Jon Stewart took Mike Huckabee to task on gay marriage last night on the Daily Show. Huckabee was interviewed for a solid 14 minutes--my guess is Huckabee stipulated a certain amount of time in order to come on the show, and Stewart in return spent almost half of the interview punching holes in Huckabee's religious rhetoric. When Stewart brings up the fact that marriage used be defined as between two people of the same race, making a platform on "traditional" (i.e., non-evolving) marriage, bunk, Huckabee makes the argument that it's not the same thing because black people don't "choose" to be black. AWESOMENESS.
Clip embedded below. If you're reading this post on facebook, click the link to watch the clip.
Huckabee on the Daily Show
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Monday, December 8, 2008
This Ain't Yur Gramma's Lamp
weburbanist.com featured an article today on 20 new ideas in lighting design. it's pretty neat, ranging from lamps designed to look like torn wallpaper with a soft glow of light pouring from the tear, to a rather morbid neon hanging noose lamp. The lighting pictured is of fields of acrylic tubes filled with optical fibers...sure beats strings of icicle lights...
more websites to check religiously
So I've been a religious fan of passiveaggressivenotes.com for quite a while now. I've been the recipient of many a passive aggressive note in my lifetime, so reading them when they're not directed at me is extremely enjoyable. I was reading the WTF? page of the site, and lo and behold, there were some recommended sites that turned out to be AWESOME:
apostrophe abuse AND the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks
if you enjoy PAN at all you will like these--they sho' tickled me!
I picked some various posts from both blogs this week...
apostrophe abuse AND the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks
if you enjoy PAN at all you will like these--they sho' tickled me!
I picked some various posts from both blogs this week...
Saturday, December 6, 2008
The Real Bill Ayers
William Ayers steps out into the New York Times.
The Real Bill Ayers
by William Ayers
published 12.05.08
IN the recently concluded presidential race, I was unwillingly thrust upon the stage and asked to play a role in a profoundly dishonest drama. I refused, and here’s why.
Unable to challenge the content of Barack Obama’s campaign, his opponents invented a narrative about a young politician who emerged from nowhere, a man of charm, intelligence and skill, but with an exotic background and a strange name. The refrain was a question: “What do we really know about this man?”
Secondary characters in the narrative included an African-American preacher with a fiery style, a Palestinian scholar and an “unrepentant domestic terrorist.” Linking the candidate with these supposedly shadowy characters, and ferreting out every imagined secret tie and dark affiliation, became big news.
I was cast in the “unrepentant terrorist” role; I felt at times like the enemy projected onto a large screen in the “Two Minutes Hate” scene from George Orwell’s “1984,” when the faithful gathered in a frenzy of fear and loathing.
With the mainstream news media and the blogosphere caught in the pre-election excitement, I saw no viable path to a rational discussion. Rather than step clumsily into the sound-bite culture, I turned away whenever the microphones were thrust into my face. I sat it out.
Now that the election is over, I want to say as plainly as I can that the character invented to serve this drama wasn’t me, not even close. Here are the facts:
I never killed or injured anyone. I did join the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s, and later resisted the draft and was arrested in nonviolent demonstrations. I became a full-time antiwar organizer for Students for a Democratic Society. In 1970, I co-founded the Weather Underground, an organization that was created after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village. The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices — the ones at the Pentagon and the United States Capitol were the most notorious — as an illegal and unpopular war consumed the nation.
The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be — and still is being — debated. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war.
Peaceful protests had failed to stop the war. So we issued a screaming response. But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends.
I cannot imagine engaging in actions of that kind today. And for the past 40 years, I’ve been teaching and writing about the unique value and potential of every human life, and the need to realize that potential through education.
I have regrets, of course — including mistakes of excess and failures of imagination, posturing and posing, inflated and heated rhetoric, blind sectarianism and a lot else. No one can reach my age with their eyes even partly open and not have hundreds of regrets. The responsibility for the risks we posed to others in some of our most extreme actions in those underground years never leaves my thoughts for long.
The antiwar movement in all its commitment, all its sacrifice and determination, could not stop the violence unleashed against Vietnam. And therein lies cause for real regret.
We — the broad “we” — wrote letters, marched, talked to young men at induction centers, surrounded the Pentagon and lay down in front of troop trains. Yet we were inadequate to end the killing of three million Vietnamese and almost 60,000 Americans during a 10-year war.
The dishonesty of the narrative about Mr. Obama during the campaign went a step further with its assumption that if you can place two people in the same room at the same time, or if you can show that they held a conversation, shared a cup of coffee, took the bus downtown together or had any of a thousand other associations, then you have demonstrated that they share ideas, policies, outlook, influences and, especially, responsibility for each other’s behavior. There is a long and sad history of guilt by association in our political culture, and at crucial times we’ve been unable to rise above it.
President-elect Obama and I sat on a board together; we lived in the same diverse and yet close-knit community; we sometimes passed in the bookstore. We didn’t pal around, and I had nothing to do with his positions. I knew him as well as thousands of others did, and like millions of others, I wish I knew him better.
