Mike Daisey

2012-01-31T15:50:00.001-05:00

I'm inundated with media requests, which is great. But it has to be said--none of the requests coming in are from technology journalists. None. The silence is still defeaning...when they do cover any of this, they do as little as possible as quickly as possible. These are, ostensibly, journalists who should be covering stories in technology. I find it incredibly sad.

Wrestling With Gravity

2012-01-31T15:49:00.001-05:00

Brad Pitt, Actor - Parabasis

2012-01-31T00:49:00.001-05:00

Brad Pitt, Actor - Parabasis:

Opacity in performance—an acting style in which the subtext of a character is present but kept secret—is made possible by film. Without the close-up, the reaction shot, the bit of closely observed business, keeping secrets from the audience is difficult. I know of only two actors who regularly pulled this off on stage (James Urbaniak and T. Ryder Smith). Film enables it, but our preference as audiences is always for revelation, to be embraced (or at least charmed) by a performance rather than held at a distance by a man presenting an unsolvable mystery.

2012-01-30T19:50:00.001-05:00

2012-01-30T11:16:00.001-05:00

My appearance on CBS Sunday Morning:

The Bear

2012-01-29T14:45:00.001-05:00

Becca Blackwell, Performer, On Being Naked in the Untitled Feminist Show - New York News - Runnin' Scared

2012-01-29T14:41:00.001-05:00

Becca Blackwell, Performer, On Being Naked in the Untitled Feminist Show - New York News - Runnin' Scared:

First off, what is it like being naked on stage?

I think everybody in the ensemble would agree that baby wipes are essential. This isn't my first time being naked on stage, but being naked in Untitled Feminist Show feels different. I have no props or words to draw attention away from the loadedness of my junk while I'm trying to be myself, which is a pretty masculine. So it's really the most naked I could possibly be. I never have identified as female, but I'm sure I read that way to an audience on a bare white floor and five other vaginas (or what-have-you) dancing with me.

It's hard knowing people won't necessarily decide that I am a masculine person right away. It magnifies something a little more subtle that happens to me daily. It's really challenging, sometimes crushing. I worked through a lot of my own gender issues in the process of developing the piece.

2012-01-29T10:01:00.000-05:00

Dear MSNBC and CBS visitors—

If you'd like to see THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS, you can click here for tickets.

Mike Daisey loved the New York Times Apple investigation | JIMROMENESKO.COM

2012-01-27T23:14:00.001-05:00

Mike Daisey loved the New York Times Apple investigation | JIMROMENESKO.COM:

I’ve been telling this story nightly for eighteen months, and I’m absolutely thrilled that the NYT is doing this reporting. It’s what I’ve been hoping for — that journalists would dig in and pull this story out by its roots, and the NYT has done that here.

I’m a monologist, and not a journalist in any traditional sense. I see our roles as utterly complementary –journalism reports the facts that fill our world, and I tell stories that create connections that make audiences engage in a human way.

I know that reporters who have worked on this series saw my monologue in the fall, and I spoke with Charles Duhigg then about my experiences. If my work helped them in any way I am very glad.

As a monologist, I’m passionate about stories told fully and deeply, so there can be a way for us to see the truth in a human way. The NYT’s work on this series does that magnificently, and they deserve all the credit for their hard work. I think it’s a great day when a work of art and a piece of journalism can both be in the public sphere affecting change in their own ways. More than anything else, I am grateful to the reporters who are telling this story because when I speak from the stage I feel less alone.

NYT Tech Columnist David Pogue’s Silence on Foxconn Persists, Even After the Times‘s Damning Expose | Betabeat — News, gossip and intel from Silicon Alley 2.0.

2012-01-27T10:22:00.001-05:00

NYT Tech Columnist David Pogue’s Silence on Foxconn Persists, Even After the Times‘s Damning Expose | Betabeat — News, gossip and intel from Silicon Alley 2.0.:

Mike Daisey—the critically-lauded monologist whose one-man show about these very problems with Apple, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, which played at New York’s Public Theater to critical acclaim last year—actually singled out David Pogue for failing to investigate Apple’s practices.

In an interview with The Daily Beast, Mr. Daisey, whose show ran for a number of weeks, and who actually ran an Op-Ed in the Times, was shocked at Mr. Pogue’s silence on his show, let alone Foxconn, who he covers for the Times and writes users manuals for.

“David Pogue—I’ll call him out—hasn’t actually been in to see the show. What I know of David Pogue, David Pogue would travel on his hands and knees, over broken glass, to see anything about the Mac or Steve Jobs, but…he hasn’t been here.”

Tomorrow's Roundtable: Could Apple build iPhones in U.S.? | Apple - CNET News

2012-01-26T15:18:00.001-05:00

Tomorrow's Roundtable: Could Apple build iPhones in U.S.? | Apple - CNET News:

Two great pieces of journalism on Apple and its place in the manufacturing economy appeared recently: First, there's a series developing in the New York Times that kicked off in the Sunday, Jan 22 edition: How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work. A follow-on piece, In China, Human Costs Are Built Into an iPad, ran yesterday.

You must read these stories.

Second, listen to the This American Life episode, Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory. In this gripping program, playwright and performer Mike Daisey tells of his trip to the Foxconn plant in China, where iPhones are made.

You must also listen to this podcast.

After you've done your homework, you will have questions. About Apple and all other electronics companies, about your ethical responsibility when it comes to buying gadgets, and about America's place in the world economy and whether or not it will ever be possible to bring modern manufacturing jobs back home.

On Reporters' Roundtable tomorrow, at 10am Pacific Time (live link), we'll be talking with Charles Duhigg, one of the authors of the New York Times series, and Mike Daisey as well. I'm excited to get these two journalists together to discuss the ongoing issues that their stories reported on. I'm sure this is going to be a fascinating discussion.

2012-01-26T12:09:00.000-05:00

Apple in China: The New York Times goes for the Pulitzer - Apple 2.0 - Fortune Tech

2012-01-26T10:36:00.001-05:00

Apple in China: The New York Times goes for the Pulitzer - Apple 2.0 - Fortune Tech:

When monologist Mike Daisey flew to China to find out why the workers who assemble electronic devices for Apple (AAPL) -- and every other major U.S. manufacturer -- were jumping from the roofs of their factory-city dormitories, he was shocked to discover that most of the American reporters writing about the suicides had never visited the plants or talked to any of the workers.

Well that's changed. A few months ago, the New York Times assigned a team of reporters led by Charles Duhigg, Keith Bradsher and David Barboza to investigate the hundreds of Chinese companies that make our iPads and iPhones -- starting with Foxconn, the world's largest manufacturer of electronics components.

