Blog Revival!

Sex, Drugs, and Punditry / By Tom Risen

These be golden years for the pundit and the ideologue that we’re living in, Sonny Jim.

Pundits prowl wild the internets to radio, and no one is safe from their rants that they spent an entire hour researching. They drink as deep from the font of human ignorance as Joe Pulitzer, William Randolph Hearst, or any old-timey yellow journalist ever dreamed.

But who is this Rush Limbaugh person we’re expected to care about and what happened to that other fat white man from Fox News that kids today were raised to hate even more? Why is every crazy claim that comes out of the cheeto-crusted mouth of a radio show host so important all of a sudden?

Gather round and I will tell you a tale of the rise and decline of Papa Bear Bill O’Reilly.

With the rise of television’s availability in the 1970s, demand for broadcast news rose and for a time standards shrank.

This would have been temporary had the availability not continued to grow. In the past 10 years, broadcast media became more available than anyone could’ve imagined. Nearly everybody had a TV and more people than ever had cable TV.

Not to mention the internet.

Though YouTube was still a few years away in the 1990s, pundits were dabbling in websites and information was of course easier to get than ever. This began a turn-of-the-century boom of cable news.

But news is hard, and when cable channels like CNN started popping up everywhere promising constant news all around the clock, they found themselves in over their head..

Cable news, eager to stand apart from traditionally reliable networks, diluted the news and pandered to entertainment and celebrity news nuts, creating new ones along the way. This was the origin of the opinion news boom we see now.

Its easy news: say what you think with minimal research.

You could even just say what you think, period.

You could make good news stories, but the desire to keep up the flow of interesting news is hard for any reporter (OR BLOGGER) to reasonably deal with. Some give into the dark side.

Like Bill O’Reilly, who spent time at CBS and on ABC World News Tonight, and was offered an anchor job on the brand new FOX NEWS. It was even better than that, he got his own solo show and was paid to talk about whatever annoyed him that particular day. It was like being a rock star, and it was every broadcaster’s dream.

“Quicker, easier, more seductive is the dark side,” said Yoda, certified Jedi Master.

The O’Reilly Factor became the show of the moment after 9/11/01 when FOX NEWS was getting exclusive after exclusive, basking in the jingoism of the early years of the Bush Presidency that they helped create. Their ratings skyrocketed.

“Some people watch Fox News like it’s a religion,” said Brandon Wily of Olney MD, whose father is a Defense Department employee and loyal Fox News viewer.

There was even a merger between the White House and FOX NEWS in 2005. Tony Snow went straight from FOX reporter to Bush press secretary just like that.

Since FOX NEWS has burned out after their moment in the sun over the past few years, the man who was on the opinion scene since the beginning moved once more to the forefront of controversy. Rush Limbaugh, the original iron man of conservative radio, rode the first wave of punditry in the late 80s and never let go.

After a decade in radio where no professional station would take him because he was such a blow-hard, Limbaugh’s father’s buddies in the Reagan Administration repealed the FCC’s Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine had always required that radio stations give free air-time for responses to any controversial opinions they broadcast. Reaganites repealed this in 1987 and opened the floodgates for editorial commentary where jowl shakers like Limbaugh were free to denounce anybody as a communist or a cross-dresser and get paid for it. Rush promptly got a job and an audience.

Daniel Henninger wrote, in a Wall Street Journal editorial, "Ronald Reagan tore down this wall (the Fairness Doctrine) in 1987...and Rush Limbaugh was the first man to proclaim himself liberated from the East Germany of liberal media domination."

Limbaugh quickly got high on his own ranting and recently got addicted to prescription drugs. This is hilariously parodied in the movie “V for Vendetta”. O’Reilly, on the other hand, has been accused of sexual harassment numerous times, so his ratings are lower and the drug addict is the top gun of “conserv-opinion” once more.

O’Reilly’s conspiracy of a “War on Christmas” by elitist gay French liberals, his claims that the American Civil Liberties Union is “the most dangerous organization in America”, and repeated accusations and examples of conservative bias, have slowly diminished his reputation.

This is a rare example of radio has proven to have greater staying power than television. Every revolution devours its own, and I think Bill O’Reilly’s time at the top might be ending.

After talking about lame brained punditry I think I’ll end on an intellectual quote from Jean Sartre. In his play “The Flies” he writes about a false god who rules through endless fear and a young brother and sister who dare to reject him.

“Your defiance has signaled the start of my decline, but my reign is long yet,” says the tyrannical Zeus. “Join my flock or your suffering will be unending.”

