Tim Riley's Blog, page 22
May 24, 2011
FORGET CHINA, HAPPY BOOBDAY
"When I first heard Elvis's voice I just knew that I wasn't going to work for anybody, and nobody was going to be my boss," Mr. Dylan once said. "Hearing him for the first time was like busting out of jail..." Bob Dylan, quoted in David Hajdu's NYTimes Op-Ed
Bob Dylan
Related articlesBob Dylan Fires Back on Accusations of 'Censored' Show in China (wcbsfm.radio.com)David Wild: "Forever Young": A 70th Birthday Playlist For Bob Dylan (huffingtonpost.com)Dowd Blows In Dylan's Wind (dave-lucas.blogspot.com)Happy Birthday, Bob Dylan! (thehollywoodgossip.com)Dylan at 70 (themillions.com)Book Review: Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina by David Hajdu (blogcritics.org)Another, Darker Side of Bob Dylan in Vintage Interview Tape (artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com)Happy 70th Birthday, Bob Dylan (geneveith.com)
May 20, 2011
DETERIORATA XI:4
BEAT THIS FOR COOL:
The Project Repat Kickstarter Video from Project Repat on Vimeo, aiding Boston NFPs: Newton-Tanzania Collaborative (www.newtontanzania.org) and Smallbean (www.smallbean.org).
BLURB OF THE MONTH: "Never, I repeat never, in the annals of entertainment has one man devoted himself more dutifully, studied more scrupulously, and documented so diligently these bizarre and astonishing feats of physical and mental derring-do than the man they call 'America's Scholar of the Unusual'--magician, author, bon vivant, raconteur, prestidigitator extraordinaire, and a personal friend to whom I no longer owe a favor--Ricky Jay."
--Steve Martin, for Collection of Curious Characters
OLD HAND, NEW BYLINE: "And why does it seem better and better to us as the albums progressed and the music became more and more decadent and self-indulgent?" Josef Patchen on "Citizen Steely Dan," in the Augusta Art Examiner.com
May 13, 2011
DETERIORATA XI:3
QUOTE OF THE MONTH: "Is it possible to be beside the point in your own memoir?" Gary Rivlin, reviewing Paul Allen's Idea Man in the NYTimes.
LETTERHEAD OF THE MONTH:
(via letterheady)
Milton Glaser did a lot of logo work for record labels, including Bearsville. His Design Study Center maintains a flickr page.
#HASHTAG OF THE MONTH: #different dylan: "Don't This Rice, It's All Fried" (where are you @Robsheff?)
Related articlesNYC/CreativeMornings Video with Milton Glaser (swiss-miss.com)PICKED: Old Jews Telling Jokes (brainpickings.org)Milton Glaser's 12 Steps on the Designer's Road to Hell (ivani.co)
undefined: undefined »[image error][image error][image error][image error][image error][image error]
May 7, 2011
May 2, 2011
ARE WE GONNA MUSH?
Image via Wikipedia
Times Book Review Letter, May 1, 2011:
...Wallace's novel and essay and McCarthy's review are excellent demonstrations that the issues of will and choice and agency are, in our era of neurobiological investigations, not sterile and abstract. They are descending from the lofty and, yes, sometimes ridiculous heights of philosophy into the real world of human moral, social, jurisprudential and political actions. (See Daniel Wegner's wonderful book "The Illusion of Conscious Will," published a few years ago.) Did you know that if I hold a gun to your head -- no, no, a pie to your face -- the motor command to mush it there precedes my consciousness of the decision to do so?
Did you know that if you decide not to pull that trigger--or mush that pie--that the motor command goes off all the same? That impulse control actually gets accounted for in some esoteric philosophies?
Related articlesGood Advice vs. Bad Advice (psychologytoday.com)No more Mr Nice Guy: Why being a do-gooder counts against you if you slip up (dailymail.co.uk)Will You Will? (thebeautifulbrain.com)Neuroscientists discover new 'chemical pathway' in the brain for stress (biosingularity.com)
April 29, 2011
BRADLEY MANNING'S RIGHTS
Image by Steve Rhodes via Flickr
Bradley Manning is the soldier charged with leaking US government documents to Wikileaks. He is currently detained under degrading and inhumane conditions that are illegal and immoral.
For nine months, Manning has been confined to his cell for twenty-three hours a day. During his one remaining hour, he can walk in circles in another room, with no other prisoners present. He is not allowed to doze off or relax during the day, but must answer the question "Are you OK?" verbally and in the affirmative every five minutes. At night, he is awakened to be asked again "Are you OK?" every time he turns his back to the cell door or covers his head with a blanket so that the guards cannot see his face. During the past week he was forced to sleep naked and stand naked for inspection in front of his cell, and for the indefinite future must remove his clothes and wear a "smock" under claims of risk to himself that he disputes.
The sum of the treatment that has been widely reported is a violation of the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and the Fifth Amendment's guarantee against punishment without trial. If continued, it may well amount to a violation of the criminal statute against torture, defined as, among other things, "the administration or application...of... procedures calculated to disrupt profoundly the senses or the personality."
