Zeroth things first
The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
Important to remember in this Facebook Moment. del.icio.us/tag/freedom0.
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politics
Happy birthday, Homeland Security Advisory System
It’s hard to believe it was five years ago today you came into the world. Thanks for all the fun, and all the memories. Who knows where we’d be without you? Let’s all take a moment today to reflect on your humble beginnings.
2007-03-12
Towers open fire
From Those crazy “cut-ups” Burroughs, Gysin, and Balch restored to their rightful place in avant-garde film history in Bright Lights:
Towers Open Fire is a collage of the main themes and situations or “routines” that appear in Burroughs cut-up novels of the period. The soundtrack accompaniment is a mixture of recordings made by Burroughs on a cheap Grundig tape recorder and resembles many of the cut-up tape experiments achieved in collaboration with Ian Somerville. The rest was done in a studio, with some Arab music used. The film depicts society as crumbling in the form of a stock exchange crash, shots of which were purchased from Pathé news. Members of “a board” are dematerialized, and Burroughs plays an omnipresent role in the film (not least as the victim of an “orgasm attack” in which he leaps through a window and shoots family photos with a ping-pong gun).
2007-03-07
Obligatory election post
Tomorrow is election day. If you live in Michigan, Publius.org will help you find your polling place and a sample ballot. I don’t write much here about group decision-making processes, but I always get the feeling that our democratic elections are prematurely optimized. But that’s another story: even if the process is stupid, it’s still the process.
I was planning to write out the standard voter guide crapola — it helps me to make sure I’ve done my research ahead of time. Instead, I’ll leave you with a simple heuristic. Michigan is in a tight spot already, surely you agree. So the heuristic is: don’t make the state even worse. That may mean keeping the toxic state Supreme Court from oozing too badly, or voting down all the weird proposed band-aids to the state’s constitution (and I’m not talking only about about the MCRI). But that’s the heuristic, if you think the Amway guy is the person to keep the state from getting even worse — knock yourself out. Just go vote, one way or the other. Thanks.
2006-11-06
Organic law
Some folks were reading the U.S. Constitution on the steps of the Graduate Library at noon today; I walked by and listened and wondered if the best way to read the Constitution aloud wouldn’t be to expel it like poetry, like Allen Ginsberg reading “Howl” — each line spoken in a single massive breath, clipped voice, empty lungs, rising to some wild respiratory crescendo:
done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names!
2005-09-19
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
From an op-ed in today’s Times, Hearing the Declaration Anew:
We are, as a nation, exceptionally profligate with the symbols of our national identity and with words like “democracy” and “freedom.” The word “freedom” especially seems to have hardened around the edges in the last few years. It has lost some of its ability to suggest the open-ended potential of our lives, the possibility of coming to new terms with the expectations we have been handed by earlier generations. The overtones of discovery the word once had seem to have been put on hold.
Instead, there is a new complacency, a certainty that we know just what freedom means and exactly how it should look. There is an unwelcome comfort with the inequitable distribution of freedom even in our own country. There is a poisonous tolerance for the idea that freedom encompasses only the right to say positive things about America and its mission in the world.
2005-07-04
Canada: no partial rights
Canada legalized same-sex marriage tonight. The legislation passed by a decently large margin, but didn’t come cheap. It’s really encouraging to see the country develop its strong human rights record in such a progressive way.
The Toronto Star ran a great article on marriage and the Charter of Rights this February, which I quote in part below. It’s well-informed and well-said, and does the topic justice in a way I cannot.
This belief in the individual worth of every person regardless of background is now part of the wider Canadian value system. It was eloquently stated by Clifford Lincoln in a speech that deserves to be included in every legal textbook in the land.
After resigning from the Bourassa government in December 1988 because the notwithstanding clause was used to take away anglophone language rights, Lincoln told a hushed legislature,
“Rights are rights are rights. There is no such thing as inside rights and outside rights. No such thing as rights for the tall and rights for the short. No such thing as rights for the front and rights for the back, rights for the east and rights for the west. Rights are rights and will always be rights. There are no partial rights.”
The Martin government has decided there should be no partial rights in marriage. In doing so, it is in the forefront of applying equality rights to marriage. The Netherlands and Belgium are currently the only countries in the world that recognize same-sex marriages. By innovating in the realm of human rights, the Liberals are firmly within a great Canadian tradition.
I am curious to discover what sort of play this gets in the U.S. corporate media. I am also idling about moving as close as possible to this beautiful place after Liana and I earn a few degrees.