[Thanks Tom for his contribution!]

Human Trafficking: A fast-growing worlwide criminal activity

Third World Images

Excerpt from Modern Slave Trade:

US DEPT OF STATE

Trafficking in persons is a modern-day form of slavery, involving victims who are typically forced, defrauded or coerced into sexual or labor exploitation. It is among the fastest growing criminal activities, occurring both worldwide and in individual countries. Annually, at least 600,000 - 800,000 people, mostly women and children, are trafficked across borders worldwide, including 14,500 - 17,500 persons into the United States.

People are snared into trafficking by various means. For example, physical force is used or false promises are made regarding a legitimate job or marriage in a foreign country to entrap victims into prostitution, pornography and other forms of commercial sexual exploitation or slavery-like labor conditions in factories and fields. Victims suffer physical and emotional abuse, rape, threats against self and family, passport theft, and physical restraint.

The Human Impact of Trafficking in Persons

Human trafficking happens in nearly every corner of the world. The following two stories bring to life the scenarios that tragically play out in different variations every day around the globe. The human impact of trafficking in women, men, and children is devastating and immeasurable.

Money for Nothing: eMpTyV

Whether you like it or not, eMpTyV had/has its impact on how popular music is made and disseminated in our world. Yes, and not just music, but also ideas and lifestyles.

Here's a book I just happened to bump into now about the history of music videos:

Money for Nothing: A History of the Music Video from the Beatles to the White Stripes

New Contributers: Lilach, Sharon and Michelle =)

=)
Hey girls! Welcome!
Now that you are registered as authors, feel free to send some stuff in.

Be sure to read about the motto of this blog =) and perhaps you have some constructive criticism so that I/we can improve it? Post or comment about it if you do.

This blog will have some changes in the coming month. I intend to make it look more like a magazine, have more contributors and interviews, and change server and domain name. I will also promote it more later on (after I'm done with schoolwork).

Hope you share something with (our?) Niche of Fascinations !

Photos

Some of this blog is text, some has photos.
Hope you check them out sometimes and tell me what you think.


I took this one in Evanston, IL this summer, at the Northwestern University campus.

And this one is from Tel-Aviv-Jaffa before I moved to NYC

and NY Arts Magazine is not bad.

and NY Arts Magazine is not bad.

ex-Israeli (women) artists in new york

Keren Ann
soft nick drake music in English & French by an ex-israeli SoHo-Parisian singer-songwriter (of Jewish-Russian-Javanese-Dutch origins).
Her 2004 album was titled- Nolita (after the Manhatten neighborhood she lives in). [wiki ].
To listen to her music click on 'videos' in her site.
To enjoy some French sounds:

BIOGRAPHIE :
"Keren Ann Zeidel est née le 10 mars 1974 à Césarée en Israël. Elle grandit jusqu'à 11 ans en Hollande avant de venir s'installer à Paris. Son bac en poche, elle cherche son orientation future dans diverses branches (informatique, psychologie, etc) mais ne trouve un réel plaisir que dans l'écriture de chansons." (excerpt from this site).

Elinor Milchan
Tel-Aviv born, New York resident, interesting artist. Check out her work.

"Pictures from a war journal " is an article in an Israeli newspaper, written by Keren Ann with pictures by Elinor Milchan documented Keren Ann's tour with renowned Israeli singer-songwriter David Broza, in the north of Israel last summer at the time of the war with Lebanon. The two musicans sang for the people in the shelters and the soldiers.

Excerpt 2 from The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974-1984

This excerpt is about the influence of poststructuralism (theories in English and Cultural studies) on the Art Scene in Downtown NYC in 1974-1984, a time of punk music and experimental art.
I include some of this in my thesis, and I will later write more of my own words about this. But for your inspiration, enjoy!


"Writing Downtown" by Robert Siegle:

“A more contemporary influence came in the form of poststructuralist thought, whose explosion in America in the 1970s paralleled the intensity of Downtown writing at the time. Both were manifestations of a profound slide (as Roland Bathes would have it) or break (as paradigm theorists would prefer) in how we experienced daily life, and both illustrated the extent to which profoundly different assumptions and metaphors were needed if we were to find our way out of what increasingly felt like a dead end. The theory invasion was mainly French, and it was led largely by English departments, where a new generation of critics had experienced the bewildering effects of close reading. A faculty suddenly more diverse in terms of class, race, gender, and sexual orientation couldn’t help but mount challenges to the canon and our ways of reading, changing the nature of literary politics. Why did America finally begin listening? The leaders were shot in the 1960s, the braggarts embarrassed in Vietnam, the liars exposed in Watergate, the great men deflated by the mediocrity of 1970s politicians—we were ready for lessons on how to think about economics, power, and the cultural and political seduction of our investment of desire.