Private Manning has been designated as an appropriate subject for both Maximum Security and Prevention of Injury (POI) detention. But he asserts that his administrative reports consistently describe him as a well-behaved prisoner who does not fit the requirements for Maximum Security detention. The brig psychiatrist began recommending his removal from Prevention of Injury months ago. These claims have not been publicly contested. In an Orwellian twist, the spokesman for the brig commander refused to explain the forced nudity "because to discuss the details would be a violation of Manning's privacy."
The administration has provided no evidence that Manning's treatment reflects a concern for his own safety or that of other inmates. Unless and until it does so, there is only one reasonable inference: this pattern of degrading treatment aims either to deter future whistleblowers, or to force Manning to implicate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in a conspiracy, or both.
If Manning is guilty of a crime, let him be tried, convicted, and punished according to law. But his treatment must be consistent with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. There is no excuse for his degrading and inhumane pretrial punishment. As the State Department's P.J. Crowley put it recently, they are "counterproductive and stupid." And yet Crowley has now been forced to resign for speaking the plain truth.
The Wikileaks disclosures have touched every corner of the world. Now the whole world watches America and observes what it does, not what it says.
President Obama was once a professor of constitutional law, and entered the national stage as an eloquent moral leader. The question now, however, is whether his conduct as commander in chief meets fundamental standards of decency. He should not merely assert that Manning's confinement is "appropriate and meet[s] our basic standards," as he did recently. He should require the Pentagon publicly to document the grounds for its extraordinary actions--and immediately end those that cannot withstand the light of day.
Bruce Ackerman
Yale Law School
New Haven, Connecticut
Yochai Benkler
Harvard Law School
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Related articlesScholars Slam Obama Over Treatment of Manning [Dispatches from the Culture Wars] (scienceblogs.com)Bradley Manning's inhumane treatment | Bruce Ackerman and others (guardian.co.uk)Bradley Manning Abuse (tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com)Obama's Legal Professor Outraged by 'Torture' of Bradley Manning, Decries His "Degrading and Inhumane" Imprisonment (alternet.org)
April 21, 2011
DON'T, LOOK PENNEBAKER, REMEMBERS BACK
Greil Marcus interviews D.A. Pennebaker about filming Bob Dylan from New Video Digital on Vimeo.
Related articlesUnreleased Bob Dylan Material Coming To Blu-Ray (wncx.radio.com)Why Bob Dylan didn't ring the chimes of freedom over Ai Weiwei (guardian.co.uk)Unsung Heroes: Jim James and Calexico in 'I'm Not There' (thefilmexperience.net)
April 15, 2011
TOM TOMORROW: LANGUAGE VIRUS
via DailyKos
more on Wisconsin
Wikipedia: Daily Kos () is an American political blog that publishes news and opinions from a progressive point of view. » [image error] [image error]
April 14, 2011
WISCONSIN ELECTION FRAUD
Image via Wikipedia
It's great to see this work on DailyKos-where all talk of election fraud has long been scored, by founder Markos Moulitsas, as "conspiracy theory," and banned from the main page. (It may still be, in fact, as Cieran's updates are running on the Daily Kos Community Site.)
Clearly, we'll be getting more of this from Cieran, so stay tuned there; and we need plenty more from other righteous bloggers, too (and from some eminent reporters with the brain and guts to deal with it, if there are any left out there).
Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus
Tue Apr 12, 2011 at 04:52 AM EDT
20,000 more votes than ballots (Waukesha, 2006) [updated-Tue]
Directly from the WaukeshaCounty.gov election results for 2006
156,804 - Total ballots cast in Waukesha county
176,112 - Total votes for Governor/Lt Governor race
174,244 - Total votes for US Senator
174,047 - Total votes for Attorney General
170,440 - Total votes for Secretary of State
168,861 - Total votes for State Treasurer
Brought to you by Kathy Nickolaus.
Partially sourced from this great diary.
Related articlesSomething Rotten in Wisconsin (It's Not the Cheese) (538refugees.wordpress.com)Wis Dems Call For Further Investigation Of Waukesha County Elections (alternet.org)Investigation Into Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus Begins (dekerivers.wordpress.com)I Want To Hear Conservatives Crying Fraud On The Waukesha County Vote (angrydd.wordpress.com)Investigation into Wisconsin Supreme Court election results continues (dailykos.com)Wisco county clerk whose homemade voting software found 14K votes for Tea Party judge is an old hand at illegal campaigningh (boingboing.net)
April 11, 2011
LOATHING MURDOCH'S DAILY
Image by Getty Images via @daylife
Let's count the ways:90-second load times for each new issuelanding on airhead newsbabe tutorial videosturning the iPad sideways to get contentAP wire copy (I'm supposed to PAY for this?)claustrophobic walled-garden framedid Bill Keller design this? can I share articles with other iPad users in my social network? Huh? Related articlesRupert Murdoch's UK newspaper admits to illegal spying (americablog.com)Praise as Rupert Murdoch rids Fox of Glenn Beck's 'hate speech' (thejc.com)Will iPad & Tablets Be Our Sunday Paper? (gigaom.com)Rupert Murdoch launches 'The Daily' only for iPad (panasianbiz.com)Bad News for Murdoch: The Daily on the Decline (techland.time.com)
![[image error]](http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Structural.gif){kind=link}