emblana

Beat that, Rupert Murdoch!

2006-08-18T13:10:00.000-04:00

Television gazillionaire and former Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi proved he was the media mogul with the mostest recently by treating guests at his Sardinian villa to entertainment reminiscent of some of his imperial Roman predecessors: a simulated earthquake and the eruption of a specially constructed faux volcano.
Unfortunately, he failed to warn his neighbours about this in advance, and they called in the fire department.

she is now limiting herself to whoring of the media variety

2006-08-07T20:21:00.000-04:00

As if we needed more evidence that the Apocalypse is nigh, Paris Hilton has decided to become celibate.

"I'm not having sex for a year. ... I'll kiss, but nothing else," says Hilton, who told the magazine [British GQ] she has had sex with only two men during her lifetime.

Some might say that this is an inconsequential news item to seize upon, given the current widespread misery in the world. They'd be right, but take a look at some of the other stories getting reported on at the moment:

europa, europa

2006-07-20T22:42:00.000-04:00

Given how easy it is to fall into a dichotomous trap when thinking about European vs. American social values, I thought it worth noting that a day after el presidente's veto of a bill allowing federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research made even Bill Frist a partisan of rationality for the day, Germany is pushing for a ban on EU funding of embryonic stem-cell research.
But they don't have any snowflake babies.

mary-kate and ashley should probably get a PAC going

2006-07-08T21:08:00.000-04:00

We may have elected a father and a son to our highest office twice in our country's history, but Poland has brought nepotism to a whole new level, with (rightist, homophobic) identical twins now serving as the country's President and Prime Minister. Also, in a nod to our 40th president, they used to be actors.

Jenna and Barbara 2020?

a cross to bear

2006-07-05T20:28:00.000-04:00

Lady Liberty has some image problems to contend with in today's America. For one thing she's French. And "give me your tired, your poor" is sooo nineteenth century; the United States of 2006 prefers that the huddled masses remain on the teeming (foreign) shores. Not only that, as a toga-clad female allegorical figure, she is just a shade to close to promoting paganism (or, as Pastor Williams would have it, "expressions of New Age, Wicca, secularism and humanism").

Lest Bartholdi's colossus be doomed to irrelevance in our current renaissance of jingoism and and Christo-fascism, the Times reports that the tellingly named World Overcomers Outreach Ministries Church has given the Statue of Liberty a makeover. The church has erected its own Statue of Liberation Through Christ in Memphis, Tennessee, triumphantly raising a giant cross and the Ten Commandments. Reaction to the statue has been mixed, with some Memphis residents feeling that the Christianization of this patriotic symbol is inappropriate. At least one local, however, countered, "I can't see anything wrong with it. This is the Bible Belt." Isn't Bible Belt supposed to be a depreciative term?

Going to Graceland

2006-06-27T21:10:00.000-04:00

In part because of concerns over his upcoming infamous annual visit to a shrine that holds the remains of Japanese war criminals, Junichiro Koizumi's final trip to the U.S. as Japan's PM will not include official events like an address to Congress. Instead, this Friday, he and W are going to hop into Air Force One to visit...Graceland.
Koizumi's deep appreciation for the King is well known; indeed, it led to him make the curious political decision to lend his name to an Elvis Presley Greatest Hits compilation in 2001. (He seems to favor the plaintive love songs of the later, rhinestone-bedecked Elvis.)
This should be a pleasant and diverting photo op for both lame ducks, but it is a bit surreal that they would carry out an extracurricular event like this when, among other things, we are in the thick of the North Korea long-range missile test crisis and the IDF seems to be in the process of invading Gaza. Or perhaps we should just take solace in the fact that these sorts of things don't really require their involvement.
God, I'd love to know what W's nickname for Junichiro is.

In Europe, the monsters prevail

2006-05-20T18:56:00.000-04:00

If you really want to understand the dynamics of Europe today, you could do a lot worse than to watch the Eurovision song contest.
The really interesting thing isn't that the majority of nations favor derivative, becostumed hard rock (everyone except the first-time-in-Eurovision Armenians, in my admittedly drunken and distracted tally, voted for the Finnish goblin band Lordi), but the way that intra-European dynamics play out (not to mention the fact that this is a Europe that includes Armenia, Turkey, and Israel). The accuracy with which a European audience predicts, for example that Germay's top vote (Germany, incidentally, fielded a country-western combo complete with bolo ties and banjo) will be Turkey (due to it immigrant population), or that Finland, even if it hadn't actually been awesome, shares both the Scandinavian and Baltic votes, could teach the average American a lot about the fallacy of Europe as a hegemonic entity. The ways in which blatantly American musical forms (not only the Germans, but also the Danes, employed country, and nations as divergent as Moldavia and the U.K. explored rap) were mined was also worth a seminar paper, as, I think, was the fact that almost every single country's voting representatives spoke English (truly, the only exceptions I noticed were France and Andorra). All in all, one got the impression that there was a globalization taking place that was both inspired by the United States and yet made the United States completely irrelevant. It was really quite thought provoking. As well as cheesy and absurdly fun.

