trouble at home

My welcome back to the law school:

I'm in the library, I have my headphones on. There are four people in here besides me. I'm siting in the middle of the reading room at a table.  One of the librarians just came over and said "apparently some people in here can hear your music from your headphones can you turn it down"

I guess it's because I'm really scary. Best to take it to the authorities!

Someone in here is a major tool, that's all I'm saying.

I love how after all the tittering and tee-heeing about Those Ignorant Australians and Their Still Hanging On To Blackface Performance, Boingboing goes right out there and posts some idiot's blackface costume taken, apparently, from a blackface character on the MIghty Boosh (???!?)
The Spirit of Jazz?

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/21/spiritofa.jpg


standard denials already appearing in the thread of course, about how this black-facepaint-&-fake-dreads-on-a-white-person-impersonating-The-Spirit-of-Jazz is somehow completely different from, you know, the bad kind. The finer nuances of blackface and who is supposed to be offended. "kneejerk" and "politically correct" have already come up more than once..

puke.

makes me happy!

"One plausible characterization of her life’s work is that it is about demonstrating the empirical weaknesses of a ‘cute’ economic model (the Tragedy of the Commons) that assumed a role in policy discussions far out of proportion to its actual explanatory power, and replacing it with a set of explanations that are nowhere near as neat, but are far more true to the real world."

my thesis from 2000 (apologies for the overly british phrasing!):
"A danger, which many scholars seem to run, is conflating “secure” with “individual” property rights. One might excuse them as merely following Garret Hardin’s example in his near-legendary “Tragedy of the Commons” article whereby he explains how common land will be overgrazed, as individual needs are pitted against those of the community as a whole. The appeal of this model has tended to obscure the fact that, as investigated  empirically with respect to commonly held land, it has not been borne out by evidence.7 
The model’s lack of explanatory power the context in which he first applied it  (communal land tenure) can be traced to a widespread tendency to equate individual property  rights with secure rights, or to see “common” = “unmanaged.” Hardin himself acknowledges this in a later essay,8 saying his model applies only to unmanaged common land (which removes it somewhat from his original context). Hardin rephrases his model as the “tragedy of the unmanaged commons” --which might better be expressed as the “tragedy of open-access.”9  The difference between unrecognised systems of management, and a lack of them, is important in the study of LDCs, where the assumptions of economists (local and foreign) about what are recognisable or secure property rights have often been grievously mistaken.10 "

I freaking hate the Tragedy of the Commons! And Ostrom put the freaking NAIL in its coffin..woo!

Thursday, September 3, 7:30pm

The Change You Want To See Gallery is pleased to host another installment of the Upgrade! NY series on open source as it relates to activism and creative practice. This month we'll explore how changes in technology and social convention affect music, software, and culture in general.

We'll start the evening with a conversation between scholar and DJ Larisa Mann, and developer and open source advocate Karl Fogel. Their discussion will examine how Jamaican music has developed in the absence of an effective copyright regime, how technological and social conditions affect the music and musicians, and how this compares to the open source movement of today.

Afterward stick around for a party and DJ set by Larisa Mann (aka DJ Ripley). Ripley was voted "Best Dance DJ of 2008" by the readers of the SF Bay Guardian.

Not in NY? Tune in to a live stream of the discussion at 7:30pm EST at http://livestream.com/notanalternative

Larisa Mann is a PhD Candidate in Jurisprudence and Social Policy at UC Berkeley Law School, and resident DJ at SuryaDub, San Francisco. She researches the social implications of intellectual property rules, the legal implications of actual creative practices, and explores the implications of networked life (day-to-day reality permeated by networked technology) for our concepts of rights.

http://djripley.blogspot.com

Karl Fogel is an open source software developer and writer who works for Canonical, Ltd, the company behind Ubuntu, helping with the open-source Launchpad collaboration platform, as well as QuestionCopyright.org, a California-based non-profit that promotes public understanding of the history and effects of copyright, and encourages the development of distribution systems suitable for a networked world in which the cost of sharing information has gone to zero.

http://www.red-bean.com/kfogel

Upgrade! NY is co-produced by Eyebeam and Not An Alternative.

