Posted 11/9/2002 10:50:01 PM

Posted 11/9/2002 08:23:04 PM
swirly and flushy.
two new goldfish friends of ayesha.
we'll see how long they can weather our home.

Posted 11/9/2002 08:20:56 PM

US tanks ready to roll on Baghdad

PRESIDENT Bush continues to tell the world that he has not made up his mind about attacking Iraq. But in the Kuwaiti desert, the US Army is busy preparing for war.

At their huge military base on the outskirts of Kuwait City, hundreds of American army tanks are being prepared to roll northwards towards Baghdad. As US military hardware piles up at Camp Doha, the locals have given it a suitably gung-ho nickname - "Camp F*** Iraq"....

"Either the Kuwaitis are very optimistic about a speedy and peaceful resolution to the crisis, or the US military want to have their main supply route into Iraq in tip-top condition," was the wry comment of one western diplomat.

Posted 11/9/2002 08:19:37 PM

Pentagon Plans a Computer System That Would Peek at Personal Data of Americans

As the director of the effort, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, has described the system in Pentagon documents and in speeches, it will provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant.

Historically, military and intelligence agencies have not been permitted to spy on Americans without extraordinary legal authorization....

note to self: the choice is never between security and liberty. when a choice is framed as such someone wants to rule over you in a way the constitution does not allow, but which you can decide to give by a lack of vigilance. liberty seems not the concern of the mass of fearful consumers happily supporting the big government solutions to a problem the big government themselves had hand in creating. what should be done?

Posted 11/9/2002 03:50:54 PM

four cultural spaces that should be held as sacred:
primary education
political bodies
narrating the news
following religion

four practices that should not be defined in terms of driving organizational revenue:
educating
holding political office
engaging in news media
giving religious direction

to hold as sacred, in our time,
is to preclude free market powers from dominating in the space deemed sacred.

to hold in trust, in our time,
is to advocate the honor of service in the practices of that deemed sacred.

are there other ways? yes, of course. we can commodify and advertise and up sell and upgrade and new-and-improve and in doing so obliterate the very thing we seek to advocate. the postures of our civil engagement dictate, to an extent not often considered, the honor and sustainability of these bulwarks of our society.

Posted 11/8/2002 11:23:55 PM

Giscard Declares Turkey Too 'Different' to Join EU

too big, too poor, and too Muslim

Posted 11/8/2002 09:32:46 PM

look, if you had one shot, one opportunity
to seize everything you ever wanted
one moment
would you capture it or just let it slip?

you better lose yourself in the music, the moment
you own it, you better never let it go...

opening day. saw the flick. off the cuff assessment:

the script for 8 Mile did not build very well. the rapping climax was well done. the make-your-own-break message was good. otherwise the film seemed a political ad for a less than noble Marshall Mathers making some peace with the world to gain market share than a compelling story about Rabbit and his pose finding their way in the 313.

i like the new song (lose yourself), from the soundtrack, that is all over the radio. nice to hear something proactive from Eminem. upon exiting the film i asked my Muslim friend, Al-Haqq, who i saw the film with, if it was haram to go to a movie with Em in it during Ramadan. he said something about going to get a steak... oh, there goes gravity.

Posted 11/8/2002 04:11:18 PM

Posted 11/7/2002 10:26:38 AM
Wired News: Monorail on City's One-Track Mind

seattle gets a new monorail. cool.

in dallas (my current quasi-home) we have a pretty significant rail project underway that i am really rather impressed with. especially given that austin, supposedly the most environmentally friendly and socially aware city in texas, recently voted a rail system down.

Posted 11/7/2002 08:16:12 AM

Clear all your sins
Get born again
Just repeat a couple lines
aic

the pacific northwest has the lowest percentage of people in the USoA who claim any particular religion (or, conversely, the highest that claim an independent spirituality). in the early 1990's a band emerged out of the Seattle area (btw, in the early 1970's Dan Hughes emerged from his mother in the Seattle area... i want to see if this shows up on the Dan Hughes googlism, sorry, Dan Hughes is amused in odd ways) called Alice in Chains. they were, arguably, the coolest live show in Singles and have already become some of the nugrandfather's of rock. anyway, in the song, Get Born Again, that went unreleased until the 1999 Nothing Safe best of/live compilation (which had the amazing photos of an adult human "fetus" in a test tube of sorts) they sing the lyric quoted above.