2012-01-25T01:29:00.001-05:00

Globalization, Capitalism, and China at Reports from the Economic Front

2012-01-25T01:17:00.001-05:00

Globalization, Capitalism, and China at Reports from the Economic Front:

In fact, China’s growth has generated few decent employment opportunities for urban workers, regardless of their employment sector. The International Labor Organization did an extensive study of urban employment over the period 1990 to 2002. Although total urban employment increased slightly, almost all the growth was in irregular employment, meaning casual-wage or self-employment—typically in construction, cleaning and maintenance of premises, retail trade, street vending, repair services, or domestic services. More specifically, while total urban employment over this thirteen-year period grew by 81.7 million, 80 million of that growth was in irregular employment. As a result, irregular workers in China now comprise the largest single urban employment category.

The issue here isn’t even one of China versus the United States. It also isn’t one of dictatorship versus democracy. Rather it is one of capitalism’s logic. Said simply, large multinational corporations and their allies in both the United States and China have successfully created a global system of production and consumption that gives them maximum freedom of operation. It is this logic that keeps pushing more free trade agreements, attempts to create more flexible labor markets, and more attractive conditions for business investment, both here and in China. And it is this logic that needs to be challenged on both sides of the Pacific.

Corbin Hiar: Laurene Powell Jobs: Obama's Awkward State Of The Union Guest

2012-01-25T01:12:00.001-05:00

Corbin Hiar: Laurene Powell Jobs: Obama's Awkward State Of The Union Guest:

That's what makes the invitation given to Laurene Powell Jobs so unusual. Most well-known as wife of recently deceased Apple founder Steve Jobs, the bio sent out to reporters by the White House Press Office only mentions education reform work and the boards she sits on. Her late husband doesn't even get a mention. That may be because the Obama administration hopes to mention Powell Jobs' education foundations while ignoring the new attention being paid to how Apple and other high tech companies have benefited enormously from lax Chinese labor standards and the outsourcing manufacturing jobs.

The White House did not respond to questions about the omission. Powell Jobs could not be reached for comment.

Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and GOP Forget Iraq Mistake in Push for Iran War - The Daily Beast

2012-01-23T21:27:00.001-05:00

Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and GOP Forget Iraq Mistake in Push for Iran War - The Daily Beast:

The extraordinary thing about today’s Iran debate is that being wrong about Iraq has barely undermined the hawks’ influence at all. In 2012, as in 2002, Republicans are driving the political discussion, and in 2012, as in 2002, Democrats are petrified about being seen as too soft. Once again the media, which did not cover itself with glory in the run-up to Iraq, bears part of the blame. To allow Gingrich, Santorum and Romney to saber-rattle on Iran, as they have in debate after debate, without forcing them to confront the consequences of their saber-rattling on Iraq, is professional malpractice.

2012-01-22T21:07:00.000-05:00

2012-01-22T16:29:00.000-05:00

2012-01-21T16:00:00.001-05:00

2012-01-20T21:53:00.001-05:00

Hello All,

I can't tell you how excited I am to write this.

First, if you haven't heard, during this break in the run at the Public we spent a month collaborating with Ira Glass and THIS AMERICAN LIFE to adapt THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS for the radio.

It aired the weekend of January 6th in a special episode of THIS AMERICAN LIFE where the only story was our excerpt of the monologue adapted for the radio, followed by a discussion featuring TAL doing extensive fact checking, interviews with Chinese labor activists, and a debate between myself and Nicholas Kristoff.

You can listen to the show here.

Apple was asked to be on the show or to respond in any way. They refused.

In its first week the episode was the most downloaded in THIS AMERICAN LIFE's history. The internet exploded, and the story went everywhere—I received over a thousand emails in just a few days; the response was overwhelming.

That same week news broke that hundreds of Foxconn workers had a stand-off that lasted two days, where they were all threatening mass suicide by throwing themselves off the roof of the plant over their working conditions. Details

This is at Foxconn, a company which Apple's own 2011 Supplier Responsibility Report said was completely up to code, and which Apple applauded for their efforts. This is the company about which Steve Jobs said the employees enjoyed a virtual paradise of movie theaters, swimming pools, and luxury.

A week after our show was broadcast, Apple made an abrupt announcement. After years of stonewalling and silence, they released the full list of their suppliers, and agreed to outside, independent monitoring of working conditions in the factories they use. It is not everything, but it is a small step down the right road. Details

Many news outlets are crediting THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS for being a large factor in Apple's decision. I've received a number of emails from Apple employees who have told me they believe that hearing this story on THIS AMERICAN LIFE, a program many Apple employees listen to with their families and their children, created "a morale situation" that finally compelled Apple to begin to do the right thing.

I would like to thank everyone who has heard this story and then told it on to the next person. In theater we sometimes doubt that we can effect change—I think we all doubt it, sometimes. The truth is that telling stories, person to person, is the best way we have ever had of connecting to the human—and whatever this show may or may not have achieved, it has come out of the conversations happening night after night after night.

Thank you,

md

PS: THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS returns to the Public Theater on January 31st. You can use the code "iFriend" for discounted tickets to the first two weeks—I hope you'll join us and see how the show has grown. Tickets and details here.

FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » NYT's Apple Debate Factcheck, Without Facts

2012-01-20T20:06:00.001-05:00

FAIR Blog » Blog Archive » NYT's Apple Debate Factcheck, Without Facts:

If you want to know why Apple does what it does, Steve Jobs might not be the best source. You could ask one of the company's critics, like Mike Daisey. A recent Times review of Daisey's recent Steve Jobs monologue revealed this about Daisey's research into Apple's Chinese manufacturers:

While the official Chinese workday is eight hours, the norm at Foxconn is more like 12 and even longer when the introduction of a product is at hand. One worker died after a 34-hour shift. Some of the workers he meets are as young as 13, and because of the repetitive nature of the labor, their hands often become deformed and useless within a decade, rendering them unemployable.

It doesn't sound like the substandard American educational system explains Apple's corporate philosophy. But it's apparently what the Times believes, because Steve Jobs once said so.

CEO OF APPLE PARTNER FOXCONN: 'Managing One Million Animals Gives Me A Headache'

2012-01-19T15:58:00.003-05:00

CEO OF APPLE PARTNER FOXCONN: 'Managing One Million Animals Gives Me A Headache':

According to WantChinaTimes, Terry Gou, the head of Hon Hai (Foxconn), the largest contract manufacturer in the world, had this to say at a recent meeting with his senior managers:
"Hon Hai has a workforce of over one million worldwide and as human beings are also animals, to manage one million animals gives me a headache," said Hon Hai chairman Terry Gou at a recent year-end party, adding that he wants to learn from Chin Shih-chien, director of Taipei Zoo, regarding how animals should be managed.

