blog – Ashok Banker is the best-selling author of the Ramayana series, and a prolific novelist, short story writer, journalist and blogger. An outspoken critic of Western publishing, he has refused interviews in the past with the New York Times,Salon.com and even a feature cover for the Washington Post Book World, and so we were delighted that he’d agreed to this interview. Here, Banker speaks candidly to Charles Tan about his difficult childhood, his views on US and UK genre publishing, and his role as India’s “self-appointed poet laureate without a license.”
Tags: interview writer author genres genrebending genreghettoes
Twenty questions for the BNP – I’ve suggested a few issues Nick Griffin could be asked about when he appears on Question Time – have I missed anything?
Tags: bnp fascists racists politics interviews
How Safe is the HPV vaccine? – I’ve been reading a lot about the HPV (Human Papillomavirus) vaccine and the risk of serious side effects and even death. I thought I would seek out the numbers and put them in context. Especially given headlines claiming the HPV jab is “as deadly as the cancer” it seeks to prevent.
Tags: vaccinations diagram statistics medicine health information hpv
They don’t get it – It’s not just Jan who doesn’t get a lot of its. A lot of people don’t get a lot of its. But we should forgive them their ignorance, their lack of understanding of these new social media phenomena. They have been brought up in a didactic world of media, where newspapers tell you what to think and why to think it; not in a world where readers give back as good as they get, want to correct inaccuracies and don’t stand for being lied to.
Tags: media news newspapers printmedia dailymail homophobia prejudice racism commentary socialnetworks
If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one to hear it, can Carter-Ruck ban all mention of the sound? – Super-injunctions raise a worrying question: what else don’t we know? Hitler could be alive, and in negotiations to present the Radio 1 breakfast show
Tags: charliebrooker funny law censorship freedomofspeech UK corporations carter-ruck trafigura media news
The Fall Of Boss Koala on MySpace Music – Probably the best of the (all good) Scottish screamo / post-hardcore / indie bands I’ve listened to today. Hot damn indeed!
Tags: band music hotdamn!
Archive on MySpace Music – Electronica / trip-hop outfit from London.
Tags: band music
Kaddish on MySpace Music – There is a pattern to these Scottish screamo bands, which is that they are good. Kaddish are from Dundee!
Tags: band music
Black Channels on MySpace Music – Why, it’s another Glasgow screamo band! Also pretty damn good.
Tags: band music hotdamn!
Mesa Verde on MySpace Music – Rad screamo from Aberdeen!
Tags: band music hotdamn!
Carson Wells on MySpace Music – Aberdeen indie / post-punk / screamo band. Rad!
Tags: band music hotdamn!

Linkfest: October 5th – October 18th

Shaun CG — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:45:22 +0000

Del.icio.us links for October 5th through October 18th:

Postal strike is an act of desperation – “As usual they emphasise the effects of strike action, not its causes. In the case of the postal workers the causes are simple, and they are experienced daily by the ordinary, hard-working people who deliver our mail.” A good piece, although as usual I want to punch the snide, smug, arrogant contrarian shits in the comments.
Tags: royalmail strike UK privatisation jobs employment
Another Wall Street bubble, thanks to the bailout – I suppose it shouldn¹t come as a surprise that the biggest of the big banks in America that sucked up tens of billions in government aid are now rolling in profits. That¹s how this game works. Thus, JPMorgan has just reported a 580% profit increase over last year to a whopping $3.6 billion third-quarter profit. The reason is, purely and simply, that the money that the US government pumped into the banking and financial sector has created a new Wall St. bubble with stock prices rising by nearly 50% to top the psychological benchmark of 10,000.
Tags: economics economiccrisis capitalism boomandbust politics banking USA
The pitfalls of tolerance – The Tories are lauded for adopting a new attitude of ‘tolerance’ toward homosexuals, and one feels an immediate pressure to partake of this cosiness, this idea that something uncomplicatedly benign is happening. Increasingly, moreover, one is apt to hear ‘tolerance’ name-dropped in respect of racial problems in the UK, in which the absence of ‘tolerance’ is either a euphemism for racism, or an attitude ascribed to supposedly self-segregating minorities. And in its function as part of a martial ideology, ‘tolerance’ is what NATO troops defend against ‘native fanaticism’. The word and its various significations do a lot of ideological work, obscuring and inverting crucial social relations, and smuggling in a patronising attitude to the subjects of said ‘tolerance’.