Layne Staley, who, with Jerry Cantrell, wrote these lyrics was both a disturbed and a joyful artist. he was fully a person of his time. the heroine that became his fatal demon is no mitigation of this. Layne lived the rock god life, but like his geographical grunge (i realize how uncool that word is--just deal with it) compatriot Kurt Cobain, it was not enough. Kurt dabbled in spirituality and caught the heroine bug in his efforts to sort life out. Layne seemed to do the same. the imagry in some of Layne's lyrics and the photos that were taken of him over time (the nearly iconic images of him in a baptismal stance eyes raised to heaven and the similar mic in hand, madonna-{the original}-like gaze up, oh, and the Joshue-Tree-like head down clingling to the mic stand with the cross around his neck dangling in the stage light and manufactured fog...) imply that he too sought some kind of spiritual solace, and it is well known that, though unofficial, his death earlier this year was, like Kurt, heroine related (thought perhaps not depression induced unlike Kurt who intentionally took his life). wow. way too many ( ... ) in this little steam of consciousness... what is the point? i don't know. i am rambling. basically, neither of these artistic, spiritually open guys wanted anything to do with the established church.

Layne and Jerry, in writing Get Born Again, ironically summed up, in a mere three lines--twelve words--the current irrelevance of the modern expression of church.

clear all your sin
it is all about guilt and fear--getting people into heaven lifeboats

get born again
it uses empty, religiously symbolic, unexplained language that literally is nonsensical

just repeat a couple lines
it is a gospel of the naive; a mechanistic collection of truisms; a smotheringly didactic, rote religious positivism

ok, now down to words and their meanings: being born again, being saved, following Jesus, announcing the kingdom and making disciples are all different things. this is the part that pastors don't really want to get into--it makes closing the sale a longer and more cumbersome process. in fact, it scares them because if they talk about this long enough they begin to think that it might not be about the sale.

anyway, yes, these historical metaphors of the spiritual life for those who call Jesus master, or at least for those who are fans of his work, are very different things.

being born again
- a command/observation/teaching spoken by Jesus to a particular person in Eretz Israel in the late 20's-early 30's AD/CE... that is, if one accepts the single attestation in a very late Johannine work. "born again" appears in only four verses in two logical units of the New Testament. the tradition is found in John 3 and I Peter 1. it is an intriguing phrase to me even though it is not in Q, the Common Sayings Source, Thomas, or the Synoptics.

being saved
- a concept virtually never used by Jesus and when used constructed out of very different ideological raw material when compared with the "get saved" neo-gnostic christian fundamentalisms of our recent past. this phrase is most used as an apocalypic midrash of various paulinisms (we'll to to Paul and his isms eventually) that became the central metaphor in a latin-hellenistic trajectory of Christian development. saved - unsaved

following jesus
- the central mode of existence in the "Jesus movement" pre-execution.

announcing the kingdom
- what Jesus, like his cousin John, did. what Jesus had his people/followers/disciples do. (note to self: these slashed descriptors are somewhat discrete, descriptive, quasi-categories of those who engaged in the announcing. develop this stuff at some point, maybe.)

making disciples
- the central mode of existence in the "Jesus movement" post-execution, pre-destruction of the temple/Jerusalem in 70/135 AD/CE

this is too long. indulge me. this stream of consciousness needs a couple more lines:

i don't know if Layne or Kurt ever encountered someone following Jesus who was unconcerned with saving them. someone who annouced the kingdom with their active living in the way of the one that everybody else simply wanted them to ask into their heart. a disciple is made by postures of mind and body--by an awakening to the altogether different ways of life in the kingdom (my thoughts on being "born again"). this utterly human spiritual encounter might have helped these guys in a way heroine did not (at least in the end--it might be hard to rival the dopamine producing endorphin shower that is the chemical joy known as the heroine high)--helped them make sense of this gift called life that so many of us don't really know what to do with.

sat suffering
i knew him when
fair-weather friends of mine
try not to think
i merely blink
hope to wish away the lies...i...
can you protect
me when i'm wrecked
i pretend you're still alive

(denied all....and tied all the lies)

i choose the day
one deepen grave
thick fog to hide our smiles
clear all your sins
get born again
just repeat a couple lines

amen.