2012-01-19T15:58:00.001-05:00

An Eighth-Grader's Letter to Apple's CEO, Tim Cook | Care2 Causes

2012-01-19T11:40:00.001-05:00

An Eighth-Grader's Letter to Apple's CEO, Tim Cook:

On the first day of class, I had the students listen to the episode themselves. Then I gave them a homework assignment to write to Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, to share their thoughts, feelings and ideas. I wanted these students to have the opportunity to use their voice to help change this unjust and inhumane system, since they couldn’t use the power of their wallets to simply choose more humane electronics.

Below is just one of their letters. I hope it will inspire you to also use your voice to create change.

Dear Mr. Cook,

I am an eighth grader from Maine, and I have recently listened to the Public Radio broadcast, “Mr. Daisey and the Apple Factory.” This story, which I assume you may have heard, was told by a man named Mike Daisey, who is a devotee of your company, and independently went to one of your supplier’s factories in Shenzhen, China.

I am writing to you and Apple because of what Mike Daisey, and other sources, have witnessed in the Apple Factory, Foxconn. I learned many things in Mr. Daisey’s talk, the first being that your products are assembled manually by humans in massive Asian factories. The second fact is Foxconn’s workers, the hundreds of thousands of them, have very low wages. And the third and most distressing thing that Mike Daisey saw was the employee’s hands. Carpal tunnel at young ages, hands ruined by the continuous motions of assembling the same piece over and over again. I, at this moment, feel so lucky to live in a place where I will never have to do such a job.

I feel it is my civil duty to write to you in the hope that with a collective effort, your prestigious company can rise out of the cult of inhumane factories.

I am not suggesting that you change your whole system, for I am aware that it is important for Apple to make money, and these people to have jobs, but Apple can make small changes, like shorter work hours, rotations on the lines, and/or slightly larger wages, to deeply change many lives.

Thank you for your consideration, Mr. Cook.

Respectfully,

Abigail Frost (age 13)

2012-01-19T09:31:00.001-05:00

2012-01-14T19:03:00.000-05:00

2012-01-12T15:36:00.001-05:00

These were sketched during ALL THE HOURS IN THE DAY, my 24 hour monologue which was performed at the T:BA Festival in Portland last fall. To see the artist's complete collection, click here.

Report: Mass Suicide Threats at Xbox 360 Plant [UPDATE]

2012-01-10T15:58:00.001-05:00

Report: Mass Suicide Threats at Xbox 360 Plant:

On Jan. 2, over 300 employees at a Foxconn plan in Wuhan, China threatened to throw themselves off a building in a mass suicide. Foxconn makes Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony products. These workers manufacture Xbox 360s.

According to Chinese anti-government website Watch China Times, the workers were protesting denied compensation they were promised.

On Jan. 2, the workers asked for a raise. Foxconn told them they could either keep their jobs with no pay increase or quit and get compensation. Most decided to quit with compensation. However, the agreement was supposedly terminated, and the workers never received their payments.

2012-01-06T16:55:00.000-05:00

Hello THIS AMERICAN LIFE listeners!

If you came to this site by way of this week’s TAL episode, I thought I’d give you a quick guide to information on my work and myself.

First, you may be interested in hearing the rest of the story: my monologue THE AGONY AND THE ECSTASY OF STEVE JOBS. The show returns to New York City at the Public Theater on January 31st, and you can buy your tickets here.

I’m very proud of what Ira and I created for THIS AMERICAN LIFE, but if you’d like to experience the full story, being there live is the best way to do that. Some of the most fascinating, heartbreaking, and hilarious moments had to be cut for the radio, and it fleshes out the story fully in unexpected ways. For those of you who don’t usually go to the theater, I hope you’ll consider it.

If you’re curious about what I do, my monologues page has extensive details on my other works. A good example is THE LAST CARGO CULT, a show about my journey to a remote South Pacific island whose people worship America and its cargo,and that narrative is then woven against a searing examination of the international financial crisis. The show became well-known for the fact that I would give away all of the money I was paid for the show in every performance, only keeping money given to me freely in a bowl on the stage at the end of the show, as part of a way of examining the abstraction of money. Over hundreds of performances we didn’t lose money—people, when free to choose, chose to see that we were paid. You can view a trailer of that show here:

Most recently I created a monologue called ALL THE HOURS IN THE DAY, which was a 24 hour performance—a single braided narrative with many strands that lasts an entire day, and which I perform the entirety of. It happened in Portland at the Time Based Art Festival, and some great pieces about what that show was like for the hundreds of people who came on the journey can be found here, here, and here.

On the lighter side, here is a performance I gave at an Occupy Wall Street event which culminates with me disrobing and openly challenging Mike Bloomberg to a Mexican wrestling match:

This site is kept updated with where I will be performing, and you can subscribe through the sidebar to get occasional emails with updates and invitations to events the public doesn’t get to hear about. I don’t spam or sell your name or engage in any form of ass-hattery.

If you need to reach me directly, the best way is the email link at the top of the page—I don’t always respond immediately, but it does get to me.

Be seeing you,

md

2012-01-05T20:53:00.001-05:00

BEST NYTIMES CORRECTION EVER:

2012-01-05T10:33:00.001-05:00

Comment: Un-American Activities : The New Yorker

2012-01-04T09:36:00.001-05:00

Comment: Un-American Activities : The New Yorker:

Several things are worth noting here. The first is that, in today’s Republican politics, one reliable way to reach beyond the Christian base is by whipping up nationalistic hysteria with language lifted straight from the McCarthy era. If criminalizing all abortions and nullifying all gay marriages are a little too sectarian for you, surely you’d like to try some old-fashioned traitor-hunting. (Santorum has also accused Obama of “sid[ing] with evil” in Iran, a country with which he plainly wants to go to war.)

The second is that this kind of gutter rhetoric is so routine in the Republican campaign that it’s not worth a political journalist’s time to point it out. In 2008, when Michele Bachmann suggested that Barack Obama and an unknown number of her colleagues in Congress were anti-American, there was a flurry of criticism; three years later, when a surging Presidential candidate states it flatly about a sitting President, there’s no response at all. Certain forms of deterioration—like writers using “impact” as a verb, or basketball coaches screaming about every foul—become acceptable by attrition, because critics lose the energy to call them out. Eventually, people even stop remembering that they’re wrong.

And the third, related point is that, once demagogy and falsehoods become routine, there isn’t much for the political journalist to do except handicap the race and report on the candidate’s mood.

