Opposing Theories of Transit

To my mind, there are really just two theories of how best to traverse a downtown area of a city; both methods are

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August & September 2018
I remember I was thinking a lot about how and when i crossed streets around this time.  The question i had was the optimal way to get from a point A to a point B if traversing a cityscape on foot.  Generally, when i enter a city block situation where i have several blocks to traverse in both directions (N/S & E/W), my preferred method of travel is the path of least resistance.  That is to say, i take advantage of the lights as long as i can.  If you have at least 1 block to go in each direction then walk in the direction of where you have a green light.  If you have no green light, walk the length of the block toward your destination and then follow the green at the next intersection.

In my experience, directions tell you generally to go all East and then turn North and handle the rest... That's not my way.

(This seemed important to me at the time... for some reason).

On this Border in History

Rather than choose what day this write-up belongs in, given its border-ity, I choose a historical Roman Numeral J entry dualism, with a 9/10 and a 9/11 entry and want to gain insight from the separations from the two different years.  What might we understand by looking at Joel 2006 & Joel 2008?

Here are some dates in history to try to dig...

2008 - Grad-school

2006 - Just done (and pre-) Grad School

It's useful to understand the way that your thinking has changed over time... My curiosity is whether mine really has.  Certainly I now, as a stooge for the right-est economy, would see my earlier take as a youthful-fool, an un-refined see-er.  That said, I am what I have been.  Radicalism is a situation of convenience.

I am decidedly inconvenient, but am happy to listen...

Love li'l sandwiches

I love cucumber sandwiches. Saturday I picked up a few weird little cukes (one was called 'lemon' - I don't recall the name of the other one). Some thin-sliced radish, smoked salmon straight from Alaska (thanks in-laws)...

Oh, 1Q84, great book. Also, a celebratory vodka martini in honor of understanding and curing Rex Grossman's summer long meh-ness.  

The Dangers of Corporate Censorship

On Monday my television received Current TV (though by that time it was mostly showing mostly the penultimate and final days of people like Jim Morrison and Richard Pryor - or maybe it was non-stop episodes of Vanguard, which is has been among the best American journalism in the past eight years or so).  On Tuesday, when that channel had transitioned to Al Jazeera America, it was no longer available for my viewing pleasure.

We are in the throes of a debate about information and the power of information, though that may not be obvious to most of us.  Sure we've all watched the spectacle of Edward Snowden's escape to Russia, though much of our attention has been centered on Snowden's weirdness (he's got sort of a 'foreign vibe', even though he was born in North Carolina... or it may just be a 'geek vibe', though I, myself, am a bit of expert with that and it doesn't usually trigger my odd-radar), but the real debate about who ought to have access to what information and how much that should cost (if anything) is raging.  This debate is also not just a debate, it's a battle and has already had casualties.

In the era of WikiLeaks, the end of internet privacy (at least for people cool enough to have twitter followers or loads of Facebook friends), and corporate data-mining, information has become a commodity (and to say so, a cliche).

The other side of #openInfo, though, is, necessarily, the free dissemination of all perspectives.  Right now, corporations have access to all manner of information about our everyday lives, preferences, and activities (governments may also be privy to the same), however, as soon as a private news organization, with a stated desire to broadcast all perspectives and de-centralize American journalism, begins its broadcast (or even its earlier Western Hemispherical movements), American corporations say, "no, that information is not suitable for your consumption" to its customers.

This has been largely covered by the mainstream infomedia... (the Slate article I link to here focuses on the unusual financial situation of Al Jazeera and raises the "problem" of non-profit news [though I, for one, cannont understand why anyone would think it a problem that an organization whose purpose is to disseminate information is not primarily focused on profits.  To me it's a similar no-brainer to the {non}question of for-profit colleges or health care companies that are more interested in profit than patients]).  

#RachelMaddow has been on a kick of late, focusing on information-redaction in a North Carolina county election board.  She's also been smartly encouraging folks to subscribe to their local newspaper, which is a great idea and the only true possibility today of keeping in touch with actual local news.  The logic runs like this: if you don't subscribe to a hard copy or online pay portal of your local news, that organization will have less money to pay actual local journalists...  So, in addition to the problem of profit motive, this leads to a problem of non-local news (or local news which is more 'earned media' by corporate interests, commentary and fluff than actual reporting).  Sound familiar?

Al Jazeera America reveals another obvious pitfall of American journalism, which is its inherent 'coastalism.'  Coastalism has, necessarily, been a problem of our nation since its inception, but the continual focus on our geographic extremes has lead to our polarized political standing today.  The disintegration of hard news and the 'talking-head-ification' of news broadcasts has re-centered journalism on the conversation and not the content.  Just imagine what it will mean when there are journalists in news bureaus in Chicago, Nashville, New Orleans, and Detroit (DETROIT!) to name a few, who are vying to get their stories on the air.  

AJAm will approach American news, I hope, with a fresh set of eyes, realizing that their is a whole middle of the country, which is under-represented in most American journalism.  Reactionary companies like Time Warner and AT&T should be boycotted as much as possible until they come to understand that restricting the type of information available to people is immoral if not criminal.  In the end, I expect AJAm will be available on U-Verse, but the attempt to destabilize the launch makes AT&T yet another American corporation worthy of scorn.  Not that that's really news to anyone...

Taxi!

Subjects in motion...

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March 2019
I don't know what this article was about.  There is, in retrospect, a reason for its existence... Happy Hour.

It turns out, a happy hour is listed on my family-shared iCal on this evening.  I think it may be that this was Brooke's hh rather than mine - she was the one mainly using our shared iCal at this time.

However, if this was a pre-Val&Sean wedding hh or work related and i wasn't invited, i was likely spite drinking at home alone at the Colonel.

Thus the late-night blog post not yet a half-dozen years ago.

The one clue, "subjects in motion..." implies to me that this was going to go in the direction of theory.  My Arfives don't help specifically, but i had recently (or would soon) see This is The End, which I'm not sure how or why, but may have been related to this.

My summer 2013 (with a lot missing):

3 September 2013

• The Sopranos Season 1 & 2
• The Bourne Legacy, directed by Tony Gilroy
• World War Z, directed by Marc Forster
• Joyland, by Stephen King
• The Art of Fielding, by Chad Harbach
• This is the End, starring Seth Rogen, James Franco, and some other guys
• Before Sunrise, directed by Richard Linklater
• Star Trek: Into Darkness, directed by J. J. Abrams
• Iron Man III, directed by Shane Black

more missing (including Bill Maher @ the Chicago Theatre on 16 June 2013)

Rex is Rex

Rex Grossman has been feeling a bit under the weather lately (see pic - note: er ist noch am leben - I know it looks a bit  like a chalk outline or some sort of ritual flooring).

He's doing well and we are once again indebted to Dr. Singh (side note to anyone in the Milwaukee Metro with a pet on the brink, Bayshore Vet in Shorewood is the best).  

** Update as of 7/10/13: Rex is back to 100% and acting normally.  We went to see Dr. Singh again today for a final check and his infection seems to have abated.  After a couple of routine vaccines, Rex was good to go, though, the promised 'sleepiness and lethargy' as a result of his shots did not come to pass...

Who's a good dog?

ooh! ooh!, did you read Joel's new tweet?!

Talking about a tweet you read (or in this case wrote) on a blog is kind of like discussing what you heard on the radio later in the day...

That being the case, I am, and have never been, cool.  I have re-watched the movie, Bulworth, and found it as redeeming as I did when it was first released.

It is my firm belief and desire that you do the same... on both counts.

Let me know.