Posted 11/7/2002 12:20:42 AM

fascinating. not sure about the "ownership is theft" mantra... happy to see creative voices speaking out about commons housing.

The Pope Squat - A Lesson in Perseverance

Politically, the Pope Squat is something new to the activist scene here in Toronto, much more permanent than a protest that marches by and then disappears down the street. Perhaps that is the threat the government sees? The threat of permanence?

more on pope.squat:indymedia
cf:[squat!net]

Posted 11/6/2002 11:50:01 PM
oh yeah, another bio opportunity. my Brandywine Fellow bio (slightly modified for this occation)... this should feed my googlism with some new stuff.

Dan Hughes grew up in a transcultural setting at the nexus of the Diplomatic, Mission and NGO communities in Pakistan. His educational background is in Christian Theology (undergraduate) and Islamic Studies (graduate). Dan has a deep fascination with Indian subcontinent culture and politics. Dan's insatiable interest in finding new ways of speaking and structures of trust that enable cross-border and interideological relationships to be birthed and nurtured have led him to shift vocational gears mid-career to begin speaking and writing more. Dan desperately needs you to call him up and say, "Our organization would like to engage you to (fill in the blank: consult, speak, mediate, infuriate) with/to/between our community with regard to (fill in the blank: organizational transition post-information proliferation, the other kingdom, anything, the way of traditional modern organizations). If you call now Dan will stop writing bios about himself on his blog. And if you are one of the first fifty callers...

Posted 11/6/2002 10:53:31 PM
a response

Posted 11/6/2002 07:18:42 PM
Andy asks from deep within an undisclosed CIS country:
Is it just me or has the United States turned into a rogue nation?

Posted 11/6/2002 07:09:45 PM
wes boyd from Moveon.org reminded me in an email tonight that, less than 20% of the American electorate voted for GOP candidates. Nearly as many voted against, and far more stayed home. There is no mandate.

he is right when you look at the numbers. my concern is that, mandate or no mandate, the concerning thing is the voter (and general) apathy that allows a mandate to be claimed.

toward the end of the email wes says,

In the end, we will win.

We will win by projecting a vision of hope for our country and the world that is too compelling to deny.

i hope that he is right--for America and the world. the only way that this vision will be made a reality is getting off of our collective asses and making change happen. we cannot simply project a vision of hope. we have to bring hope into being.

Posted 11/6/2002 09:32:10 AM

Posted 11/6/2002 09:14:23 AM
such pain
and so little to say
that you feel nearly unfaithful, at the least hopelessly trite,
why does, "rise up and walk," no longer work, father?
is it you or is it us? i'm sure that is the wrong question,
but it is all that i have
at the moment.

honest in our sorrows. what else can we be?

Posted 11/6/2002 08:29:34 AM
in response to the idiocy i keep seeing on warblogs and from self-righteous American pundits i am posting a rather curt response i wrote to someone who sent me a list of ten reasons why a devout Muslim cannot be an American "patriot and loyal citizen."

Perhaps, I should have waited to respond to this until the morning. Reading over my responses it seems that I had a difficult time taking anything this person said seriously. These ideas he espouses are pablum. I would go so far as to say that they approach softcore hate literature. This person is trying to exclude anyone who follows after God in the tradition of Islam from being an American. I cannot believe that educated people still speak in this fashion. Did we not get enough of this in our reactionary fears of “the Commies” or “the Japs” or "the Jews" or “the Catholics?” THIS IS RIDICULOUS. YES, I AM YELLING NOW. Is the new McCarthyism of our time really this rampant??