Proposed law prohibits TSA employees from dressing like cops - Boing Boing

2012-01-03T16:36:00.001-05:00

Proposed law prohibits TSA employees from dressing like cops - Boing Boing:

The STRIP Act, proposed in the US House of Reps, would require TSA employees to stop dressing like police officers, because they aren't cops, and when they give orders to travellers, travellers assume that these are the orders of real law enforcement officers, rather than minor bureaucrats:

The bill, which has drawn 29 co-sponsors in the few weeks since it was introduced, would prohibit any TSA employee "who has not received federal law enforcement training or is not eligible for federal law enforcement benefits from using the official job title of officer, or wearing a metal badge resembling a police badge or a uniform resembling the uniform of a federal law enforcement officer."

Fwd: Good Morning!

2012-01-03T09:26:00.000-05:00

Friedman (unit) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

2012-01-03T00:01:00.003-05:00

Friedman (unit) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

The Friedman, or Friedman Unit (F.U.), is a tongue-in-cheek neologism coined by blogger Atrios (Duncan Black) on May 21, 2006.

A Friedman is a unit of time equal to six months in the future.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8] The Huffington Post cited it as the "Best New Phrase" of 2006.

The term is in reference to a May 16, 2006 article by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) detailing columnist Thomas Friedman's repeated use of "the next six months" as the period in which, according to Friedman, "we're going to find out...whether a decent outcome is possible" in the Iraq War. As documented by FAIR, Friedman had been making such six-month predictions for a period of two and a half years, on at least fourteen different occasions, starting with a column in the November 30, 2003 edition of The New York Times, in which he stated: "The next six months in Iraq—which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there—are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time."

The term has been used in general to describe any pronouncement of a critical period for the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Such pronouncements have been made by numerous politicians and military officials involved in the war.

More generally, the concept can refer to any event or "critical period" which is repeatedly expected to happen in the near future, but repeatedly fails to occur.

雲浪來襲

2012-01-03T00:01:00.001-05:00

When the Clock Strikes

2012-01-01T19:50:00.001-05:00

In the spirit of the holidays, here is the complete audio of last night's New Year’s Eve show, WHEN THE CLOCK STRIKES, performed for a sold out crowd at the Huntington Theatre as part of Boston’s First Night festival:

Download the audio here

This is, as the kids call it, freestyling—the monologue was woven in real time in front of the audience, and it touches on death, rebirth, the horrors of the inevitable disappointment of New Year’s Eve, an insane film director in the Ukraine, Samuel Beckett’s face, the pleasures of television, Nazi stormtroopers, theatre as a metaphor for the nature of life, and a survival guide for the coming jaegermeister zombie apocalypse. It concerns the nature of New England Puritans—their origins, feeding habits, and elaborate mating rituals. It is also a document detailing how one might attempt to have a New Year’s Eve that does not suck.

The audio isn’t perfect, and the monologue was written on the wind, but take it in the spirit it is intended—a small gift for the year ahead.

Be seeing you,

md

flickr.com

2012-01-01T19:46:00.001-05:00

Happy contrafactual public domain day (what you've lost) - Boing Boing

2012-01-01T16:47:00.003-05:00

Happy contrafactual public domain day (what you've lost) - Boing Boing:

Jennifer Jenkins sez, "What could have been entering the public domain in the US on January 1, 2012? Under the law that existed until 1978... Works from 1955. Asimov's The End of Eternity, Nabokov's Lolita, the play Inherit the Wind, Hitchcock's To Catch a Thief, Disney's Lady and the Tramp, Rebel Without a Cause, The Seven Year Itch, the music for Blue Suede Shoes and Tutti Frutti, and Laurence Olivier's film version of Richard III... What is entering the public domain today? Nothing."

BrickArms - Prototypes Batch 1

2012-01-01T16:47:00.001-05:00

Praxis Theatre’s Top 10 of the Top 10 for 2011 – Praxis Theatre

2011-12-31T00:09:00.001-05:00

Praxis Theatre’s Top 10 of the Top 10 for 2011 – Praxis Theatre:

Cult of Mac reports that in February of this year, bad publicity was at an all-time high surrounding the conditions and suicides at the Chinese factory Foxconn, Apple’s largest supplier. Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak was apparently moved to tears by the story as told by Mike Daisey when he saw the show, and urged Tim Cook, Apple’s Acting CEO to see it as well, saying “I will never be the same after seeing that show.” [Full disclosure: this list was created on two Macbooks, with some side research on one iPad, after tweeting to one another via two iPhones.]

We’re not surprised by Wozniak’s reaction to Daisey’s performance. Daisey has appeared on a number of 2011 lists across North America, and for the New York Times list of Cleverest Theatrical Moments a category was created for “most remarkable storyteller who isn’t Mike Daisey”. Daisey was a definite influence on our co-production of You Should Have Stayed Home at SummerWorks this summer, and we hope he’ll come to Toronto soon.

Sunfall.

2011-12-30T18:08:00.001-05:00

A Reunion with Boredom by Charles Simic | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books

2011-12-30T17:00:00.001-05:00

A Reunion with Boredom by Charles Simic | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books:

Do people still suffer from periods of boredom even with computers, smart phones and tablets to occupy them endlessly? There’s also television, of course, which in homes of many Americans is on twenty-four hours a day, making it harder and harder to find a quiet place to sit and think. Even neighborhood bars, the old refuge of introspective loners, now have huge TV screens alternating between sports and chatter to divert them from their thoughts. As soon as college students are out of class, cell phones, and iPods materialize in their hands, requiring full concentration and making them instantly oblivious of their surroundings. I imagine Romeo and Juliet would send text messages to each other today as they strolled around Verona, though I find it hard to picture Hamlet advising Ophelia to betake herself to a nunnery.

These and other thoughts came to me as I sat in a dark house for three days in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. Being without lights and water is a fairly common experience for those of us who live in rural areas on roads lined with old trees. Every major rainstorm or snowstorm is almost certain to bring down the lines, which, because of the relative scarcity of population, are a low priority for the power company to fix. We use oil lamps and most often candles, so our evenings around the dining room table resemble séances. We sit with our heads bowed as if trying to summon spirits, while in truth struggling to see what’s on our dinner plates. Being temporarily unable to use the technology we’ve grown dependent on to inform ourselves about the rest of the world, communicate with others, and pass the time, is a reminder of our alarming dependence on them. “Nights are so boring!” my neighbors kept repeating. Our days were not much better, with overcast skies that made it even difficult to read indoors. All of this reminded me of the days of my youth when my family, like so many others, lived in a monastic solitude when the weather was bad, since we had no television. It wasn’t in church, but on dark autumn days and winter nights that I had an inkling of what they meant when they spoke about eternity. Everyone read in order to escape boredom. I had friends so addicted to books, their parents were convinced they were going crazy with so many strange stories and ideas running like fever through their brains, not to mention becoming hard of hearing, after failing to perform the simplest household chores like letting the cat out.