Tags: tolerance politics society racism imperialism cultural UK colonialism history
Spec-tac-ul-ar. Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love adversity – The news media spectacle of the Credit crisis, portrays our socially produced institutions of Banking Conglomerates and Federal Banks appearing as ‘god like personalities controlling our lives without reason or accountability’. Richard Seymour traces a corresponding spectacularising and alienating representation of Capitalisms inherent cyclical logic of wealth obliteration.
Tags: capitalism culture film art representation alienation consumerism materialism richardseymour
Better off on the dole – The focus on [recruiting] young people makes strategic sense. In 2006, 14,000 people left the British armed forces, but only 12,000 signed up – and most of the new recruits were teenagers. Last night at a Stop the War Coalition meeting, I learned a bit more about what this effort to draft the kids now entails. For it seems that the British Army is now placing stalls at further education colleges on enrolment day. And what they do when there is offer students a £5,000 bursary to sign up for the army there and then. They do not immediately join, for they are only sixteen, but rather complete their two years of study at college, and are then committed to four years of military service. This makes Britain the only country in Europe that targets sixteen year olds for military recruitment. And they don’t even necessarily stick to their own rules in this process, as it was revealed back in 2007 that the British government had sent soldiers under the age of eighteen into southern Iraq.
Tags: waronterror armedforces recruitment UK britain afghanistan iraq youth teenagers propaganda
Court considers stripping Silvio Berlusconi of immunity – Italy’s prime minister, already on the defensive because of a lurid sex-and-drugs scandal, could go back on trial in two cases if an act passed last year to shield him from the law is thrown out. In his address to the court, Berlusconi’s lawyer, Gaetano Pecorella, said that as a result of changes to Italy’s electoral law the nation’s prime minister could no longer be regarded in the same way as other politicians. Pecorella told the judges the prime minister was “no longer ‘first among equals’, but must be considered ‘first above equals’.”
Tags: italy silvioberlusconi corruption capitalism
Marek Edelman – This is what Marek Edelman did. In April 1943 he, along with some confederates of his – notably Mordecai Anielewicz, Chaim Frimmer and Adam Halperin – embarked on a violent uprising, using a combination of home-made and obsolete weapons, against the Nazis. Their aim was to stop the Nazis from transporting them to Treblinka, one of the Operation Reinhard camps, and murdering them. Two thirds of the ghetto’s population had already been taken away by the time the Jewish Fighting Organisation was formed.
Tags: history ww2 genocide judaism resistancemovements
The new rules of news – “Here’s a list of 22 things, not in any particular order, that I’d insist upon if I ran a news organization.” Bugger me, if only even half of these were applied.
Tags: journalism web2.0 socialnetworks socialchange communication dialogue newspapers media
Punknews.org | Defiance, Ohio – Distance and preoccupation tend to be the Achilles’ heel for most bands, but folk punk act Defiance, Ohio manages to make it work. Perhaps circumstance prohibit them from the more traditional band experience. Though, given everything the members are involved in, the core requirements are there: they do play shows (sometimes), they do put out records (sporadically), and they do communicate with each other (a lot). In an effort to make up for their lack of touring this year, they are making the trek down to play Fest 8. Upright bassist Ryan recently talked to Matthew Bentel about the challenges popularity incurs, the insatiable desire to stay involved, and the increasing interest in “licensing” their music.
Tags: interview band music
Punknews.org | The Gaslight Anthem – “Trusty Chords” (cover) – Video of the Gaslight Anthem covering HWM’s ‘Trusty Chords’.
Tags: band music thegaslightanthem
Hot Water Music – Retrospective Vol. 1 « (((unartig))) – Part 1 of a 4-part series of HWM retrospectives, full of live videos.
Tags: band music hotwatermusic
LONG DISTANCE CALLING on MySpace Music – Another rad epic prog metal/post-rock band.
Tags: band music
BETWEEN THE SCREAMS on MySpace Music – Epic/prog metal band.
Tags: band music
SPIRES on MySpace Music – Mid-pace melodic emo… really, really good.
Tags: band music hotdamn!
THE ARTERIES on MySpace Music – Neat UK punk rock.
Tags: band music
Above Them on MySpace Music – Ace melodic punk rock band from Yorkshire.
Tags: band music hotdamn!
Illness on MySpace Music – Wicked Brighton drum/gtr 2-piece.
Tags: band music
MIHAI EDRISCH on MySpace Music – Awesome French screamo band (tribute page with tunes).
Tags: band music hotdamn!