Can a devout Muslim be an American patriot and loyal citizen?

1.Theologically, no. Because his allegiance is to Allah, the moon god of Arabia.

It is difficult to even take this response seriously. A Muslim cannot be an “American patriot and loyal citizen” because his allegiance is to God? Al-lah means, literally, “The God.” The silly moon god mumbo jumbo that self-righteous Christian apologists try to throw out during debates or in reactionary, ill-informed pieces of religious diatribe that often pass as books by “experts” is something I will not even address. Read ANY real Islamic scholarship on this topic. If some Christian is still adamant about this than they have to address a similar critique that could be posed with regard to the various names and understandings of God in the Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament.

2. Scripturally, no. Because his allegiance is to the five pillars of Islam and the Quran.

And this precludes patriotism and loyal citizenship how exactly? How could anyone be declared a disloyal American scripturally? The very premise is skewed.

3. Geographically, no. Because his allegiance is to Mecca to which he turns in prayer five times a day.

Ditto last comment above--how can a direction of prayer “geographically” preclude loyal citizenship? A very odd line of thinking that is difficult for me to follow with any measure of seriousness.

4. Socially, no. Because his allegiance to Islam demands that he make no friends of Christians and Jews (Q. 5:51)

Ditto above, again—assuming that this gentleman’s exegesis is right how does a choice with regard to association preclude loyal citizenship?

As soon as this person who sent you this can explain his Qur’anic exegesis of this passage I will take issue with him. Actually, no, I will respond in the absence of his exegetical reasoning on the assumption that he has none. This is classic rhetorical proof-texting that might play well to an uninformed audience, but is simply naïve to anyone who has read the Qur’an with even the slightest care for an understanding of the contextual nature of the surahs that discuss communal affiliation. This is like pulling a verse like “women should be silent at church” or “women should not wear jewelry” from the letters of the New Testament and making some generalized assessment that all of Christianity is simply a thinly veiled religious misogyny.

5. Politically, no. Because he must submit to the mullah, who teaches annihilation of Israel and destruction of America, the great Satan.

Oh my God. When do I get to stop responding to this idiocy? Has this guy ever met a Mullah?? This is like saying that all Christian preachers teach snake handling.

6. Domestically, no. Because he is instructed to marry four women and beat and scourge his wife when she disobeys him (Q. 4:34).

Even if this were true it would keep one from being a loyal American? It might be reprehensible, but many an American, even founding Fathers, had concubines and did not spare the rod when it came to domestic upheaval. Domestic abuse is abhorrent, but it does not preclude patriotism (which is his point in all of this, right??).

With regard to his Qur'an proof-texting, like in the case above, his exegesis is simply a misguided, extraction-literalism--an approach easily employed to, without interpretive commitment, make a text say pretty damn well anything you want it to.

7. Religiously, no. Because no other religion is accepted by his Allah except Islam--intolerance (Q. 2:256).

I would ask if the writer of these 10 “reasons” believes that God accepts any other religion other than the one he holds to.

Ditto misguided exegesis comments… “islam” is a generalized religious predisposition that humanity is born with in many of the uses of the word in the Qur’an—as in the ayat cited. There is open acceptance of the Abrahamic faiths as equally valid and salvific in Islam. There is a generalized concern for all religious confessions under the care of the Ummah when the Qur’an says, “There is no compulsion in religion” (Qu'ran 2:256).

8. Intellectually, no. Because he cannot accept the American Constitution since it is established on Biblical principles, and he believes the Bible to be corrupt.

First, even if the Biblical documents have been changed there are principles that remain so where would the disconnect be between one who believes the Bible to be corrupt and yet believes in the generalized ethic of the American constitution, some of which came from a form of Biblical religion? Are there not millions of Americans who believe the Bible to be corrupt and yet openly embrace the constitution????

This naïve claim above is simply not the case in practice. There are countless Muslims who presently live honorably as American patriots having sworn to the constitution publicly—something that very few of us “native born” Americans have done.