From Jacques Lacan we learned that the kind of subjectivity we thought was transcendental truth was in fact infantile neurosis. From Jacques Derrida we learned that the kind of textuality we thought was sacramental or scriptural was agonistic self-deception, and that the tradition of conceptuality we called Truth was a structure of repression and mythology. From [Michel] Foucault we learned that we were looking in the wrong direction when we hunted for power, that what ran through our bodies told us more about power than the series of failed sovereigns we watched in sound bites. From Jean-Francois Lyotard we learned that the grand theories, the master narratives of modern intellectual life, were already dead, even if we had barely (begun to) read them. And the list goes on to include Helen Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Gilles Deluese and Felix Guattari, Walter Benjamin, Guy Debord, Roland Barthes, and Jean Baudrillar.

Skimming indexed, footnotes, and textual references of the time suggests the pervasiveness of poststructuralist thought, the amount of energy it produced, and how frequently it provided vocabulary and concepts for understanding how culture works, how art works, and what is possible through art. I wouldn’t argue that every writer mastered the intricacies of Derrida, but it is remarkable the extent to which the historical distrust of theorizing and explantion among many writers gave way to using such thinking to amplify and expedite what they were trying to do. ‘At this point in my life. . . , politics . . . take place inside my body,’ wrote Kathy Acker, describing the political inscription of individuality. We ‘exist, like a shadow, in the interstices of argument,’ wrote Lynne Tillman, alluding to our passage through all the determining strands of cultural codes. Even among writers who were not particularly interested in theory or criticism, the ideas that pervaded the Downtown climate during the 1970s reinforced difference in their way of understanding what they were about and the distinctive, postmodern reality in which they found themselves.” (138-139).

The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974-1984. M. J. Taylor (ed.). New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2006.

Books about Grunge, Politics, Activism

Powell's Books - All the Power by Mark Andersen
Publisher Comments:

"An ambitious, accessible mix of history, autobiography, and how-to-manual, this "anti-manifesto" challenges popular concepts of radical activism. Long-time inner-city organizer and punk rabble-rouser Mark Andersen takes aim at the illusions that tend to keep North American radicals self-satisfied but ineffective. A whirlwind tour across decades — through punk and student activism, identity and lifestyle politics, animal rights, armed struggle, patriotism, globalization, and beyond — this book seeks a radicalism that is both rigorously self-critical and genuinely populist."

Of Grunge & Government: Let's Fix This Broken Democracy!

by Krist Novoselic

Publisher Comments:

"Although Krist Novoselic will undoubtedly be forever best known as a member of Nirvana, his accomplishments go far beyond that remarkable achievement. Nirvana was a band with a conscience, and as a major label act they regularly played benefits — the first Rock For Choice show, a major concert in support of gay rights, and a legendary gig that raised money for the Balkan Women's Aid Fund.

In 1995, Novoselic founded JAMPAC (Joint Artists and Music Promotions Political Action Committee), a proactive organization that advocated on behalf of Washington state's music community. Novoselic's work with JAMPAC helped Seattle club owners find ways to host all-ages shows, and was instrumental in helping to overturn the infamous Teen Dance Ordinance. And sometimes making music and making a statement go hand in hand, as when Novoselic, Soundgarden's Kim Thayil, and drummer Gina Mainwal backed Jello Biafra as the "No W.T.O. Combo" at a show performed during the World Trade Organization conference held in Seattle in 1999.

There have been other musical endeavors since Nirvana, as well as new causes (Novoselic is a strong supporter of electoral reform, an issue he writes about extensively on his website). The one constant is Novoselic's desire to continue making progressive contributions to the community — and to keep on making good music."

Excerpt from The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974-1984

From:

The Downtown Book: The New York Art Scene 1974-1984. M. J. Taylor (ed.). New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2006.

