Accept no substitutes

Author: Paul (Page 121 of 147)

Violence in Dreamland?

We’ve been looking at a DVD that Michael “Horns and Haloes” Galinsky sent our way called Operation: Dreamland, a documentary about the day to day lives of foot soldiers in Falluja, Iraq before the clampdown/invasion of the city. The co-directors, Garrett Scott and Ian Olds, spent 6 weeks with a small group of soldiers letting us get to know them fairly deeply in only 78 minutes. Falluja is realtively calm at this point despite becoming known as a haven for the various enemies. The film is not meant to be political, but I’m sure that every viewer will find politics somewhere in the film. I dropped the film off for Michael’s parents to see.
Next, Tucker and I watched the Matrix and Matrix: Reloaded. Between viewings, Michael’s mother, Maeda, stopped me as I was mowing. She asked about the violence in the Dreamland documentary. How could I answer that question having just been through hours of Matrix? Her friends in the car with her were concerned that there might be unsettling scenes, say a beheading (nope), say explosions (yes but compared to the Matrix not so upsetting), but how to say that the real violence in Iraq paled beside the Keanu Reeves cord-dancing pomposity?

Carrie catches Clear Channel

The NYTimes credits ole ibiblio buddy and Stay Free publisher Carrie McLaren with outing a Clear Channel prank called “Radio Free Ohio.” While pretending to be a pirate AM station that rails again corporate radio and controlled playlists, etc, the DNS clearly showed the website was owned by Clear Channel itself. Once disclosed, the web site radiofreeohio was purged of most content, but Stay Free has kept much of the disinformation alive for us. For more updates see the Stay Free blog.

Deja Review

On the phone to poet Betty Adcock tonight — since there is no way to do email with her. We ended up talking about the future of books which Betty will wax romantically about as if they were coalfired steam engine. That is extolling all their vices as if they were virtues. In the case of the stream locomotives — the clouds of coaldust smoke becomes something poetic instead of a stinky burning mess, the overloud engine becomes a lullaby, the earpiercing screams of the brakes becomes a kind of music. Basically the less you see of it, smell of it, the more valuable the experience becomes — like walking uphill to school in the snow and in the summer when the streets were melted tar (as I tell my son I experienced).
Books too have many not so great sides to them. The smell that Betty talks about of an old library is the smell of the books rotting. The heft of books often an artifact of marketing and of the limits of technology — what is needed to make a binding and what the bounds that binding will allow.
Betty says she stands by what she said in our discussion that Educom published in 1998. Now I have to go back and see what we both said.

Caligari!

Caligari poster
After a rather odd series of attempts to get DVDs from the campus library — too long to tell, but let’s say I was inspired to ask for the Matrix once Crouching Tiger became to complicated to obtain, but then the Matrix was even more complicated to find a copy of so I asked for Brazil which seemed fitting the situation as it was evolving, but then Brazil although in the catalog as available was not or was only viewable within the building, so I asked for Ken Russell’s Kafka, that I could have, so inspired I asked for the 1919 Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, that was in as well — we watched the Caligari film tonight. Rather I watched the film while my family fell asleep.
The version I ended up with had a complex dissonate sound track; the original was a silent. The copy was a bit faded and glaring alternatively. But the odd Expressionist sets, completely painted in stark black and white and built with no right angles instead favoring sharp unsettling acute knife-like whenever possible, came across nicely or better jarringly. The film is told by a young man sitting in the garden of an asylum. The story of the reappearance of the evil 11th Century monteback magician and his somambulant zombie-like slave who can see into the future but will only predict deaths — murders that he will himself commit — were meant to address the insanity of the World War in which old men had just sent young men off to kill for them. But through a series of false endings and perhaps false ends the story is turned on its head several times over. The framing for the film was added over the objections of the writers/director at the insistance of the producer, Erich Pommer. Many argue that the framing story while completely changing the story’s intent and message actually created a more memorable film.
One interesting note: the somambulist, Ceasare, was played by Conrad Veidt, who would much later appear as Maj. Strasser in Casablanca.

Mighty Times: Children’s March

This year the winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject was “Mighty Times: The Children’s March.”
The showing in Carrboro at the Century Center tonight followed closely the burning of three large Klan-style crosses in nearby Durham.
The Carrboro showing was very very well attended the Century Center filled to near overflow. I would guess over 200 people there. The showing was followed by a panel made up of Chuck Stone, Reginald Hildebrand and Tim Tyson. The panelists provided some acute descriptions of the contexts, events and people elided or left out of the movie as well as praise for its strengths. Frankly the movie is a triumphalist tale aimed at children and young adults and focused on the role, the very important and pivotal role, that children played in the Birmingham Civil Rights Movement. As Tim Tyson noted, the running time of 40 minutes is perfect for showing to a class, then to have a 20 minute discussion afterwards. The film is part of the Teach Tolerance series from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
I understand from the Cybrarian that the DVD will be available for checkout from the Cybrary.

Among those in the audience were Lois and T J Anderson. T J, an avant garde composer, was just inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters last week.

New Van CD (or slightly used)?

The wonderful long-lived Van Fan site describes and dissects the new Morrison CD, “Magic Time,” which was just released last week in the US. Briefly the good news is that if you liked the last two Van releases, “Down the Road” and “What’s Wrong With This Picture,” then you will like this CD too. The bad news is that the “new” CD looks to be mostly outtakes from and/or music recorded at the same time as those CDs with the same personel, at least one of whom is now dead, Foggy Lyttle (2003). Speculations by long time fan, Dave of Tasmania make sense to me.

