Pure Twaddle

I don’t want to alarm anyone, but it looks like the central source for hipster satire and transplant hate, diehipster.com, is dead. Is this a nefarious plan perpetrated by some hipster who has finally had it? Has Brooklyn been nuked from orbit and I’m only just finding out? What is the American Apparel connection?

Beware those who poke fun at the weak-willed and poorly dressed of Brooklyn. They, too, will come for you.

(Or perhaps their hosting company has just hit the “website off” button.)

Popularity: 10% [?]

(Scene: Friday, 2 a.m. underground at a Brooklyn subway station. The hallway is sparsely populated by a few lone late-night revelers.)

(Enter a large, lumbering, black woman from stage right)

LLBW: (addresses Stranger 1 loudly in Carribean accent): Have you SEEN the light of Jesus Christ?!

Stranger 1: Uh, no. (Exits stage right)

LLBW: (to Stranger 2): Have YOU seen the LIGHT of Jesus Christ?!

Stranger 2: Sure… (Quickly exits stage right)

(Your Hero enters from stage left)

LLBW: (To Your Hero) HAVE you SEEN the LIGHT OF CHRIST?!

YH: Nope.

LLBW: (Enraged, screaming) I WIPE MY FILTHY HANDS ON YOU! (Wipes imaginary muck on Your Hero’s sleeve)

YH: ( Looks around to see if anyone else witnessed this. To himself) What the f…?

LLBW: (Exits stage left; To unseen stranger) Have you SEEN the light of Christ?!

Fin

——

Seriously, you can’t make up this kind of action. New York is the strangest place on earth.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Lazy Friday video: People who missed 4th grade science have access to video cameras:

Thanks to Boingboing for revealing this video.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Wired EIC (editor-in-chief), Chris Anderson, has just published a book espousing the nature of the free economy. As part of the book’s promotion, he gave a speech at the Wired Disruptive Business Conference outlining his main points (below). I offer a rebuttal in the form of early ninety’s hip-hop. Watch and learn:

Chris Anderson’s “bitch-ass” speech:

V. MC Double Def DP’s Don’t Copy That Floppy! from 1992 (with extra whitey hate)

Bonus: DCTF sequel coming soon (with extra prison rape)!

P.S. If your game/movie/television show is so bad that only pirates will watch it (read: no one wants to pay to watch it – I’m looking at you, Michael Bay), then you need to re-think your media. Shit’s changin’, yo!

Popularity: 14% [?]

The King of Pop is dead. Long live the King of Pop.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Here’s his writeup from Fark member Tatsuma about what’s been going on in Iran with a great description of the “players”:

https://sites.google.com/site/tatsumairanupdate/

Great photos (though dated) here:
http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/06/irans_disputed_election.html
and here:
http://tehranlive.org/

Plus the BBC’s live Farsi feed:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/persian/tv/2009/01/000000_ptv_live_s.shtml

Crazy times…

Popularity: 9% [?]

The current election protests in Iran are exceptional in their own right; but what is even more exceptional is the role Twitter is playing in generating support for the opposition. Right now, thousands of Twits (people on Twitter) are showing their support of the “Green Revolution” by adding a green tinge to their digital avatars and forwarding news and following the flow of contraband Tweets from inside Iran. In a situation where most journalists have been ousted or silenced, the vacuum has been filled with thousands of defiant voices from Iran. And their chorus has been echoed ten-fold by followers on the ‘net.

But what the internet has proven that even its largest fads can burn out within a few weeks. Remember that British woman with the great voice? Remember BananaPhone? Remember Mumbai? All these were high-powered internet obsessions that ebbed back into the undulating waves of the WWW. Supporting Iran is easy when all you have to do is Tweet and follow; but I wonder if even 10% of those Tweeting would be marching in that protest (or if they will even remember the cause three weeks from now).

I would love to expound on this, but I still don’t have reliable access to the ‘net. And I’m not even in Iran…

Popularity: 12% [?]

Just for Friday, Jack Kerouac reading from On the Road on the Steve Allen Show in 1959:

Popularity: 49% [?]

Good enough for government work.

“Freedom is not free.” All too frequently during the Iraq war we heard this phrase used by hawks to justify the invasion. There is truth to this statement, the real reasons for the Iraq war not-withstanding. Freedom does require vigilance, but often in ways we do not want to consider.

There has been much controversy over the recent release of memos revealing that the US policy of water-boarding was not only used on many occasions by numerous individuals, but that it was also institutionally encouraged by the chain of command. Water boarding has been in the public eye for some time, but now we know it was more than the result of an over-zealous interrogator. This disturbing reality has raised hard questions: Should we prosecute? Do we pardon the offenders? Do we do nothing?

Our nation has long held the belief that torture is wrong and that any one who practices it is contemptible and despicable. But we face a moral dilemma: here we have men who we think may hold information that will vital to public safety. Does that justify pouring water into their lungs to make them talk? If so, why stop there? Why not shove bamboo shoots under their fingernails or hook car batteries up to their genitals if it reveals nefarious plans? Do not the ends justify the means if it saves even one American life?

Here the supporters of water-boarding blanch. If we approve of water-boarding, the logical progression to more violent means is unavoidable. To justify the practice, they re-classify water-boarding. Now no longer “torture,” it is euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation,” which sounds like a feature on a new car. (See how marketing-speak leaks into our national vocabulary?) With this linguistic firewall between what we want to do and what we shouldn’t do, we can water-board as many people as we want.

But that solid barrier merely semantics,  a construct that can be built and un-built in the span of an official press conference. Once we allow one form of cruel and unusual interrogation, we can push ahead to even more brutal methods unhampered by ethical standards. And once we allow the government to torture one person in the name of national security, we implicitly allow them to torture anyone, including you and me.

“But what if it’s your child who dies in a preventable terrorist attack?!” you might hear shouted by cable pundits. This argument is unassailable. Even if one ethically opposed to torture wouldn’t dare wish death upon his own child. Ah, but here is the rub.

For most of our nation’s short history, the cost of protecting our freedoms was borne mainly by our soldiers. Those on the home front may have made many sacrifices for the war effort, but rarely were their own lives directly at risk. With the advent of modern terror, this has all changed. As former President Bush intoned repeatedly, we are no longer fighting a traditional war. Everyone is now an enemy combatant – including us.

This new type of war does not justify torture on any level. To the contrary, we must be more vigilant to stop it from ever being done. To allow torture brings our government one step closer to tyranny. I do not wish to die in a terror attack because the US refuses to torture somebody. But to quickly resort to such inhumanity just to save my own ass is pure cowardice. I would be willing to pay the ultimate price to ensure we remain true to our ideals and our society remains free.

No one said being American was going to be easy.

Popularity: 48% [?]