Punknews.org | About Nothington – Full album streams for the new album, plus preceding album ‘All In’.
Tags: band music
The Emergency Room on MySpace Music – Dan Andriano (Alk3) acoustic side-proj.
Tags: band music
Calvinball (free album download) on MySpace Music – Pretty ace Exeter punk band.
Tags: band music
OK PILOT on MySpace Music – Their new songs are excellent!
Tags: band music hotdamn!
BANGERS on MySpace Music – SxC!
Tags: band music
BROTHERS on MySpace Music – Pnk rck.
Tags: band music
Men on MySpace Music – I LIKE MENlololol
Tags: band music
run,WALK! on MySpace Music – SRS RADNSS
Tags: band music hotdamn!
Torture the Artist on MySpace Music – “Members of Screeching Weasel, Rise Against and Common Rider have joined up with vocalist Jorge Orillac – the nephew of the President of Panama – to release a record as Torture the Artist.”
Tags: band music hotdamn!
Failures’ Union on MySpace Music – Warm fuzz-pop/indie band (slightly a Lemuria side project).
Tags: band music
A TEXTBOOK TRAGEDY on MySpace Music – Good metalcore band with some occasionally cheesy, occasionally excellent melodic bits and vocal harmonies.
Tags: band music
Future of Music Summit: 115,000 albums and only 110 ‘hits’ – “U.S. album sales in 2008: More than 115,000 albums were released, but only 110 sold more than 250,000 copies, a mere 1,500 topped 10,000 sales, and fewer than 6,000 cracked the 1,000 barrier”
Tags: musicindustry music business economics
This film is on: inside the ATP movie – The comments make it sound like the film may not be so great, but this article is a great explication of why ATP is so rad.
Tags: festivals music independentmusic
The Thick of It: top 10 Malcolm Tucker quotes – To celebrate the return of Armando Iannucci’s political comedy on Saturday, 24 October, we recall Tucker’s finest moments.
Tags: funny quotes
My book is mine, not Google’s – Google has the support of the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, but it faces formidable opposition. Some 400 legal objections have been filed, and the US Department of Justice has serious concerns. The dispute was due to be resolved in court next week, but at the last minute Google and its partners asked for the case to be adjourned so they could make revisions. A hearing will still take place, but only to inform the parties concerned how Google intends to proceed.
Tags: books publishing web online google
Everyday Genius: Ellis Sharp – Impressionistic short story by Ellis Sharp.
Tags: fiction ellissharp story
What is a “clip job”? – “In the end, this article is just another “we love us” sort of thing, chockful of imaginary enemies, like “the publishers.” What exactly that’s supposed to mean remains unspoken, but well, what did you expect from a clip job?” THANK YOU. God, I wish fandom would shut up about this imagined snobbery.
Tags: SF fantasy books publishing genre writing snobbery literature literati
Why I Flame – As companies try to build their brands through newsgroups, e-mail feedback, and Web forums, the job title “Professional Flamer” stands ready to be penciled into the office hierarchy, right under “Chief Yahoo” and just over “Minister of Indie Culture.” In service to our employers, we flamers slither across the Internet—a realm where rudeness is a form of currency—and take out the customers, competitors, and wannabes who target businesses out of misplaced rage or the need to feel important.
Tags: nickmamatas internet web flaming argument PR
‘Spider pill’ offers new way to scan for diseases including colon cancer – “A new way to scan for diseases, including cancer of the stomach or colon, using a remote contol ‘spider pill’ camera with moving legs, has been hailed by scientists in Italy.” Send one into Berlusconi, stat! Better yet, send an army!
Tags: medicine science research technology cancer disease diagnosis robotics
100 years of Big Content fearing technology—in its own words – For the last hundred years, rightsholders have fretted about everything from the player piano to the VCR to digital TV to Napster. Here are those objections, in Big Content’s own words.
Tags: technology innovation content art creativity music television film business copyright

Linkfest: September 20th – September 27th

Shaun CG — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:21:38 +0000

Del.icio.us links for September 20th through September 27th:

Revealed: the hidden army in UK prisons – The number of former servicemen in prison or on probation or parole is now more than double the total British deployment in Afghanistan, according to a new survey. An estimated 20,000 veterans are in the criminal justice system, with 8,500 behind bars, almost one in 10 of the prison population.
Tags: britain armedforces veterans crime prisons law imperialism
G20 protesters blasted by sonic cannon – Only a few hundreds protesters took to the streets of Pittsburgh to mark the opening day of the G20 summit of world leaders, but the police were taking no chances.