2011-12-29T02:22:00.001-05:00

‘Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close’ With Tom Hanks - Review - NYTimes.com

2011-12-28T00:59:00.001-05:00

‘Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close’ With Tom Hanks - Review - NYTimes.com:

But it’s an impossible role in an impossible movie that has no reason for being other than as another pop-culture palliative for a trauma it can’t bear to face. In truth, “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” isn’t about Sept. 11. It’s about the impulse to drain that day of its specificity and turn it into yet another wellspring of generic emotions: sadness, loneliness, happiness. This is how kitsch works. It exploits familiar images, be they puppies or babies — or, as in the case of this movie, the twin towers — and tries to make us feel good, even virtuous, simply about feeling. And, yes, you may cry, but when tears are milked as they are here, the truer response should be rage.

The Big Lie - The Daily Beast

2011-12-27T12:03:00.001-05:00

The Big Lie - The Daily Beast:

I had my doubts from the beginning. A few months after I started to work downtown, I ran into an old friend from college and before, a man later to become one of New York’s most esteemed writers and editors.

“So,” he asked, “how do you like what you’re doing now?”

“I like it quite a lot,” I said. And this was true: these were new frontiers for me, the pace was lively, the money was good enough ($6,500 a year), and there was so much to learn. But there was one aspect of Wall Street that I found morally confusing if not distasteful: “There’s one thing that bothers me, though. It’s this: on the one hand the New York Stock Exchange has sent its president, the estimable G. Keith Funston, out into the countryside, supported by an expensive, extensive advertising campaign, to exhort the proletariat to Own your share of America! As if buying 50 shares of IBM or GM in 1961 is as much of a civic duty as buying a $100 war bond in 1943.”

I then added, “But here’s the thing. At the same time as Funston’s out there doing his thing, if you ask any veteran Wall Street pro how the Street works, the first thing he’ll tell you is: The public is always wrong. Always.” I paused to let that sink in, then confessed, “I have to tell you, I have trouble squaring that circle.”

2011 in Review: The Year Secrecy Jumped the Shark | Electronic Frontier Foundation

2011-12-27T10:13:00.001-05:00

2011 in Review: The Year Secrecy Jumped the Shark | Electronic Frontier Foundation:

The government has been using its secrecy system in absurd ways for decades, but 2011 was particularly egregious. Here are a few examples:

Government report concludes the government classified 77 million documents in 2010, a 40% increase on the year before. The number of people with security clearances exceeded 4.2. million, more people than the city of Los Angeles.

Government tells Air Force families, including their kids, it’s illegal to read WikiLeaks. The month before, the Air Force barred its service members fighting abroad from reading the New York Times—the country’s Paper of Record.

Lawyers for Guantanamo detainees were barred from reading the WikiLeaks Guantanamo files, despite their contents being plastered on the front page of the New York Times.

President Obama refuses to say the words “drone” or “C.I.A” despite the C.I.A. drone program being on the front pages of the nation’s newspapers every day.

2011-12-26T12:23:00.001-05:00

2011-12-24T14:29:00.000-05:00

"Fantasía en rojo tul"

2011-12-24T10:18:00.001-05:00

Exclusive: Leaked Details of How Facebook Plans To Sell Your Timeline to Advertisers | Betabeat — News, gossip and intel from Silicon Alley 2.0.

2011-12-24T10:17:00.001-05:00

Exclusive: Leaked Details of How Facebook Plans To Sell Your Timeline to Advertisers | Betabeat — News, gossip and intel from Silicon Alley 2.0.:

What most users don’t know is that the new features being introduced are all centered around increasing the value of Facebook to advertisers, to the point where Facebook representatives have been selling the idea that Timeline is actually about re-conceptualizing users around their consumer preferences, or as they put it, “brands are now an essential part of people’s identities.”

The name itself is cleverly designed to conceal the fact that your profile no longer arranges information chronologically. Yes, things are laid out by year and by month. But, when it comes to what’s displayed to your social circle at any given time, other metrics, including direct payments to Facebook itself, will now influence the ranking and placement of stories. This payola will be a crucial part of the graph rank, the new metric for placement that the social network uses to determine what appears on your profile.

2011-12-23T19:21:00.001-05:00

A tale of two systems | Remapping Debate

2011-12-23T11:49:00.001-05:00

A tale of two systems | Remapping Debate:

American autoworkers are constantly told that high-wage work is an unsustainable relic in the face of a hyper-competitive, globalized marketplace. Apostles of neo-liberal economic theory — both in the public and private sectors — have stressed the message that worker adaptation is necessary to survive. Indeed, Steven Rattner, President Obama’s “car czar” during the restructuring of General Motors and Chrysler in early 2009, spoke last week of his regret that the federal government had not required the United Auto workers to take a wage cut at that time to enhance the competitiveness of those companies, comments similar to those he made in a recently published book (after the outcry created by last week’s remarks, Rattner yesterday backed away from them, though reiterating his view that more “shared sacrifice” would have bolstered American competitiveness).

Governments, too, the globalists have contended, should not think that markets can or should be controlled. As Remapping Debate reported earlier this year in an article about the role of large consulting firms in the promotion of the notion that national policy can and must allow global capital a free hand, McKinsey & Co. was already arguing back in 1994 that “a national government has no choice but to move forward to embrace the global capital market unless it wants to harm its own citizens, its economy and its own purposes.”

But the case of German automakers — BMW, Daimler, and Volkswagen — tells a different story. Each company produces vehicles not only in Germany, but also in “transplant” factories in the U.S. The former are characterized by high wages and high union membership; the U.S. plants pay lower wages and are located in so-called “right-to-work” (anti-union) states.

It turns out that “inevitability” has nothing to do with the differing conditions; the salient difference is that, in Germany, the automakers operate within an environment that precludes a race to the bottom; in the U.S., they operate within an environment that encourages such a race.

2011-12-22T22:18:00.001-05:00

Suzanne Morrison: The tour in review

2011-12-22T19:46:00.001-05:00

Suzanne Morrison: The tour in review:

Promoting a book is . . . well, good holy hell, it's just insane. It's so much fun, and it makes you completely mentally ill. Try talking about yourself non-stop for two months, taking breaks only to switch time zones by plane, train, or automobile, and you've got the idea. It's more overwhelming than I ever would have imagined. After nearly a month on the road, I flew home with about 16 hours to kill before I was scheduled to read at Elliott Bay Book Company. During my time away, I had been on two continents, oscillating between anxiety and exhilaration, enjoying too little sleep and too much of the kind of diet I consume while traveling (whatever protein I can find to avoid passing out; red wine & coffee) and now I arrived at Elliott Bay hoping I would at least remember the name of my own book and my own self, should anyone ask me.