Demonization, guilt by association, and the politics of fear did not triumph, not this time. Let’s hope they never will again. And let’s hope we might now assert that in our wildly diverse society, talking and listening to the widest range of people is not a sin, but a virtue.
William Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is the author of “Fugitive Days” and a co-author of the forthcoming “Race Course.”
The Real Bill Ayers
by William Ayers
published 12.05.08
IN the recently concluded presidential race, I was unwillingly thrust upon the stage and asked to play a role in a profoundly dishonest drama. I refused, and here’s why.
Unable to challenge the content of Barack Obama’s campaign, his opponents invented a narrative about a young politician who emerged from nowhere, a man of charm, intelligence and skill, but with an exotic background and a strange name. The refrain was a question: “What do we really know about this man?”
Secondary characters in the narrative included an African-American preacher with a fiery style, a Palestinian scholar and an “unrepentant domestic terrorist.” Linking the candidate with these supposedly shadowy characters, and ferreting out every imagined secret tie and dark affiliation, became big news.
I was cast in the “unrepentant terrorist” role; I felt at times like the enemy projected onto a large screen in the “Two Minutes Hate” scene from George Orwell’s “1984,” when the faithful gathered in a frenzy of fear and loathing.
With the mainstream news media and the blogosphere caught in the pre-election excitement, I saw no viable path to a rational discussion. Rather than step clumsily into the sound-bite culture, I turned away whenever the microphones were thrust into my face. I sat it out.
Now that the election is over, I want to say as plainly as I can that the character invented to serve this drama wasn’t me, not even close. Here are the facts:
I never killed or injured anyone. I did join the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s, and later resisted the draft and was arrested in nonviolent demonstrations. I became a full-time antiwar organizer for Students for a Democratic Society. In 1970, I co-founded the Weather Underground, an organization that was created after an accidental explosion that claimed the lives of three of our comrades in Greenwich Village. The Weather Underground went on to take responsibility for placing several small bombs in empty offices — the ones at the Pentagon and the United States Capitol were the most notorious — as an illegal and unpopular war consumed the nation.
The Weather Underground crossed lines of legality, of propriety and perhaps even of common sense. Our effectiveness can be — and still is being — debated. We did carry out symbolic acts of extreme vandalism directed at monuments to war and racism, and the attacks on property, never on people, were meant to respect human life and convey outrage and determination to end the Vietnam war.
Peaceful protests had failed to stop the war. So we issued a screaming response. But it was not terrorism; we were not engaged in a campaign to kill and injure people indiscriminately, spreading fear and suffering for political ends.
I cannot imagine engaging in actions of that kind today. And for the past 40 years, I’ve been teaching and writing about the unique value and potential of every human life, and the need to realize that potential through education.
I have regrets, of course — including mistakes of excess and failures of imagination, posturing and posing, inflated and heated rhetoric, blind sectarianism and a lot else. No one can reach my age with their eyes even partly open and not have hundreds of regrets. The responsibility for the risks we posed to others in some of our most extreme actions in those underground years never leaves my thoughts for long.
The antiwar movement in all its commitment, all its sacrifice and determination, could not stop the violence unleashed against Vietnam. And therein lies cause for real regret.
We — the broad “we” — wrote letters, marched, talked to young men at induction centers, surrounded the Pentagon and lay down in front of troop trains. Yet we were inadequate to end the killing of three million Vietnamese and almost 60,000 Americans during a 10-year war.
The dishonesty of the narrative about Mr. Obama during the campaign went a step further with its assumption that if you can place two people in the same room at the same time, or if you can show that they held a conversation, shared a cup of coffee, took the bus downtown together or had any of a thousand other associations, then you have demonstrated that they share ideas, policies, outlook, influences and, especially, responsibility for each other’s behavior. There is a long and sad history of guilt by association in our political culture, and at crucial times we’ve been unable to rise above it.
President-elect Obama and I sat on a board together; we lived in the same diverse and yet close-knit community; we sometimes passed in the bookstore. We didn’t pal around, and I had nothing to do with his positions. I knew him as well as thousands of others did, and like millions of others, I wish I knew him better.
Demonization, guilt by association, and the politics of fear did not triumph, not this time. Let’s hope they never will again. And let’s hope we might now assert that in our wildly diverse society, talking and listening to the widest range of people is not a sin, but a virtue.
William Ayers, a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, is the author of “Fugitive Days” and a co-author of the forthcoming “Race Course.”
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Prop 8: The Musical!
a star studded cast sums up the evils of prop 8 via song and dance.
although, as funny as this it, didn't it come about 6 weeks too late?
See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die
although, as funny as this it, didn't it come about 6 weeks too late?
BANKSY
So i'm super late to the Banksy party.
Banksy is apparently one of the most subversive and articulate artists of our time. His medium of choice is stencil graffiti on walls and buildings in major cities around the world. His aesthetic is the clean lines and detail of stencil art, and his tone is satirical, political, and sometimes anarchistic.