9. Philosophically, no. Because Islam, Muhammad, and the Quran do not allow freedom of religion and expression. Democracy and Islam cannot co-exist. Every Muslim government is dictatorial or autocratic except Turkey.

These reasons are so asinine that I find myself unable to take them seriously. Is this truly a set of reasons that someone thinks is reasonable?? Does this not smack of simpleton xenophobia to anyone else??

The statement that democracy and Islam cannot co-exist has got to be one of the most presumptuous and ill-informed statements I have yet read. Who makes such a claim? Democracy is an evolving political system that has looked, and continues to look, very different generation to generation and local context to local context. Iran has, perhaps, the most well established Islamic democracy today. Turkey is a close second in my book.

Many of the corrupt Islamic monarchies and dictatorships (civilian and military) are a direct result of either:

1. a different set of political ground realities that has the country on a path that is different from that of the USA in terms of the pace of democratic adoption and the face that democracy has.


2. the hegemonic power politics of the West post-WWII that carved up the region into slave states that merely transitioned into controllable, corrupt puppet regimes as the decades passed and that even today are supported and often manipulated unconscionably by the West (the US deposing a democratically elected premier in Iran and inserting the Shah—a dictator; the US funding Saddam in his war with Iran providing the very technologies that he used against his own people that we today decry; the US funding the civilian dictatorship that is today’s Egypt; etc.).

10. Spiritually, no. Because when we declare "one nation under God," the Christian's God is a triune God, while the Muslim's is one entity called "Allah," who is never a heavenly Father, nor is he ever called "Love" in the 99 excellent names.

There seems to be a very real misunderstanding of the American vision in this man’s presuppositions. He too readily makes "Christian" and "American" synonyms. There is no history that suggests that “one nation under God” is an invocation of the Trinity! That is simply an ignorant statement to make.

This man’s problem with the Qur’an not using the exact metaphor’s that some parts of the Biblical tradition use with regard to God is meaningless when the item he is debating is patriotism and loyal citizenship.

Resources:

Two articles by well known native-born, white, European-Americans (as that seems to matter to your friend who wrote these 10 points):

1 & 2

A new book by an American Muslim entitled,
Taking Back Islam: American Muslims Reclaim Their Faith

Posted 11/6/2002 08:15:43 AM
each morning i drive under a bridge

an old bearded man
and a young boy stand
five feet apart gazing down at the traffic
moving in uniform flow despite each car's individual intention.
the man and his boy pump their arms ceaselessly
in hopes that just one of the thousands below will honk their horn.
i have never, in all my days below this bridge,
heard a horn; never seen an upturned eye.
{nevertheless}
today i honked my horn.
today i left the flow.

Posted 11/6/2002 08:09:53 AM
current mp3:
believe, believe in me, believe
that life can change, that you're not stuck in vain
we're not the same, we're different tonight
...
believe, believe in me, believe
in the resolute urgency of now
...
we'll make things right, we'll feel it all tonight
we'll find a way to offer up the night tonight
the indescribable moments of your life tonight
the impossible is possible tonight
believe in me as i believe in you, tonight

-the.smashing.pumpkins::mellon.collie.and.the.infinite.sadness::tonight,tonight

Posted 11/6/2002 06:12:54 AM
i voted for a college student for Harris County Clerk, a customer service representative for Governor, a real estate agent for Texas Judge.... why? because we are a government by the people for the people and i have had enough of professional, millionaire politicians who act like they are the morally superior experts while their opponent and (after they are elected) their constituents are idiots needing to be defeated on the one hand or coddled on the other.

America's political upper class is the very thing that our hardworking, blue collar, business owning and poet-revolutionary founding mothers and fathers escaped from in old Europe by transversing the ocean and braving the unknown in an uncharted land. the callous machines that feed and water the campaigns of the political elite in our time do not work for free. the candidates, and the machines that play them in the great American chess match that is politics today, enrich and empower themselves through the positions that the public has given them in trust. political office is no longer selfless service to the nation.

i think that we need a little shake up in the political ranks.
some of us need to run for office in two years. we will not win.

that is not the point.

yet.