For my birthday today

• nature gave me perfect weather in NYC to walk around in
• I gave me the choice of a very flattering and fun outfit which looks even better since I am back to the weight I was in NY in 2002.
• UC Berkeley gave me my funding for the semester -always a rush since it comes all at once
• I gave myself 2 Religion dresses from Century21, to be worn at the wedding I have to go to in 2 weeks where my ex will be in attendance.
  
  • The outlandish one is a big grey jersey one with a wide boatneck and kimono sleeves that narrows down to a tight miniskirt and with a freaking hilarious print in darker grey: rock-n-roll devil hands all over it in diagonal rows.
  • the simpler one is a white jersey minidress gathered into big flatlink black metal chain "straps" with a faded black repeating print of cassette tapes.

yes they are both very rock-n-roll and very london. I kinda wish the devil hand print was a middle finger print but that wouldn't be so right for a wedding pre-reception dinner..

I had to hold off on buying the most sexiest dress evar (in my style, though) a sculptural scooped black leather top with black silk gathered under it, kinda babydoll but tough and verrrrry short.. man it was hot but not appropriate for a wedding and i really don't have places to wear stuff like that. sigh!

and now, off to dinner with friends!

I gotta say, being not-broke in NY, staying at a friend's lovely apartment in Soho, and being single are not a bad combination of things. I am still sad and angry when I think about my ex (the more so for the fact I will see him at this wedding and we are on the same plane coming back to SF -awkward!), but overall life is feeling pretty good. Starting the research again too, although it's easy to be distracted isn't it..

things have gone from crappy to really extremely crappy between me and the ex.*  But recently I've been motivated to blog more about Jamaica on my music blog. It's pretty cheerful and entertaining, sorry the livejoural has been less so.
But it has been good place for me to vent, since I'm on my own a lot these days, and many of you readers are nice & supportive. It really does mean a lot, even a few words... it's still a rather lonely & fragile time for me in some ways.

*Partly my fault because for once I wrote an email where I said a bunch of stuff I've been holding back. Some of it maybe isn't fair but a lot of it is. Fair but probably unproductive, because clearly he's not in a position to hear or respond well, and maybe he never would be.. maybe it's self-indulgent to point out all the ways his immaturity has hurt me. but fuck it, I've held back so much over the past few months in the hopes that we could work through this, and maybe I need to give up that hope..

I have been blogging semi-regularly at the music blog.  Last week I went to see Major Lazer kick off their tour in Kingston.. I wrote a review of the show, in probably wayyy too ethnomusicologically-exhaustive detail - that's up there now.

Let's not go back to the days of Operation Rescue terrorism..

http://www.kansas.com/news/breaking/story/833730.html

Now is a good time to call and see if clinics need support/defense

or donate - here's the Planned Parenthood office for the region Dr. Tiller worked in
http://www.ppkm.org/donations.asp

and there's also medical students for choice
http://medicalstudentsforchoice.org/index.php?page=support

Simon Reynolds has a nice little piece up in the guardian, and he shouts out my research (not by name, O for some print legitimacy). Anyway I decided to engage with it on my music blog.

you can check it out here

from Ballastexistenz:

a woman with physical and psychological disabilities is being driven to suicide through denial of care. Amanda Baggs' take on it is better than mine could ever be. Here's an excerpt:

"he truth is that many physical disability agencies don’t want to provide services to people with developmental or psych labels — they figure that’s someone else’s problem and they think they’re above having to deal with us. So those of us with combinations of developmental, psych, and physical conditions (the strict divisions between such being largely societal anyway — with some conditions even seeming to have more than one different name depending on which branch of medicine claimed them first) often end up falling through the cracks and dying as a result.

