BrownBourne's Xanga Site

Weblog

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

I'm a Sucker For Trippy Videos, Pt. 2: ...Since I Broke The Seal

I might as well flesh out an entire video-post stream of (induced) consciousness. RJD2's "Work it Out" at the bottom of this post serves for a perfect transition from audio-visuality to the kinesthetically-pleasing, and I think it's best that I refrain from any more flowery video-to-video transitions. Amusez-vous.
I'm a Sucker for Trippy Videos

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Admitting Complexity, Gauging The Global Meme War, more Boomsha, and Degradations of Humanity

Tuesday; February 20th, 2008
Domestic Politics: The reason I prefer Barack over Hillary is that he has the authority, the capacity, and the world view necessary to articulate a different set of priorities for shaping our country's (and its citizens') interactions with the 6 billion other people on this planet.   Hillary is a Realist hawk who sees the world as an anarchic zero-sum game in which every country is out to get every other country, and who thinks that's just how the world will always be no matter what. More importantly, she would operate on such assumptions if elected, and that would continue to motivate the countries we consider enemies to do so as well. I wish I could ask Hillary how she thinks the leaders of other countries react when the sole Superpower's political leaders see its foreign policy objectives in a context that defines them as "dangerous"? I'm thinking the reaction sounds a little something like Somebody call Russia. We need a Nuke.

In his most recent article, E.J. Dionne explains the major theoretical gaps in a Republican foreign policy that conceptualizes "radical islamic extremism" as the "transcendent challenge of the 21st century." Sombody CC Hillary's staffers:

"Of course, defeating terrorism is important, and no candidate will say otherwise. But the United States has a lot of work to do in the world. If we're thinking about the next two decades, not to mention the next 90 years, it's a mistake to see terrorism as a "transcendent challenge" that makes all our other interests secondary."

To borrow a phrase from Barack, we need to "admit complexity"--we need to see the world for the ambivalent amalgam of forces that stretches human nature to its best and worst capacities in every direction imaginable (breath) that it is.   Thomas P. M. Barnett's latest piece about re-imagining American Grand Strategy in a post-post-9/11 world (my phrase, not Barnett's . . . even though I'm sure somebody else has already said post-post-9/11) reflects the kind of nuance I want running through the veins of whoever leads our country through the next historical era.

"Frankly, all notions of clashing civilizations or global insurgencies pale before inescapable reality, which is why it's so essential that America redefine its currently narrow grand strategy of defending the homeland to something far broader like securing the future."

That nuance escaped from Hillary's message the minute she voted for the Iraq War without questioning the NIE, and it never came back.

Fa' All Mah' Innuhnet News Junkies: WaPo and Newsweek teamed up to bring us a Barometer measuring which country wins each day's media cycle:

"The Global Power Barometer (GPB) provides a relative measure how well various nations, ideologies and political movements are exercising their power to move global opinion and events in the directions they desire."

I haven't had time to play around with it yet, but I'm all about visualization. (Boomsha to Hans Rosling for the trailblazing Gap Cast presentations, created with Trendalyzer]

Episode #2: On today's episode of We Degrade Humanity, And You Can Too:

UK Dog Whistles for Dispersing Disenfranchised Youth!

I keep telling all my friends to vote. If you don't vote, your demographic gets it in the pants. That's how Democracies work. And now, we've got the UK dispersing young loiterers with high-powered dog whistles.   3,500 of these throughout the country and the only issue raised by critics is that they don't effectively target only the young people whose dignity and liberty is worth nothing to the English government:

"These devices are indiscriminate and target all children and young people, including babies, regardless of whether they are behaving or misbehaving.”

No one's concerned about the dearth of human rights protections for young people who are deemed as "misbehavers" because adults have this unspoken assumption that young people deserve this kind of treatment. They aren't people. Their parents basically own them until they turn 18. This from a generation once inspired by mantras like "Never trust anyone over 30." Oh baby boomers, how far you have fallen.
iYuppies, Boomsha, Journalismo, and Degradations of Humanity

Monday; February 19th, 2008

1) Been grooving to the gentle mental vibes of the mister man Daniel Coffeen. He teaches a life-wisdom type class at UC Berkeley called "Rhetoric 10." Now, this isn't your Founder-of-the-West's Rhetoric. Coffeen strives to knock down your assumptions in the hopes to reveal the ways in which most of us are immersed in a reality consisting solely of rhetoric. When I listen to him I feel like I've stumbled upon a way to escape this Reverse-Matrix-esque sham--to resensitize myself in the hopes to remove this dull, dreary psuedo-reality fed to me from birth by the adults and the ambitious (Alan Watts for iYuppies). I want to fully appreciate each and every moment as ineffable. I want to be astounded by the physical entity that is a text book, the idea behind the meaning and process that went into this collection of 1200 pages of dense legal writing, rather than caught up with what my professors think these words mean. I'm going to be such a hopeless lawyer.

2) Much Boomsha (the Mohesian word for "Respect") to Seed Magazine for dropping these clusters of knowledge on us drooling humanities-types. I hope I can gather enough gumption to use the term "Exoplanet" in a sentence today.

3) Andrew Sullivan is next on my list of CeWebrities I want to meet in real life. From the metaphysical hope-mongering with which he contained Sam Harris . . .

"You rely in your books on a lot of historical facts to buttress your empirical case. But these facts are not true - and could never be proven true - by the scientific method that is your benchmark. There are no control groups in history. There are no experiments."

. . . to the balanced coverage he throws down for my favorite hope-monger . . .

See: his piece in the December 2007 issue of The Atlantic

"At its best, the Obama candidacy is about ending a war—not so much the war in Iraq, which now has a momentum that will propel the occupation into the next decade—but the war within America that has prevailed since Vietnam and that shows dangerous signs of intensifying, a nonviolent civil war that has crippled America at the very time the world needs it most. It is a war about war—and about culture and about religion and about race. And in that war, Obama—and Obama alone—offers the possibility of a truce."

But See: his link to Patrick Ruffini's piece:

"The campaign and its marketing seems designed to evoke aspirational feelings that have virtually no political meaning whatsoever. This is what great brands do. They evoke feelings that have virtually zero connection to product attributes and specifications....The end result is that great brands are fungible. They can be all things to all people. The branding approach liberates Obama to be the candidate of the MoveOn wing and of national unity. That’s not a criticism. It is a compliment. Now we’ll see if it stands up in the land beyond the energized core, in the land of 50% plus one nationally, where evangelism alone is not enough."

. . . Sullivan's journalismo demonstrates that dark cynicism isn't necessary for solid analysis.

4) On today's episode of We Degrade Humanity, And You Can Too:

Japanese Pick-Up Night Classes!

"'I always teach my students that sex comes first,' he says. 'Then you figure out whether the woman is worth marrying later.'"

The general idea behind the class is to subject women to the illusion that these guys are functional human beings for long enough to get them into bed.

"'Since joining Mr. Fujita's school, I have had five successful relationships,' says Hachioji Robocop, a 27-year-old civil servant who has been taking the course since 2004. 'I lost my virginity six months into the course, and now I can now communicate with women. I'm very grateful.'"

So does the advanced class teach them how to be functional human beings? And how is this Robocop guy defining "successful relationship" if he's burned through five of them since starting the class?