The New Faces of Poetry

I have seen the mad new poets who are drunk on language, aware of critical approaches, ready for fun and sly about their gravitas. The Carrboro International Poetry Festival had a great helping of smart new edgy poetry. Poetry informed by performance, by l*a*n*g*u*a*g*e, poetry that rejects quietude, defies therapy, recognizes displacement, questions syntax, poetry that can be sarcastic and deep at the same time, poetry full of noise and full of fun.
The audio will be online at the Festival site soon.

Poetry and NAACP

Spent most of the afternoon at the Carrboro International Poetry Festival hearing about 10 of the 40 poets scheduled to read there. Organizer Patrick Herron and I will both be reading tomorrow. I had to leave just after Tonya Olson’s wonderful set which included a piece in which Joyce’s The Dead is rewritten to be about the breakup of an affair between the author and Lisa Marie Presley over the author’s refusal to become a Scientologist. I cannot explain any further except to say I recommend this piece be it poem or short story or performance piece.
Later Sally and I went to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP banquet. There among the entertainers was a terrific a capella group called “the Sons of Bethel.” The Sons have been part of the Music on the Terrace program at UNC’s Johnston Center in the past year or so. Tonight they were playing to a home crowd.

Old Time Music from/in NC

Not all of the nearly 60 folk recordings on the Folktunes.org wiki-powered site (hosted on ibiblio) are from NC but a number of them are especially those by Clarance Ashley and Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers.
These are some of the best rerecordings of the old 78s that I’ve ever heard. If you know more about them you can add to the wiki knowledge base or if you know nothing, you can listen and learn.
Charlie Poole
The weekend in Eden, NC is the 10th Annual Charlie Poole Music Festival. Go only if you can stand to miss the Carrboro International Poetry Festival.

IBM blogging unleashed!

Sayan points us to the official IBM policy on corporate blogging and further to Tim Bray’s reactions.
James Snell describes the construction of the IBM blogging policy:

The core principles — written by IBM bloggers over a period of ten days using an internal wiki — are designed to guide IBMers as they figure out what they’re going to blog about so they don’t end up like certain notable ex-employees of certain notable other companies. They’re also intended to communicate IBM’s position on such practices as astroturfing, covert marketing, and openly goading or berating competitors — specifically, don’t do it. As these guidelines were being drafted, we drew heavily upon our own experiences as bloggers and the excellent prior art in this space graciously provided by Sun, Microsoft, Groove and many others who have drafted policies and guidelines for their employees.

Snell also has a great parody of corporate activity policies on his blog called “Guidelines for IBM Breathers: Executive Summary”. One of my favorites: “Try to add value, and for goodness sakes use a breath mint.”

Confessing poet; poetic wax

Carrboro Poetry Fest Logo
The Chapel Hill News finally put Carrboro Poet Laureate Patrick Herron’s “My View” piece that was published last Sunday online so I can refer to it here. Patrick confesses that he manufactured the poem that won him his Poet Laureateship by looking about some poetic tropes and cliches then incorporating them into his submission. But the joke was on him. He had wanted to use the office of Poet Laureate to create a community of poets and to put together a Festival of very diverse poets and poetics. Now he had to actually do it. No excuses.
And he did. Last year, 40+ poets read in the course of two days to good crowds and good responses. And we had a blast.
This weekend will be the Second Annual Carrboro International Poetry Festival. Many different poets. Some old favorites. And some surprises (I’ve been assured).
Here’s how the Chapel Hill News promotes it in today’s edition.

Service Science?

Out at IBM today for University Day. This is a time when IBMers talk about programs that support the local Universities and for the Universities to talk about their programs — this time mostly Computer Science departments (NCSU, NC A&T, Duke, and UNC especially).
One recurring theme, besides my personally beloved Open Standards, Open Code, and the question of Patents, was the attempt to start a discussion of a new area of study, “Service Science.”
Don’t imagine burger flipping. Instead think that 70% of Americans work in jobs in the Service sector. That means you (most likely).
When we were mostly agricultural, we created and developed Agricultural Science (later agro-science). When we were mostly industrial, we created and developed Industrial Science . Both of these fields further specialized and as they grew our insight into agriculture and industry grew and our practices changed and some would argue became more effecient. (Wendell Berry or authors of “I’ll take my stand” would probably disagee, but history at least in the immediate term is not on their side, but there is still resistance or at least a different tact on Agro-Industry Science).
That said, the IBM take on services is broad, very broad. It includes Grid Computing and social conscience as in the World Community Grid, services to customers like autonomic computing, and technological advances that drive and support services, as well as business and management practices like say remote group work, collaboration, extreme programming and the like.
To some extent, Services Science shows IBM taking a gamble at entering into Social Sciences. And other press is already out on this from Cnet, in an interview with Jim Spoher of IBM’s Almaden Services Research in which he calls Services Science the “coevolution of technology and business innovations”, in a Technology Review article called “Research in Development” featuring SILS Graduation speaker Paul Horn, and even in academic papers such as “The Role of Text Analytics in Managing of Intangible Assets and the Emergence of Service Science” by Dr. Wlodek Zadrozny.
So this is serious here. The question is whether Service Science is the buzzword of the quarter heating up only to fade as the insipid Knowledge Management seems to have or will it usher in a seachange of research and education. NCSU’s Michael Rappa, in a hallway conversation with speaker Lillian Wu and myself, points us to the sociology and history of science studies for clues.

Note: one of my appointments is in a School of Information and Library Science.

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