A friend of mine showed me his book "Wall and Piece", which showcases Banksy's art, around last Thanksgiving and I immediately loved it. But, I apparently forgot about him until my favorite "urban explorer" photog Xavier Nuez wrote a blurb about him and stencil artist Roadsworth on his blog last week.
Banksy is now famous around the world. He has pulled off such stunts as adding his own work to the British Museum of Art (it took something like a week for it to be noticed by museum staff, and it was eventually added to the permanent collection), replacing 500 of Paris Hilton's CDs with original (and rather biting) cover art and jacket, and stenciling a number of rather profound works on the wall that divides Israel from Palestine. His work is a social commentary, one that is most poignant given it's context. There is a great article from last year on weburbanist.
I've also embedded a bbc video about the elusive Banksy. It's about 8 minutes long but pretty fascinating. It showcases some of his most famous works.
Banksy is apparently one of the most subversive and articulate artists of our time. His medium of choice is stencil graffiti on walls and buildings in major cities around the world. His aesthetic is the clean lines and detail of stencil art, and his tone is satirical, political, and sometimes anarchistic.
A friend of mine showed me his book "Wall and Piece", which showcases Banksy's art, around last Thanksgiving and I immediately loved it. But, I apparently forgot about him until my favorite "urban explorer" photog Xavier Nuez wrote a blurb about him and stencil artist Roadsworth on his blog last week.
Banksy is now famous around the world. He has pulled off such stunts as adding his own work to the British Museum of Art (it took something like a week for it to be noticed by museum staff, and it was eventually added to the permanent collection), replacing 500 of Paris Hilton's CDs with original (and rather biting) cover art and jacket, and stenciling a number of rather profound works on the wall that divides Israel from Palestine. His work is a social commentary, one that is most poignant given it's context. There is a great article from last year on weburbanist.
I've also embedded a bbc video about the elusive Banksy. It's about 8 minutes long but pretty fascinating. It showcases some of his most famous works.
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Lolcat Tuesday!
oldest lolcat ever! found in an antique shop, dates back to 1905. the caption says "what's delaying my dinner?"
Monday, December 1, 2008
Obama Cabinet Run-down.
Secretary of State: NY Senator Hillary Clinton
A small town girl.
Srsly tho, I am stoked about that one. Shh to the h8ers.
Defense Secretary: Robert Gates(a continuation from the Bush admin)
Gates is one of the few to handle the same post in two prez admins. He was def a huge step up from Donald Rumsfeld. He was high up in the CIA during the Iran-Contra scandal, but his involvement/awareness was never proven.
Nat’l Security Adviser: retired Marine Gen. Jim Jones (also a continuation)
Besides having a great name, Jim Jones is also extremely photogenic! Jones is generally reported to be a bipartisan figure who is down with both Robert Gates and H. Clinton.
Secretary of Homeland Security: AZ Gov. Janet Napolitano
Border state gov. gets to deal with immigration and border security on a nat’l level. Makes sense. I do not envy her new job. GL janet.
Attorney General: Eric Holder
Has been opposed to the bush admin’s enforcement of the patriot act and nsa surveilance, and is in favor of closing down gitmo. I’m a big fan.
If confirmed, will be the first AfAm Attorney General. Obama totes just picked him cuz he’s black. jk. /he does kind of look like Steadman, right?
United Nations ambassador: Susan Rice
Stanford, Rhodes Scholar, blah blah blah. Don’t know that much about her except for those allegations a couple years ago that it was totes her fault that we didn’t catch Bin Laden when he was in Sudan pre-9/11. if you want to read all that gossip hit up wikipedia, I’m tiyurd.
A small town girl.
Srsly tho, I am stoked about that one. Shh to the h8ers.
Defense Secretary: Robert Gates(a continuation from the Bush admin)
Gates is one of the few to handle the same post in two prez admins. He was def a huge step up from Donald Rumsfeld. He was high up in the CIA during the Iran-Contra scandal, but his involvement/awareness was never proven.
Nat’l Security Adviser: retired Marine Gen. Jim Jones (also a continuation)
Besides having a great name, Jim Jones is also extremely photogenic! Jones is generally reported to be a bipartisan figure who is down with both Robert Gates and H. Clinton.
Secretary of Homeland Security: AZ Gov. Janet Napolitano
Border state gov. gets to deal with immigration and border security on a nat’l level. Makes sense. I do not envy her new job. GL janet.
Attorney General: Eric Holder
Has been opposed to the bush admin’s enforcement of the patriot act and nsa surveilance, and is in favor of closing down gitmo. I’m a big fan.
If confirmed, will be the first AfAm Attorney General. Obama totes just picked him cuz he’s black. jk. /he does kind of look like Steadman, right?
United Nations ambassador: Susan Rice
Stanford, Rhodes Scholar, blah blah blah. Don’t know that much about her except for those allegations a couple years ago that it was totes her fault that we didn’t catch Bin Laden when he was in Sudan pre-9/11. if you want to read all that gossip hit up wikipedia, I’m tiyurd.
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