it really is big

2006-05-12T13:01:00.000-04:00

This Flatbush Avenue view of the newest incarnation of the Atlantic Yards Project gives a good sense of how it will recontextualize the areas closer to Grand Army Plaza. If it's accurate, then it looks like the new buildings won't be significantly blocking the horizon this far up Flatbush, but they will definitely become the major skyline feature. We'll forget what the Williamsburgh Bank building looks like.

via Gowanus Lounge

accepting the obvious, and leaving it at that

2006-05-03T19:24:00.000-04:00

heartening news: the Bush administration has accepted the results of a study concluding that there is "clear evidence of human influences on the climate system."

disheartening news: in spite of acknowledging that we are rapidly making the earth uninhabitable, "the administration's policy remained focused on studying the remaining questions and using voluntary means to slow the growth in emissions of heat-trapping gases like carbon dioxide."

And based on the sad, sad national climate science website (which looks like it hasn't been updated since 1998), no one's making this a priority any time soon.
[Compare the UK's analogous climate change page for a sense of the degree to which we lag behind, both environmentally and aesthetically.]

but which target?

2006-04-28T18:18:00.000-04:00

The boys at the Pentagon are semi-openly moving forward with plans for airstrikes on (Iran's or North Korea's) hidden weapons installations with a test of the bunker-busting potential of massive amounts of conventional explosives, and at least one of their spokesmen can barely contain his glee at the hope we'll be moving back to the hard stuff soon:

"It’s the first time in Nevada that you’ll see a mushroom cloud over Las Vegas since we stopped testing nuclear weapons," James Tegnelia, director of the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency, told a small group of reporters.

I'm thinking it's specifically Iran's bunkers they have in their sights, as they have code-named the test "Divine Strake". Divine. As in "our God is better than your God". (A strake is part of an airplane [or a boat, but I'm guessing they have the former in mind]). What's with the DoD and naming? "Weapons Test 2006-01" was already taken? I guess we can thank Rumsfeld for all the poetics.

just because you think of a pun doesn't mean you should use it

2006-04-21T21:09:00.000-04:00

Especially when said pun is a) vomit-inducingly offensive without actually being funny; and b) in no way describes the actual non-event which took place yesterday, which was distinguished by such important diplomatic progress as a White House official mistakenly referring to China as the Republic of China, which is the formal name of its archrival, Taiwan, and of which Our Fearless Leader himself acknowledged that the two men 'do not agree on everything' but said, 'We're able to discuss our disagreements in a spirit of friendship and cooperation.'

But credit where credit is due: Best. Picture. Ever.

the company we keep

2006-04-19T22:56:00.000-04:00

Given the sense of moral superiority that permeates American foreign policy thinking, it is always interesting to see where we find ourselves statistically. Like #4 on the list of countries performing the most executions, after China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, in that order. (Granted, China is ahead of everyone else by at least a power of ten, but the U.S. is more or less neck and neck with the others.)

trial and error

2006-04-13T13:58:00.000-04:00

Zacarias Moussaoui is not a person who inspires a great deal of sympathy. Nonetheless, I'm finding myself disgusted by the proceedings surrounding his trial, and particularly the prosecution's push for a death sentence. Moussaoui is certainly guilty of being a terrorist, but can we really execute someone for a crime if he was already in custody when it took place? Even more than most capital cases, this one is obviously about vengeance rather than justice. How far do we allow the 'but-the-usual-rules-don't-apply-because-this-is-about-9-11' logic to take us'? [Pretty far, clearly.]

Most disturbing is the way in which two parallel impulses are combined here: 9-11 revenge fantasy and 9-11 voyeurism. The papers today, in the wake of the Flight 93 tapes being played yesterday, were grotesque. The glee of the media at finally being able to report more details of (and make more money from) 'the final minutes' was palpable. Intoxicated with the new macabre details, the New York Times even managed to work in a pop-culture angle: 'The release of the transcript comes as Universal Studios is about to release a film about the event called "United 93".... The transcript may provide another template against which to measure the film's accuracy.'