Last I heard, nursing agencies are not allowed to administer the death penalty for having a bad attitude or unusual social skills. But this is exactly how many of them handle people they consider problematic. I have watched other such agencies, as well as staff in nursing homes and mental institutions, fail to provide necessary services for survival, to people who needed them, because they did not happen to like the person. There is a reason that serial killers and other people of questionable conscience like such jobs — they can characterize someone as a problem, or as “dying anyway”, and get away with this crap, especially because there are double standards where if we are violent, or even possible to mischaracterize as such, then it’s because we’re defective and if other people are violent to us then it’s also because we’re defective.

Don’t let the newspaper fool you — it talks about Minna “ending her suffering” which is a classic code phrase (I am terrible at using those, but can certainly often detect them in others) designed to call forth images of her disability as the main cause of suffering, and all the injustice she is suffering as incidental, or even inevitable. It isn’t. Severely disabled people are not committing suicide in droves, most of us are still around. What drives people to despair — and, often, suicide — is having crappy care (often includng abuse) and neglect be the only two options that seem to be available."

--apparently there are protests:

We Are Protesting:

FRIDAY JANUARY 23rd from 8AM until NOON in front of MPP Rick
Bartolucci’s office located at 93 Ceder st, corner of Ceder and
Lisker, the Canada-Broker Building.
Then at NOON we are Marching to the Community Care Access Centre
which is located in the Rainbow Centre 40 Elm St, Suite 41-C the
north east corner of the mall at the corner of ST Anne Rd and Notre Dame Ave.

For Further and Updated Information:

Facebook Group: Minna’s Hunger Strike - Call to action for an ALS patient denied care

The Sudbury Star article

Youtube: Sudbury CCAC Exposed

 

"At some point, we are completely encircled by riot cops, but they are a decent distance away from us. Everyone is ignoring them, and focusing on the mayor. A paramilitary tank rolls up. A brotha shouts "Oh look, democracy has arrived!""

5 things you can do about the Oscar Grant shooting

25th ways someone has suggested you can take action for peace & justice in Gaza (some of them seem a bit odd (wear a keffiyeh? been to the LES lately? or the mall? but if they feel it helps, maybe that's cool).. http://nosnowhere.wordpress.com/2009/01/03/25-ways-you-can-take-action-to-bring-peace-with-justice-to-gaza/

(on that note, Matisyahu added me to his twitter feed. ?? when I read his feed it was all ridiculous stuff about the brave IDF soldiers protecting the state of israel. feh. just feh. what an ass)

---

OK bye america. gone to JA for six months. will post a link to my JA blog when it goes up!

How come I missed this? I mean it's the holidays (happy holidays y'all) but this seems pretty important. Students there also calling out the protests in Greece and elsewhere..

And it looks like they have won a lot of concessions as of today! Including "an agreement not to press charges or impose academic punishments for students involved in the protest, the implementation of a Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) committee within the university, more autonomy and power for Student Senate to communicate with the student body, more representation on the Board of Trustees for students and faculty, and finally the creation of more student study space on campus."

Also, a Faculty vote of no confidence in Kerrey at an emergency meeting.
AND>.. UNITE HERE Local 100 (who represent the cafeteria workers) have refused to cross the barricade!

~ Demands of the Occupation ~
• The removal of Bob Kerrey as president of our university

• The removal of James Murtha as executive vice president of our university

• Students, faculty, and staff elect the president, EVP, and Provost.

• Students are part of the interim committee to hire a provost.

• The removal of Robert B. Millard as treasurer of the board of trustees.

• Intelligible transparency and disclosure of the university budget and investments.

• The creation of a committee on socially responsible investments.

• The immediate suspension of capital improvement projects like the tearing down of 65 fifth Ave.

• Instead, money towards the creation of an autonomous student space.
• Instead, money towards scholarships and reducing tuition.
• Instead, money for the library and student life generally.