2011-12-22T19:40:00.001-05:00

2011-12-22T16:54:00.001-05:00

n+1: Outsourcing Jobs

2011-12-21T11:03:00.001-05:00

n+1: Outsourcing Jobs:

It takes confidence to sit in front of an audience, armed with a few pages of notes and one glass of water, wearing clothes you may have slept in, using your rubbery face as your primary prop, to discuss warmly but ultimately damningly, for nearly two hours, a man you never met. A man thought of as a rare contemporary hero. A man who died five weeks earlier. What gives Mike Daisey, a veteran monologist, the confidence and endurance to perform The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs daily is, I suspect, justice. The jumpy, chilling, riotous monologue has the expected: scenes from the life of Steve Jobs and Apple; hilarious set pieces about Daisey’s technology geekishness. But its heart lies in Daisey’s disillusionment from his “religion” of Apple after years researching how Apple products are made, most upsettingly by interviewing workers outside the Shenzhen, China factory of Foxconn, a major manufacturer of Apple products. Daisey witnessed the company that produced his objects of identity be ruthlessly indifferent to the lives of the workers making them. His indictment is personal, directed at Jobs, but it leaves no one innocent. After the performance, I needed to run an errand, to buy a toaster. But the stores—buying and selling—sickened me. Toast would have to wait.

2011-12-19T02:33:00.001-05:00

Little Oscar and Crowd

2011-12-16T18:15:00.001-05:00

What the water gave me

2011-12-16T17:30:00.003-05:00

Louis C.K. | TV | Interview | The A.V. Club

2011-12-16T17:30:00.001-05:00

Louis C.K. | TV | Interview | The A.V. Club:

Louis C.K.: This is pre-mortem.

AVC: Does it worry you when things seem to be going too well?

LCK: Not at all. I expect there to be a cycle and to be back out on the street again at some point. That’s the nature of it. The good thing about living that cycle a lot, like I have, is that you survive the downside, and make use of the downside, so you don’t fear it anymore. I’m not worried about that. I’m enjoying the work while I get it right now. This is really great, and I have high hopes for [Louie], but not expectations. [Laughs.] Actually, in this case, I do, but I’ve had high expectations before, and so much of it isn’t up to me that I’m just enjoying the work. If I lose any of the stuff I’m getting right now, I’ve always got the road. Stand-up makes you so autonomous and self-sufficient that it really helps with that part of show business.

AVC: You have complete control.

LCK: I can go out on the road. I can make money. I can do what I do in its purest form without asking anybody for permission. You can’t cancel my stand-up tours. It’s impossible. There’s too many separate bosses. There is no “bosses.” I rent these theaters now. When I worked the clubs, it was very different. Pretty much you needed to please the Improvs, but if I get cancelled, I can put together a stand-up tour and go on the road and continue generating. I don’t worry that way anymore. I don’t know what it’s like to be an actor, where if your show gets cancelled, really you’re just a bum. [Laughs.] It must be really awful. You can’t go out and do a little acting, you know what I mean? If I’m not on tour, I can run down to the comedy club and do a little stand-up. If you’re an actor, you can’t go—I guess there’s forms of it.

2011-12-16T12:44:00.001-05:00

2011-12-10T02:08:00.001-05:00

Bloomberg Claims NYPD Didn't Prevent Press From Reporting On Occupy Wall Street Raid: Gothamist

2011-12-09T16:27:00.001-05:00

Bloomberg Claims NYPD Didn't Prevent Press From Reporting On Occupy Wall Street Raid: Gothamist:

Bloomberg insisted that there was no media blackout during the early morning raid: "We didn't keep anybody from reporting, you just had to stand to the side. You don't have a right as a press person to stand in the way just in the interest of getting the story...the police [showed] amazing restraint. This is the greatest police department in the world. The number of times police fire their weapons here is so much less than any other police department."

We reported at the time of the raid that an NPR reporter, a New York Times reporter, and a City Councilmember were all arrested. A New York Post reporter was allegedly put in a "choke hold" by the police, an NBC reporter's press pass was reportedly confiscated, and some reporters and protesters were hit with pepper spray during skirmishes with police after the eviction. Bloomberg claimed at the time that reporters were only asked to "stand to the side"—it may have been literally true, but many reporters said the "side" in this case was so far away from the park that reporting the eviction in any serious way proved seriously difficult.

Later, the Society of Professional Journalists condemned the city's actions and said the Mayor's efforts insinuated what "would seem to be a strategic decision to cloak potentially volatile police activity from the public."

You Have History: Occupied Seattle in 1970, 1978, and 1985-'93 | Slog

2011-12-08T23:10:00.001-05:00

You Have History: Occupied Seattle in 1970, 1978, and 1985-'93 | Slog:

"Time to stop occupying and start doing!" someone threw at me recently on Facebook.

With all due respect and even acknowledging Occupy Seattle's flaws, I call bullshit: Occupying is doing. And there's more than one way to Occupy: If you didn't like the ragtag Westlake occupation and you don't like the SCCC increasingly homeless-encampment occupation (which, hey, if you don't like it, your chief problem shouldn't be with Occupy but with homelessness), so what? These two Occupy Seattles already were different from each other, and the next incarnation has yet to be written. It looks like Occupy Seattle's days are numbered at SCCC, but I believe the tactic of physical occupation of spaces still has plenty of life in it.

It also has inspiring history in Seattle.

Country's Largest Corporations Spend More Money On Lobbying Than Taxes: Gothamist

2011-12-07T22:27:00.001-05:00

Country's Largest Corporations Spend More Money On Lobbying Than Taxes: Gothamist:

In a "remember me, three years ago?" speech in Kansas yesterday, President Obama told the crowd, "This country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share and when everyone plays by the same rules." A new report [pdf] from the non-profit organization Public Campaign shows that 30 of the country's largest corporations—including GE, Wells Fargo, Verizon, and Fed Ex—paid more to lobby Congress from 2008 through 2010 than they did in federal income taxes. What country was the president referring to?

Of the 30 companies, only one actually paid any federal income taxes: FedEx.

2011-12-07T08:19:00.001-05:00

2011-12-06T19:55:00.001-05:00

2011-12-06T19:37:00.001-05:00

play and ideas: Give My Regards to Occupy Broadway: Times Square as a Place Where Stories Start (once again)

2011-12-06T14:15:00.001-05:00

play and ideas: Give My Regards to Occupy Broadway: Times Square as a Place Where Stories Start (once again):

Mike Daisey stood up around midnight. “On the subway up to the show,” Daisey mused he had no idea of how many people he would be performing for. He confessed he had no idea what he was getting into. “And I’m delighted you’re here,” he explained, with a humble gentleness, as the crowd cheered. He immediately established a rapport with the crowd. To hold a space really is about connecting with the crowd and hearing what they need, what are their concerns, etc. . “Its an amazing thing to try to hold a space. Cause that’s what we do in the theater, we hold spaces. But one of the tricks they never tell you is, to not hold it at all, but to give it back to the people, to give it back to the audience. They are the source, the thought, the source. You don’t do anything. You take what you are given, you mediate that and give it back to them.” His monologue really was a highpoint. In a way, he was talking about what Talen was talking about, the links between audience and self, community and city, the collective experience of stories, dreams, unconscious desires, reflections on the tragicomic continuum of human experience, all of which is necessary to truly say we are living democratically. It was that contract of experience which produced Kusher in Times Square out of the AIDS crisis.