The defense offered by Moussaoui's legal team--don't execute him because it's actually what he wants--is undoubtedly accurate. The execution will play abroad as one more example of American brutality and selectively applied notions of justice, creating a martyr or a victim out of a very bad man by treating him like a living effigy.

by any other name

2006-03-17T12:57:00.000-05:00

You would think that a country which has guidelines and software to help it choose names for military operations would be able to come up with something better than Operation Swarmer (especially since they've already used it once before).

Do we really want people to think about vermin infestation when they think about U.S. foreign policy? (If they don't already.)

But what can you do with a computer that doesn't run Powerpoint?

2006-03-16T22:13:00.001-05:00

Bill Gates showed the limits of his philanthropic inclination (and revealed his anxiety about Microsoft's future) with his criticism of the MIT "One Laptop per Child" project, which aims to provide schoolchildren in impoverished countries with their own computers, which will be sturdy, small, energy-efficient (capable of running off of a crank-powered battery if necessary) and operate entirely online (wirelessly), using open-source software. It is a visionary and exciting concept, especially given the cynicism and defeatism that seem to permeate most development projects.

"Geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type," Gates said.

Yeah, we should really wait to give these children computers until their countries have enough infrastructure to support energy-gobbling widescreen machines with advanced graphics cards. Oh wait...that was the whole point of the project, wasn't it?

Open-source software and web-based applications, if combined with universally available and affordable wi-fi, offer an unprecedented chance for improving the imbalance of cultural resources, both internationally and locally. The kicker is, this would disadvantage a lot of people who profit from the status quo. Then again, that's only a kicker if you happen to be them.

Special Dispensation

2006-03-16T12:21:00.000-05:00

Example #3,644 for the year of how people in positions of authority have their priorities in perfect order: the local Catholic Diocese has granted a special dispensation to New York Catholics allowing them to abstain from abstaining from meat on Fridays during Lent this week because of St. Patrick's Day. We can't have female priests, and my mother can't receive communion because she didn't get an anullment, but don't worry about honoring the event upon which the entire religion is based--people need their beef, after all.

Anyway, I guess it means there will be one day of Lent this year that I am actually a practicing Catholic.

via Gothamist

the term is freedom of expression

2006-03-08T19:51:00.000-05:00

Something worth looking at (though please see caveat below) is IranCartoon.com, "the first information center of Iranian cartoonists on the web". The site is busy and not transparently organized, but to see portfolios of various Iranian cartoonists, click on "Iran cartoonists" and then on the links. There are a prodigious number of Iranian cartoonists, apparently. Not everything is political, a lot of it is just funny, and a lot of it is probably more funny if you have an Iranian sense of humor. There are political cartoons from around the world, in addition to Iran. We are generally only exposed to foreign media views (if at all) on topics that involve our own country, so it is rather enlightening to see, for example, a Brazilian perspective on the Danish cartoon row.

Speaking of which, before clicking the above link, please be forewarned that this site is currently participating in the infamous Holocaust cartoon contest. If you are able to keep a critical distance, there is much to glean here about the way in which this crisis of misunderstanding and disrespect is viewed from a non-Western perspective. Many of the treatments are rather subtle, though there is plenty of anti-Semitism as well. One superficial thing that surprised me was that the stereotypical Jew in many of these representations is a Hasidic man with a hat, beard, and payos.

Another thing that struck me was a somewhat enigmatic statement on the site expressing the expectation that the Holocaust cartoons would bring down the wrath of the United States.

Regarding to clarification of the issue of "Holocaust" this website possibly will be closed by United States, in this case please refer to the following addresses

Even when a conflict isn't about America, it's about America. I think this statement probably has as much to do with self-conscious bravado as anything else, but it is nonetheless very revealing: of the degree to which vaunted U.S. freedom of speech is regarded as mere posturing; of the degree to which the U.S. is thought to have all-powerful tentacles which know all and interfere with all.

Spring comes to Prospect Park

2006-03-05T17:31:00.000-05:00

And a digital camera comes into our possession. Twenty-first century here we come.

A Voice from Gitmo

2006-03-03T13:55:00.000-05:00

The BBC has an interview with a detainee who is currently being held in Guantanamo and participated in the recent hunger strike, in which he discusses torture and force-feeding. It is appalling, of course, but very interesting in that we rarely hear the voices of these prisoners themselves, so the discussion about torture and unlawful detention tends to take place on an abstract level, rather than being personalized. I can only begin to imagine the treatment he'll receive from his guards after having spoken out on the record. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if we hear more about this article, since the interview took place via the man, Fawzi al-Odah's, lawyer. I think the detainees are supposed to be kept from communicating with the outside world; presumably this would be not unlike the Lynne Stewart case, with potential legal implications.