Posted 11/4/2002 11:07:37 PM
Israel and the Occupied Territories:
Shielded from Scrutiny - IDF violations in Jenin and Nablus

Publish date: 4 November 2002

Jerusalem -- at the launch of a report into the actions of the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) in Jenin and Nablus in March and April 2002, Amnesty International said today that there is clear evidence that some of the acts committed by the IDF during Operation Defensive Shield were war crimes.

The report, Israel and the Occupied Territories: Shielded from Scrutiny - IDF violations in Jenin and Nablus, documents serious human rights violations by Israeli forces -- unlawful killings; torture and ill-treatment of prisoners; wanton destruction of hundreds of homes sometimes with the residents still inside; the blocking of ambulances and denial of humanitarian assistance; and the use of Palestinian civilians as "human shields".

Posted 11/4/2002 12:38:40 PM
do i yet have to apologize for my many words as one ashamed of speaking too much? it was easier before i knew anyone read this. i do not write for you; though you are welcome here. this is the momentary work of a soul yet unable to take up pen and paper. when that day returns this will go away. so for now, enjoy. i appreciate the email, both insulting and praising, but neither is my drive or delight. i must write as i must live.

i am going to stop addressing you now.

Posted 11/4/2002 12:06:58 PM
boredom

in the Top 5 Theological Issues of Long Now spirituality.

Posted 11/4/2002 06:33:17 AM

living and otherwise

Although the demoralization brought about by autocracy and the decay of the revolutionary periods have often been described, the decay of an age without passion is something just as harmful, though, on account of its ambiguity, it is less obvious....

This indolent mass which understands nothing and does nothing itself, this gallery, is on the look-out for distraction and soon abandons itself to the idea that everything that anyone does is done in order to give it (the public) something to gossip about.

passion, or lack thereof, is one of those traits of a person that is difficult to describe. passion, and its antonym, is an odor that seeps from the pores; the vast sea of presupposition that lies under the thoughtful smile; an unintentionally sublimated beauty eliciting fixation; the moment of animated body and speech as spirits join and the muse possesses.

imponderably, passion is. like much with regard to the human species, "i know it when i see it," is perhaps passion's most oft spoken definition. so what is it to be in the presence of unintentionally sublimated beauty, that moment of soul fixation, of momentary addiction, of unintended, yet unmitigated domination that is this thing called passion?

sublimation is instantaneous state transition that totally neglects an intermediate step. in the human psyche sublimation is the redirecting of energies from some disposition or action that is without societal sanction to one that is culturally condoned. an unintentionally sublimated beauty is an inner state being, without contrivance, translated into something quite like passion. it is an unscoped redirection of the soul's perpetuities into the transience of the moment. so it is that the fixation of those who share in a moment of amorphous passion is a post-transfiguration reaction. an attempt to possess and perpetuate what has been intimately known momentarily. the building of structure to house the shekinah and those at the center of the moment's epiphany. but the passion will not be encased.

transfiguration elicits voices advocating worship, commerce, encasement. money is raised. plans are charted. the masses are marketed. passion leaves. passion's quiet exit is so frightening to those who have invested name and fortune in its encasement that they will do nearly anything to perpetuate the figment of arrival. and so the play begins. the generational curse of fear, ignorance, xenophobia and odd patterns of centralized empowerment seeds itself across the centuries in the machinations of rigid war-systems that being right creates.

there is one thing that those who will do nearly anything will not do. they will not give up their good little lives. they will not, in the uncharted suffering and struggle, live. the uncanny life that has quieted the grasping heart, stilled the clutching hand, emptied the inflated self is the very substance of the unknown depths of passion. some would call it authenticity. others spiritual authority. still more the wisdom of an old soul. i call it mystery. i am a mystery to myself. this is the unknown origin of epiphany. the magic of passion. the hope beyond indolence. we are all a mystery to ourselves and to each other. it is at the nexus of mystery that a humane humanity begins to emerge. it is there that the sacred is born in our midst.

to be a people of passion. a people through whom the other brings peace, justice and healing. this is what it is to be of that odd non-kingdom of which Jesus speaks. this is to live life with the quiet intensity that realizes that it cannot be saved. that it is the very intractable nature of life to preclude a storing up for later. this is the movement beyond indolence, of which Søren speaks.