Tags: police protest activism g20 USA technology
G20 Protests – One of the better comments I’ve seen about the repression of the G20 protesters points out that when the ‘Teabaggers’ inspired by Glenn Beck turned out to protest over healthcare reform, they could bring a gun and cite the second amendment, without being harrassed. G20 protesters get beaten up and exposed to top notch military technology if they just cite the first amendment.
Tags: police protest activism leftwing rightwing USA
LRB · Roy Mayall: Diary – According to Royal Mail figures published in May, mail volume declined by 5.5 per cent over the preceding 12 months, and is predicted to fall by a further 10 per cent this year ‘due to the recession and the continuing growth of electronic communications such as email’. Every postman knows these figures are false.
Tags: britain royalmail publicservices bureaucracy privatisation politics management lies statistics
There will be no ‘invasion’ from ‘jungle camps’ – At a moment when the Labour home secretary, Alan Johnson, expresses his “delight” at the pitiful sight of hundreds of French police rounding up mainly Afghan asylum seekers in a makeshift camp in Calais, it is time to defend the right to claim asylum in Britain. Johnson, in language that seems more concerned about the Daily Mail front page than the wording of the 1951 Geneva convention on asylum, pre-judges the issue by talking about protecting “genuine” refugees but insisting they should not be allowed to come to Britain to have their claims decided.
Tags: immigration britain france europe asylumseekers racism xenophobia rightwingbullshit war refugees imperialism
Blurred boundaries for teachers – Following the jailing this week of Helen Goddard, the teacher who had a sexual relationship with a pupil, Jon Henley looks at how texting, emailing and social networking sites are radically changing the teacher-pupil relationship
Tags: britain schools education teaching relationships profit
The very British values of John Enoch Powell – Enoch Powell is the subject of reactionary encomium wherever the issues of race, integration and post-colonial Britain arise. They say that he wasn’t a racist, just a decent English patriot who was saddened by the dilution of national identity. They say that he was right. They say that the current multicultural situation is intolerable and perverse, and that this was foreseen by Powell. ‘They’ talk an incredible amount of rubbish.
Tags: britain history racism patriotism xenophobia nationalism farright immigration rhetoric
Sabra and Shatila – To destroy the basis of Palestinian nationhood, Israel had to crush every manifestation of civil society, political and military development among the Palestinians living in border areas and miserable refugee camps, from 1949 onward. Repeated incursions into Jordan, including the bombing of Irbid, and the ethnic cleansing of one and a half million people from the Suez Canal area in 1970, was a logical corollary of this. The Hashemite kingdom of Jordan had been the Zionists’ key ally in the originary purge of 700,000 Palestinians that enabled the Israeli state to come into being.
Tags: israel palestine jordan lebanon middleeast politics genocide stateterror
Alas, poor Trotsky – When neoconservatives perish, do they share the same circle of hell as Leon Trotsky, or that of Joseph de Maistre? Is their sin one of revolutionary hubris, or militant reaction? It is a staple of both liberal and right-wing critics of neoconservatism that it is a mutation of Trotskyism, a ‘foreign’ revolutionary doctrine overthrowing classically American conservative discourse.
Tags: neoconservatism trotskyism politics ideology history
Wicca Lies (conclusion): An Unsupportable Pack of Lies – You see, there isn’t much actual magic in Wicca 101. There’s not much psychic development, just basic grounding and centering, maybe a few breathing exercises and some chants. There’s not much on group dynamics, on working with a group and managing the needs of such a group. And there’s certainly no push to encourage students to study primary source material. So given these deficits, it’s obvious that these should be the agenda for any classes beyond Wicca 101. However, there’s an intractable problem that any would-be Wicca 200 (and above) course developer faces. If such a class were to be in any way honest, then class 2, lesson 1, sentence 1 would have to be this: “OK, all of that stuff we taught you in Wicca 101? Forget it. None of it was true.”
Tags: wicca paganism religion spirituality belief politics history
Gin, servants and bloodlines for royalty’s Alf Garnett in a tiara – It must be exhausting to be a monarchist, forever finding ways to pretend a family of cold, talentless snobs are better than the rest of us. They have to make gold out of mud. The system of monarchy – selecting a head of state solely because of the womb they passed through, and surrounding them with sycophants from the moment they emerge – produces warped and dim people and demands that we scrape before them. What’s a poor monarchist to do? They can only lavish a thick cream of adjectives – “dignity”, “charm”, “majesty” – over the Windsor family in the hope that some of us are fooled.