So I sold my old laptop on craigslist. I had 3 emails within 3 hours of posting it yesterday.
this morning I had back and forth with two people. One couldn't come today and said we could talk tomorrow. The other could. So I sold it to person b. YAY!

then I thought I'd be considerate and tell person A. "sorry it's been sold. good luck"

then I got this email from person A

"why did you waste my time then"

heh. I'm usually super-polite by email but hey it's craigslist. So I wrote

"because someone COULD come tonight, dumbass. it was sold AFTER you
said you couldn't come.

why did you waste your own time complaining about it?"

AND they WROTE BACK

"You are such an inconsiderate idiot. Don't have any common sense or courtesy!!!

Stop wasting people's time.

What's wrong with tomorrow? You need the money for drugs tonight?"

Although I don't want to take away from the importance of the sit-down strike (links for donations below)

I did want to post an RIP for the creator of the Clangers, the Soup Dragon, and other amazing kids stuff on TV. Oliver Postgate has died

RIP Oliver Postgate - I loved your seriously weird kids shows.



--in other news you can donate to support the strikers via paypal here (thanks everyone who is also posting the link)

or mail donations to

UE Local 1110 Solidarity Fund,
UE Western Region,
37 S. Ashland,
Chicago, IL 60607

Mumbai Twitter feed: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=mumbai+OR+bombay+OR+%23mumbai
A Flickr stream just posted (haven't been through it all so I don't know how graphic it gets): http://flickr.com/photos/vinu/sets/72157610144709049/
A Google Map of the attacks so far: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=106719836142005814567.00045c9d9d0c959a84c6e&ll=18.938763,72.816267&spn=0.052607,0.11158&t=h&z=14

It looks really scary. I don't know what else to say but I hope the damage is limited and that as many people as possible make it through ok.

I don't know much about this blogger, and I am only reprinting this post because it is AWESOME (and I just saw Quantum of Solace and was interested in its discussion of US attitude  towards South American dictators.. as well as daniel craig in his underwear, true), but anyway you should all start reading BoRev on South American politics..

(quote)

Again With The Venezuelans And Their Stupid Happiness

It's here again. Every year the Chilean polling firm Latinobarometro releases the latest round of public opinion polling data from 18 Latin American countries, and every year Venezuela comes out on top in all the democracy and quality of life categories, and every year the press has no idea what to do with that, so they cover some marginally relevant data point en masse, and ignore the rest. It's become a Thanksgiving tradition, like triptophan! Here's the PDF of the results if you read Spanish. If not, allow me. Venezuelans:

• Are more likely to support democracy than any other nationality surveyed.

• Are the most likely to say the best way to change things is through voting.

• Are most likely to say that democracy has decreased social inequality in their country.

• Are least likely to say youth are politically apathetic

• Are less worried to be worried about high prices than anybody else.

• Are most likely to have access to the internet .

• Are the third mostly likely to say that their countrymen are treated equally under the law, and

• Are the fourth most likely to say their democracy functions better than the rest of Latin America

Anyway, whatever. These are the same results that they get every year. The sport of it is in guessing which weird angle the media will focus on this year. Last year it was that support for Chavez was on the decrease...outside of Venezuela. The year before that it was that Venezuelans disliked Bush (therefore maybe America hmm??) more than everybody else. The press stories are just starting to come in, so there's still plenty of time for wild speculation in the comments section.

_____
I just started using google reader, and subscribed to this cat forthwith.

At least the news is reporting it. but then again, does it hurt as well as help? does it glorify

WASHINGTON – Two white supremacists allegedly plotted to go on a national killing spree, shooting and decapitating black people and ultimately targeting Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, federal authorities said Monday.

our car was stolen last night from where it was parked in the alley around the corner from our gig. (lots of other, nice new cars parked there, nothing visible in the car and on the seats)

crap. this sucks.
luckily our computers, phones, wallets and such were out of the car

but, housekeys & things like car registration (which I think has our address on it) were in there. do you think we have to worry about someone robbing our house? should we change the locks?

also gone - freaking expensive and awesome prescription sunglasses. ipod. newish favorite messenger bag.

blech.

at last the truth about acorn

I mean,

acorn revealed