2011-12-06T08:08:00.001-05:00

Comparing Fred Armisen’s ‘SNL’ Obama to Dana Carvey’s Bush - NYTimes.com

2011-12-05T10:51:00.001-05:00

Comparing Fred Armisen’s ‘SNL’ Obama to Dana Carvey’s Bush - NYTimes.com:

“People say the economy has problems,” Mr. Carvey said in a robotic, high-pitched whine in an Oval Office address. “Try telling it to that guy out there in Oregon who is working on that thing, doing it, going round and round in the whole area out there.”

Most of Mr. Carvey’s sketches were solitary speeches delivered at a desk, with no gimmicks and relatively few jokes. The humor was rooted in character. What made Mr. Carvey such a thrillingly adventurous and funny performer is that he kept pushing his cartoonish character in more flamboyant directions.

His elaborate hand gestures became so ornamental that they looked like something out of Peking Opera. As he refined the character, his language grew vaguer and vaguer, an evolution that was actually an articulate comment on the decline of clarity in political rhetoric. Sentences turned into fragments, then words turned into mumblings. “Not going to do it” became “na ga da.” It was so outlandish that it appeared less scathing than it actually was. Mr. Bush, who appeared on the show, seemed genuinely to like it.

Occupy Broadway Draws Artists, Protesters To Theater District

2011-12-05T02:50:00.001-05:00

Occupy Broadway Draws Artists, Protesters To Theater District:

Perhaps the most powerful moment came just before midnight on Friday when Mike Daisey, the monologist and author who is currently appearing in "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs" at the Public Theater, delivered an impassioned speech about consumerism, Mayor Bloomberg and Occupy Wall Street. An enormous crowd of people formed as he took the stage.

"I'm very sympathetic to the desire to not only have there be protests, but also protests that incorporate an artistic movement and incorporate the skills of the artistic community," Daisey told The Huffington Post on Saturday between performances of his show at the Public. "And I think that it's a really exciting thing to see the arts become civically and politically engaged. I'm just intensely interested in all of it."

"I think it's an important moment for people to stand up," Daisey continued. "There's a huge number of people in New York who profess belief systems that coincide with or overlap with the concerns of the protesters, but they don't feel sufficiently stirred yet to go and have a conversation. And if they want to have a conversation, if people want to talk about the nature of equality and the lack of equality in this country, and if they want to talk about economic power and about corporatism, this is a platform to talk about those things. They're all topics that I've been talking about for years in my monologues."

"I think it's a really crucial time, and the more and more people sort of stand on the sidelines, gawking, the more they are going to find that they're on the wrong side of history."

2011-12-04T21:56:00.001-05:00

2011-12-04T20:31:00.000-05:00

2011-12-04T12:06:00.001-05:00

The $7 trillion secret loan program: The government and big banks should be punished for deceiving the public about their hush-hush bailout scheme. - Slate Magazine

2011-12-04T12:03:00.001-05:00

The $7 trillion secret loan program: The government and big banks should be punished for deceiving the public about their hush-hush bailout scheme. - Slate Magazine:

Imagine you walked into a bank, applied for a personal line of credit, and filled out all the paperwork claiming to have no debts and an income of $200,000 per year. The bank, based on these representations, extended you the line of credit. Then, three years later, after fighting disclosure all the way, you were forced by a court to tell the truth: At the time you made the statements to the bank, you actually were unemployed, you had a $1 million mortgage on your house on which you had failed to make payments for six months, and you hadn’t paid even the minimum on your credit-card bills for three months. Do you think the bank would just say: Never mind, don’t worry about it? Of course not. Whether or not you had paid back the personal line of credit, three FBI agents would be at your door within hours.

Yet this is exactly what the major American banks have done to the public. During the deepest, darkest period of the financial cataclysm, the CEOs of major banks maintained in statements to the public, to the market at large, and to their own shareholders that the banks were in good financial shape, didn’t want to take TARP funds, and that the regulatory framework governing our banking system should not be altered. Trust us, they said. Yet, unknown to the public and the Congress, these same banks had been borrowing massive amounts from the government to remain afloat. The total numbers are staggering: $7.7 trillion of credit—one-half of the GDP of the entire nation. $460 billion was lent to J.P. Morgan, Bank of America, Citibank, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley alone—without anybody other than a few select officials at the Fed and the Treasury knowing. This was perhaps the single most massive allocation of capital from public to private hands in our history, and nobody was told. This was not TARP: This was secret Fed lending. And although it has since been repaid, it is clear why the banks didn’t want us to know about it: They didn’t want to admit the magnitude of their financial distress.

Christmas At Rockefeller Center 2011

2011-12-04T12:02:00.001-05:00

Swiss gov't study: downloading leads to sales, so we're keeping it legal - Boing Boing

2011-12-04T11:59:00.003-05:00

Swiss gov't study: downloading leads to sales, so we're keeping it legal - Boing Boing:

The Swiss government commissioned a study on the impact of copyright-infringing downloading. The independent study concluded that downloaders use the money they spend to buy more legitimate entertainment products. So they've concluded to maintain Switzerland's extant copyright law, which makes downloading for personal use legal. It's a rare victory for evidence-based policy in a world dominated by shrill assertions of lost jobs and revenue, backed by funny-number "statistics" from industry-commissioned researchers.

2011-12-04T11:59:00.001-05:00

2011-12-04T11:00:00.001-05:00

This is it—last day. It's a very sweet closing, because we know we'll be back in the same theater in January, but final performances still always have a bittersweet magic. With each scene that drops away for the final time, vanishing into the air, it's like the magic of memory itself. It has been an incredible run, and my thanks to the audiences who made that possible.

Summer Sheiling, Lewis

2011-12-04T00:41:00.001-05:00

2011-12-03T19:27:00.001-05:00

A Pale and Lovely Place by Kevin Joyce

2011-12-03T19:02:00.000-05:00

The Dark Side of Enlightenment:

Joyce says that the initial audience reactions were enthusiastic but befuddled—people didn't know what it was, but they knew that they liked it. That makes sense—A Pale and Lovely Place can be simultaneously, confoundingly savage and charming. Sometimes the text is menacing and the delivery is light, as in the story of the huckster chasing a lost little boy down an alleyway. Sometimes the text is light but the delivery is menacing: "So just remember, boys and girls, you're important—and everybody wants to be your special, special friend!"