Tags: britain monarchy aristocracy class imperialism racism royalfamily
Taqwacore: The Birth of Punk Islam – Three years in the making, this feature documentary follows the progression of the Muslim Punk scene: from its imaginary inception in a novel written by a white-convert named Michael Muhammad Knight to a full-blown, real-life scene of Muslim punk bands and their fans.
Tags: punk music islam counterculture USA muslims rebellion
The Decade Of Custom, Made To Order Products – Me and DIY go way back. Through running Big Scary Monsters Records, a label born, bred and sustained through ‘do-it-yourself’ ethics and ideas, I’ve taught myself the ropes and learnt lessons the hard way over the past 7 or 8 years.
Tags: DIY music labels musicindustry business
Rory Henderson (American Steel) – American Steel are in full on support mode for their most recent Fat Wreck Chords release, Dear Friends and Gentle Hearts. Tonight we bring you an interview between our own John Numbskull and American Steel’s Rory Henderson.
Tags: band music interview
‘Let Them Know – The Story of Youth Brigade and BYO Records’ by Various Artists – The compilation for the LA punk label’s 25th anniversary features some of the best in the genre covering each other’s songs, including one of Pennywise’s last recordings with their original lineup. (Full album stream here!)
Tags: music stream
Apologies, I Have None – A stream of the excellent London punk duo’s latest EP.
Tags: band music
Black Wine on MySpace Music – Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Videos – 80s-style US alt-rock band feat. ex-Ergs! guitarist.
Tags: band music
Burning Love on MySpace Music – Ex-Cursed! Dirty rock & roll combined with crushing hardcore.
Tags: band music hotdamn!
DIE EMERGENCY [2006-2009] on MySpace Music – Awesome ex-ANOTKTWR punk band.
Tags: band music hotdamn!
Why are we the naked ape? – RIGHT from the start of modern evolutionary science, why humans are hairless has been controversial. “No one supposes,” wrote Charles Darwin in The Descent of Man, “that the nakedness of the skin is any direct advantage to man: his body, therefore, cannot have been divested of hair through natural selection.”
Tags: evolution biology paleontology humanity history research studies theory
Dollhouse, Joss Whedon, and the Strange and Difficult Path of Feminist Dudes: Some Thoughts – Dollhouse is, pretty much specifically and entirely, a show about consent. It’s built around an organization – the titular Dollhouse – which erases volunteers’ personalities and memories and renders them childlike and passive, in order to implant them with new, built-to-order personalities custom made for wealthy clients who wish to order the “perfect” person for a specific job.
Tags: television review criticism analysis identity rape power control society politics josswhedon
Dollhouse, Joss Whedon, and the Strange and Difficult Path of Feminist Dudes: Some Thoughts – Dollhouse is, pretty much specifically and entirely, a show about consent. It’s built around an organization – the titular Dollhouse – which erases volunteers’ personalities and memories and renders them childlike and passive, in order to implant them with new, built-to-order personalities custom made for wealthy clients who wish to order the “perfect” person for a specific job.
Tags: television review criticism analysis identity rape power control society politics josswhedon
Asking the Wrong Questions: Alpha and Omega – Hey, you know what show could really use a bit more online discussion? Dollhouse! “Echo,” the original, unaired pilot for Joss Whedon’s by no means triumphant return to television, and “Epitaph One,” the shelved thirteenth episode of its first season, are now viewable through various and sundry means. Taken together, they paint a very different picture of the show from the one arising from the first season. Not simply because they are both well-written, engaging hours of television–hardly stellar on either count, but certainly head and shoulders above most of the season’s conventionally aired episodes–but because they illustrate how wide the gap is between the show Whedon envisioned and tried to create and the show he was allowed to make.
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Strange Horizons: Two Views: Dollhouse, season one, reviewed by Bernadette Lynn Bosky and Gianduja Kiss – Dual review of season one of Dollhouse from Strange Horizons. Worth a read if you’re interested in the show.
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5 Real Life Soldiers Who Make Rambo Look Like a Pussy – “We all understand that action movies are cheesy escapism. After all, could one commando really take out a whole compound full of bad guys? Actually, yes. It turns out the history books are full of stories of soldiers doing things so badass they’d hesitate to put them into a film for fear of killing the realism. Like these five, for example.” Insane.
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Hark, a vagrant: 213 – Jules Verne <3 Edgar Allan Poe.
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