There are many horrifying details, like:

"If anything bad happens to the United States anywhere in the world, they immediately react to us and treat us badly, like animals," he said.

But one of the details I found most disturbing was the following euphemistic statement by a U.S. spokesperson:

Speaking to the BBC, US state department official Colleen Graffey said all detainees were afforded regular status reviews and offered the opportunity to renounce violence

"Offered the opportunity to renounce violence"---that sounds like something the crazy evil German/Russian/Chinese torture doctor in a James Bond movie would say while fingering his collection of scalpels.

Anyway, I find it interesting that while there is pretty much a constant dull hum of anti-Guantanamo sentiment in the more left-leaning U.S. media outlets, it really seems to be much more of an established cause for mainstream outrage in the U.K. (the Guardian, for example has an entire online special feature devoted to it). Maybe that's just because it isn't their government doing it?

Look before you leap

2006-03-01T17:41:00.000-05:00

A cautionary tale from the Times of London, 25 Dec. 1823, pg. 3:

On Saturday an attempt was made by a man...to commit suicide, which was frustrated in a most singular manner. In a fit of despair he threw himself over the gable window of his house, but there being a very small space between his own gable and that of a neighbour, he descended only a short way, when he stuck fast, and remained for some time in a deplorable situation before he could be extricated. The attempt, however, did not wholly fail, for he succeeded in breaking one of his arms, and desperately lacerating other parts of his person.

The misfortune of others: still funny after 183 years.

magenta states, mauve states, violet states

2006-03-01T12:42:00.000-05:00

This week's New Yorker has a great article by Hendrik Hertzberg on a new effort afoot to overthrow the electoral college. Not via an amendment to the Consititution, which is never going to happen, but on the state level. States are free in the current system to determine the specific process by which they allocate their electoral votes, so in theory, if enough states were to pass laws allocating their votes to the winner of the national popular vote (enough to constitute a majority), the electoral college would no longer have a practical meaning. And not all states would have to pass such laws (obviously, swing states like Ohio and New Hampshire, which receive outsized attention and power under the current system are unlikely to do so). Apparently a bill to make this change has already been introduced in Illinois. Add New York and California, and we'd be well on our way.

It is difficult to overestimate the effect this would have, not necessarily on the outcome of elections, but on the political discourse surrounding them. Issues like abortion and gay marriage, which can be exploited to influence turnout in limited local areas through the use of inflammatory rhetoric, would be less useful tools. Turnout in solidly blue or red states would increase, not only because votes in these states would actually matter again, but because issues relevant to these states would actually become relevant to getting elected. And the Democratic Party might actually start to stand for something again if it wasn't so busy calibrating its message to appeal to 10,000 swing voters in a given district of Ohio.

As for those who fear this would take away vital representation from smaller states: they still have the Senate.

Lagging behind Rwanda. And Afghanistan. And Iraq.

2006-02-27T20:22:00.000-05:00

A newly released survey by the Inter-Parliamentary Union shows the percentage of women in the legislative assemblies of 187 different countries. Unsurprisingly, the United States is not in the top 50 (with about 15% of House and Senate members female, the U.S. is number 69 on the list, between Cape Verde and Angola). Equally unsurpisingly, the Nordic countries are in the top five (though long-time leader Sweden has been unseated recently by Rwanda). But what struck me were the countries in 23rd and 26th place, with 27.3 and 25.5% female MPs, respectively: Afghanistan and Iraq.

Yes, the countries the U.S. forcibly imposed democracy upon have greater legislative gender parity than the United States itself.

Of course, there is a good reason for this: Iraq and Afghanistan have measures in their constitutions mandating that 25% of MPs be female. I don't think that quotas are appropriate for the U.S., but it is shameful that a nation engaged in exporting democracy abroad makes such a poor showing of equal representation at home. This applies doubly to the representation of minorities, as illustrated by the fact that Barack Obama is currently the sole African-American in the Senate.

One fears that in the prevailing environment of complacency, these numbers will not change significantly in the near future. Indeed, the U.S. political system, with its emphasis on individual candidates, is particularly ill-suited to expansion of women and minority representation, in contrast to systems in which each political party puts forward a slate of candidates. It's a classic catch-22: until practical changes like affordable and available childcare, and conceptual changes like acceptance of women in leadership positions take place, we are unlikely to see significant improvements in the gender parity of our elected representatives; but none of those changes are likely to happen as long as our political system is underrepresentative of women.