therobots.org - select * from robots

I stumbled across this link while searching for creative gift ideas. A Buy Nothing Christmas. This initiative was started by Canadian Mennonites and the website is tied in with Adbusters (just be sure that you don't go to buynothingchristmas.com because that will take you to a crappy online webstore that sells gifts). Too bad my friends and family don't participate in this.

-ick!

I've had a really good last month or so. The weather hasn't been too bad. There have been a handful of decent local rock shows around the city. Halloween is always a blast and this November also marked a very surprising and momentous midterm election. Top this off with my trivia team's domination over the last few month and things are looking on the up.

I stayed at the recordBar late after a big first place trivia win one week and watched up-and-coming Detroit indie rockers Thunderbirds Are Now!. TAN! showed up early and competed against fellow bar patrons in skills of the mind. They held their own and I think they had a pretty good time. About two years ago, I was quite impressed with them as an unknown opener touring with Enon (who produced their new album). Once again, they didn't disappoint . I was also a big fan of the local opening band. I didn't catch their name but I'm sure I'll see them again somewhere around town. They were a bit of a Yeah Yeah Yeah's ripoff - but who gets tired of that. The female lead singer was just as much a spaz as Karen O.

It must be nearing concert season again because the list of good concerts in the area continues to grow. I'm batting .600 in that category this week, making it to three and only missing two. Not to mention the weather is getting to be pretty nice out. Every day when I get home from work, I'm greeted by a new colorful plant that I didn't know was planted in my yard. This has been a busy week, full of concerts and parties. Heh, I even voted this week...

It's something I never thought I'd see - a memorial service for a bulletin board.

China's cracked down on public discussion sites, as they did before with some of the blogging providers.

Jeremy Goldkorn at Danwei describes the latest update:

Some arm of the sour and corrupt Nanny authority has resticted access to Internet bulletin boards (BBS) hosted on servers at Tsinghua University, Peking University and Nanjing University to students and people with university Internet accounts. These BBS were formerly available to the public.

Furthermore, all students who still have access to the BBS will apparently have to register with their real names if they want to continue posting to the BBS. The above-mentioned BBS were previously sources of lively debate about social, economic and cultural issues.

Way to go Nanny!

This may not seem like much; after all, it's just a BBS, and the students can still post. But by blocking outside IP addresses, it will effectively kill the culture of the BBS. And without any hope of anonymity, there won't be much left for the students.

On Saturday Qinghua students gathered to mourn the BBS. One student took a lot of pictures, and posted them on flickr with the name "smth dying". Check it out.

As per my resolution, I actually bought and read the paper yesterday. So here is the witty commentary on the news of the week for you.

Two weeks ago Prime Minister Thaksin (or as I like to think of him, ‘The Third Musketeer’) unveiled a new plan for dealing with the violence plagued southern provinces. Clashes between local muslim ‘insurgents’ and government officials has been continuing with absurdly horrific consequences. The so-called insurgents go around harassing and killing buddhists, muslims and officials alike, while the police respond by persecuting innocent civilians. The worst case involved the death of 83 protesters as the police had piled them one on the other in the back of truck for several hours in sweltering heat. The government has done nothing but defend the actions of its officers and soldiers whose apparent policy is to shoot first and not ask questions.

Thaksin’s brilliant new plan involved categorising villages into green, yellow and red zones, according to the magnitude of violence occurring in each. The red zones, obviously the most violent, could be exempted from receiving any government money through development schemes. The brilliance of helping the alienated and disenfranchised by alienating and disenfranchising them should be obvious to anyone. In fact, I’d say the brilliance of this plan is matched only by last year’s plan to drop a gazillion paper cranes from the air onto southern villages in a message of ‘solidarity’.

Actually, I shouldn't say finally, since it only came out two weeks ago. But still. I don't have the energy to make any kind of commentary on it. It was meticulous and well targeted, and all of the stuff that Ick said. I think it may have been more interesting to watch with an American audience, though. Much like me, Australians already hate Bush, this just articulated the reasons why.

Really, I just felt the need to announce that I'd seen the movie.

This is great.

Have you watched any of the convention?

Well, I was waiting around to see if someone would post something about Fahrenheit 9/11. Nobody did so I guess I'll bite.

Julie and I made a once in a blue moon trip to the movie theater to see this film the Friday after the movie had opened. I picked an upscale suburban area to see the film in the hopes that I would hear a loud chorus of hisses and boos throughout the movie from an objective conservative audience but I was sadly disappointed. The crowd consisted mainly of the liberal or at least liberal-curious type and nearly everyone laughed at Michael Moore's hilarious juxtapositional editing. He maintains the same themes that appear in all of his films (U.S. vs. Canada, America's obsession with weapons, greed, racial divides, beaurocracy of politics, etc.) however this film is much more accusatory. I'd encourage anyone (conservative, liberal, or independent) to view this film just for the simple fact that it provides tons of revelatory factual information and video clips about Bush and the Bush administration that the general public would not otherwise have any idea about. For example, what percentage of the U.S. population actually know of the Bush family's ties with the Bin Laden family? or that the U.S. arranged special flights to get members of Bin Laden's family out of the country? or that Bush was quoted as saying that the upper-class big businessmen were his "back"? I sure didn't. How many people witnessed the subtle indirection from Afghanistan to Iraq performed by Bush & Co.? Even worse, how many people (including important national and world leaders) bought into it? I would guess that if as much attention and media coverage were paid to these important political issues as, say, certain other wedge issues or fear mongering bombarded down by Bush & the media (marriage sanctity, security alert levels, post-9/11 scare tactics), that the general population would have a much different view of the current administration. I realize a large portion of this country (including my parents) simply discredit Moore as an eccentric one-sided liberal documentarian hack and in some ways, I could see how that viewpoint could be valid. However, this is his movie, full of his ideas (albeit supported by lawyer-backed facts), presented in the way he wants to present it. He makes no reservations about this so just leave it at that. Go see this movie, drop your bilateral prejudices at the door and soak it in with an open mind. Most importantly just use the brilliant tool bestowed upon you and THINK. I'm not saying Michael Moore's view is 100% right but it's high time people were at least presented with both sides of the story. With the works of this film, I feel Moore does a respectable job of getting this other side out there.

In case you haven't seen it yet, McSweeney's Pros and Cons of John Kerry's Top Twenty Vice-Presidential Candidates:

4. Bill Clinton, former President
Pro: Oh man, that would be awesome—could you imagine? He'd be all like Yeah, I'm back, so suck on this, y'all and everyone would be all No way and he'd be all Way
Con: None