This indolent mass which understands nothing and does nothing itself, this gallery...

this gallery… this form of life that frames the greatness of others whose lives are set in sharp relief to the frame of worthless lifewaste that has become the repository for the memories of a greatness now far off.

this gallery… of institutional mediators that would have, themselves, sought to co-opt, enslave or castrate the great who now make up their well massaged stories that so conveniently preserve their authority. these merchants of metanarrative who show off the lives of artists and prophets and revolutionaries that would have burned their pitiful packaging of valor with scorn had they been unframeably contemporary.

this gallery… this attempt to sell access to domesticated revolution. the perversity that markets banal ideology and persecutes (if they were only worthy of this word!) those who would attempt a life that creates the ideology of a time to come.

this gallery… of impotent commentators on the exploits of others; the culture of critic without stake in the game; the reporter of great lives of the past; this curator of nothing their own busily about the work of the gallery that leaves no time to live the greatness of future stories of the past; that leaves no space for the courage to create.

TO LIVE, TO BE, TO ENACT—this is what we scoff at today. we want to simulate life. we want controlled extreme sports not the danger of real exploration. we want the packaged conflict and success of fictive characters that we follow for decades in an unreality that seems much more real than our own family lethargically sitting on the couch creating heritage no more powerful than, "remember the time that Ross..."

we are the people always, "on the look-out for distraction," a people who have found little to believe in and few worthy of emulation. a people caught in story unworthy of the genre. a people running after the encasement of passion's momentary pore that could transform if it were but accepted at the moment of its unchanneled flow and welcomed at its genesis in their own being.

so little greatness!
so little courage!

Posted 11/3/2002 09:28:27 PM
Jerusalem Post: Turkish Election Landslide

...The AKP's victory is all the more impressive because the voters cast their ballots without knowing who would be the party's prime minister.

Erdogan was disqualified in September from holding this position because he spent prison time in 1999 for reciting a poem the court deemed seditious.

congrats to the AKP. i hope that they can bring some sanity to a system that arrests and imprisons people for reciting poetry.

Posted 11/3/2002 02:14:58 PM
Guilt Free TV

What he found surprised him. Like most researchers, he assumed that fast-moving images and sounds mesmerized young viewers. But videotapes of kids’ viewing showed that their attention wandered most during transitions between segments and when dialogue or plotlines became too complex. He hypothesized that even young children watch TV for the same reason adults do: to enjoy good stories. To test that theory, he sliced up “Sesame Street” skits so the plot no longer made sense. Even 2-year-olds quickly realized the story was amiss and stopped watching. Some knocked on the TV screen. Others called out: “Mommy, can you fix this?” Over years of research, Anderson reached a startling conclusion: “Television viewing is a much more intellectual activity for kids than anybody had previously supposed.”

this fascinates me. we have a couple TVs. heck, we have a big screen even. but for the last couple years we have not had cable. until a couple weeks ago we did not even have an antenna. we live disconnected from the network. the benefits are mixed and subtle when i reflect on it a bit. it is not that we do not watch television. we have the consumate children's DVD collection and a seemingly endless number of old VHS tapes. we watch Dora and Blue and the rest of the Nick/Disney/PBS gang. we even hooked up the rabbit ears tonight to catch the new Simpson's Halloween special (although we ended up on ABC instead watching some Sunday night Disney movie). we like good stories. we do not like being fed consumption memes with our Sponge Bob. nor do we savor the mind numbing ease of turning the box on and snapping out of a media coma five hours later unable to account for the lost time. finding a healthy media-to-real-life ratio is what we are about. we like good storytelling. we love living stories worth telling.