It's not all about Christianity, Faust, and the Devil. Sometimes, Joyce's description of the Covenant sounds like a promise of enlightenment in the language of yoga, Buddhism, and the other bits of Asian theology that have floated across the Pacific and into America's culture of self-improvement. In one passage, Joyce tells us that we "often confuse desire with reality" and cheerfully suggests an exercise to release us from the chains of "desire's bondage":

For the children in tonight's audience, I encourage you to try this at home. Find a friend or nearby family member, and ask them to lie prostrate on a bed of nails or sharp glass shards. Then begin to lightly pound on their back with a hammer or some similarly heavy, blunt object. As they scream or cry, imagine some thing or person you truly desire, especially a desire that may be difficult or impossible to attain—true happiness, for example, or a full head of real hair—and hold that vision in your mind, mingling it and mixing it with the screams of your beloved friend or family member. This type of activity is guaranteed by the Covenant to rid you of the desire forever.

A Pale and Lovely Place is something to be befuddled by and enthusiastic about, a short but intense trip through the moral looking-glass, where it's hard to tell the good from the evil.

Magic (explored! #7 & front page!)

2011-12-03T10:59:00.001-05:00

2011-12-03T04:02:00.001-05:00

2011-12-02T18:55:00.002-05:00

2011-12-02T18:55:00.001-05:00

2011-12-02T18:50:00.001-05:00

Mike Daisey, The Civilians, et al. Taking Part in OCCUPY BROADWAY Today

2011-12-02T11:54:00.001-05:00

Mike Daisey, The Civilians, et al. Taking Part in OCCUPY BROADWAY Today:

On December 2, 2011 New York artists will introduce tourists and New Yorkers going to Broadway shows or shopping themselves into debt to the idea of occupation as creative resistance with non-stop free performances. Occupy Broadway will set up in a privately owned public space (POPS) near Times Square, turning once blandified space into a space for cultural production.

“The city created privately owned public spaces for the people, in exchange for bonus height and bulk in these spaces,” notes Benjamin Shepard, co-author of The Beach Beneath the Streets. “As State Judge Stallman made clear last week, the people have a right to be in these spaces 24 hours a day.”

In recent weeks, there has been a push to tramp on our rights to public assembly, public space and by extension democracy itself. In response, Occupy Broadway joins a global struggle using occupation as a form of creative resistance. Occupations are spreading around the world and around New York City, even uotown. Bloomberg Beware, you take our park, Now Liberty Park is everywhere! In a time when downtown theaters are rapidly losing their spaces, being turned into high-end fashion stores, Occupy Broadway is a symbolic attempt to regain the space of theatre as an accessible, popular art form, bringing it back to where it all started - in a public space, for the common citizen.

flickr.com

2011-12-02T02:08:00.003-05:00

An Open Letter From a Dancer Who Refused to Participate in Marina Abramovic’s MOCA Performance | Artinfo

2011-12-02T02:08:00.001-05:00

An Open Letter From a Dancer Who Refused to Participate in Marina Abramovic’s MOCA Performance | Artinfo:

I refused to participate as a performer because what I anticipated would be a few hours of creative labor, a meal, and the chance to network with like-minded colleagues turned out to be an unfairly remunerated job. I was expected to lie naked and speechless on a slowly rotating table, starting from before guests arrived and lasting until after they left (a total of nearly four hours). I was expected to ignore (by staying in what Abramovic refers to as "performance mode") any potential physical or verbal harassment while performing. I was expected to commit to fifteen hours of rehearsal time, and sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement stating that if I spoke to anyone about what happened in the audition I was liable for being sued by Bounce Events, Marketing, Inc., the event’s producer, for a sum of $1 million dollars plus attorney fees.

2011-11-30T17:04:00.001-05:00

Man arrested at Large Hadron Collider claims he's from the future | CNET UK

2011-11-30T17:03:00.001-05:00

Man arrested at Large Hadron Collider claims he's from the future | CNET UK:

A would-be saboteur arrested today at the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland made the bizarre claim that he was from the future. Eloi Cole, a strangely dressed young man, said that he had travelled back in time to prevent the LHC from destroying the world.

The LHC successfully collided particles at record force earlier this week, a milestone Mr Cole was attempting to disrupt by stopping supplies of Mountain Dew to the experiment's vending machines. He also claimed responsibility for the infamous baguette sabotage in November last year.

Mr Cole was seized by Swiss police after CERN security guards spotted him rooting around in bins. He explained that he was looking for fuel for his 'time machine power unit', a device that resembled a kitchen blender.

Police said Mr Cole, who was wearing a bow tie and rather too much tweed for his age, would not reveal his country of origin. "Countries do not exist where I am from. The discovery of the Higgs boson led to limitless power, the elimination of poverty and Kit-Kats for everyone. It is a communist chocolate hellhole and I'm here to stop it ever happening."

Tonight's Sunset - The View to the South

2011-11-30T01:24:00.005-05:00

An Awkward Moment With Police Commissioner Ray Kelly – Bwog

2011-11-30T01:24:00.003-05:00

An Awkward Moment With Police Commissioner Ray Kelly – Bwog:

About fifteen minutes ago, NYPD Police Commissioner Ray Kelly was answering questions in former NYC Mayor/Columbia Professor David Dinkins’ SIPA class about urban public policy when a student pulled out a projector and began to screen images of police officers beating civilians on the wall behind Kelly. “We’d like to offer an alternative version,” one slide read.

People started shifting awkwardly in their chairs, then shifting much more awkwardly when the student turned the projector around so that the film was facing Kelly as he continued to speak. Kelly ignored the film, finished answering his question and called on another student, who was interrupted by a young man reading a textbook about military history.

Sunset Last Night

2011-11-30T01:24:00.001-05:00

10 things the iPhone Siri will help you get instead of an abortion | The Raw Story

2011-11-30T00:42:00.003-05:00

10 things the iPhone Siri will help you get instead of an abortion | The Raw Story:

Ask the Siri, the new iPhone 4 assistant, where to get an abortion, and, if you happen to be in Washington, D.C., she won’t direct you to the Planned Parenthood on 16th St, NW. Instead, she’ll suggest you pay a visit to the 1st Choice Women’s Health Center, an anti-abortion Crisis Pregnancy Center (CPC) in Landsdowne, Virginia, or Human Life Services, a CPC in York, Pennsylvania. Ask Google the same question, and you’ll get ads for no less than 7 metro-area abortion clinics, 2 CPCs and a nationwide abortion referral service.

Ask in New York City, and Siri will tell you “I didn’t find any abortion clinics.”