“In fact, what he had begun to unfold was a geneology of outsider-art practice that Pierre Bourdieu regarded as an epoch-making moment in cultural history. Rather than viewing the world in terms of Marxian economic capital or Foucauldian discourses, Bourdieu developed the concept of “the field of cultural production,” separate but related to the fields of economics, science, and politics. A sociologist by training, Bourdieu saw limitations to Foucault’s dire prognosis for the agency of the individual within culture, especially creative culture. For Bourdieu, economic capital did not apply as easily to the value of artworks as it did in other spheres of human activity. If the whole field of cultural production could be thought of as all those artists, poets, musicians, editors, publishers, critics, performers, and the literally hundreds of others involved in the creation, production, promotion, distribution, and preservation of cultural properties, then there could be subsets of this group who did not all conform to the desire for economic capital, but rather, and mostly because their work was experimental, sought, ‘symbolic capital’ from their peers. If the total creative world could be thought of as ‘large-scale’ production, then there could also be ‘restricted’ fields of production. For Bourdieu, the Symbolist poets represented the first field of ‘restricted’ production. Their works, often intensely personal, were produced with little thought of widespread distribution. In fact, often very small print runs numbering only a handful of copies were distributed to friends. This is certainly true of the work of Stephane Mallarme, for instance. The value of Symbolist works lay within the reputation of the author in his subfield of cultural production, not within the larger world of the marketplace.

The Downtown scene was exactly the ‘restricted’ field of cultural production of the sort that Bourdieu describes. The value of Downtown works emanated from the symbolic capital Downtown artists received from their peers. Artists worked in multiple media, and collaborated, criticized, supported, and valued each other’s works in a way that was unprecedented. The new modes of art—whether installation, performance, or a host of others—opened new paths for all art to follow. It is essential to remember that in this ten-year period, more artists were graduating from art schools than at any time in American history. The excitement of what was going on Downtown drew them to New York.

All these artists were living and working in an urban geographical space that was not more than twenty-by-twenty square blocks. Rarely has there been such a condensed and diverse group of artists in one place at one time, all sharing many of the same assumptions about how to make new art (30-31)”.

"The Effort Effect"

An article I got from Eran:
How to Change the World: "The Effort Effect"
I'm not sure if it's too simplistic, but it's an interesting idea.
I found the last 2 paragraphs the most useful/new for me...
I was skeptic about applying the theory (which is about kids) to employees (who are adults), because adults, perhaps, are less likely to change thier 'mind-sets' and their employers are not necessarily those who can/should educate them (as parents).

Civil Society and You

Civil society in the US is much more developed than in Israel. But it's getting bigger all over the world.

Check out idealist.org if you want to get a job in non-profit organizations or NGOs. I found a cool internship through this site. You can get ideas on what's out there and what's possible, or what other people have been doing.

Also, check out: "Strengthening Global Civil Society" Resource List.

Words on Screens: Secondary Literacy in the Age of Cybertext as a New Hybrid Medium

Here is an introduction to a paper I wrote in 2005 (I will include the rest of it here later on).

“Words on Screens:”

Secondary Literacy in the Age of Cybertext as a New Hybrid Medium

“’We live in each other’s brains, as voices, images, words on screens.’”

-- Turkle, 257

“Computers don’t just do things for us, they do things to us, including our ways of thinking about ourselves and other people.”

-- Turkle, 26

“We construct our technologies, and our technologies constructs us and our times.”

-- Ibid, 46

“What compels me is that the painter has tried to find a visible expression for that which lies in the realm of the intangible. Isn’t this the most elusive and private of all conditions, that of the self suspended in the medium of language, the particles of the identity wavering in the magnetic current of another’s expression? How are we to talk about it?”

-- Italics mine, Birkerts, 78

”Words on Screens:” Secondary Literacy in the age of cybertext as a new hybrid medium

Introduction

The use of communication through the Internet is one of the most fascinating phenomena in the media world of the last decades. It gained public face as a collective network in the 1990’s, and by now has become a pervasive medium of communication impacting the everyday lives of societies and cultures all over the world. Today, people use the Internet for work and leisure, for finding information and for communicating with co-workers, family, friends and complete strangers. While in its first stages of development the Internet relied mostly on text, today it offers its users the multimedia experience of sound, image and video (e.g. webcam, earphones and microphone chats). However, regardless of emerging new possibilities, communication through text online, which I refer to as “cybertext”, is still the most widespread type of communication on the Internet. Cybertext communication includes e-mail, instant messaging, chats, bulletin boards, discussion lists, forums and more.

With the introduction of cybertext to our social world as a prevalent medium for communication, it is important to assess what has changed in our experience of the world and of language as a result. The investigation of this cultural phenomenon through the lens of media theory engenders multiple questions about the nature of this medium and its effects on society, in psychological, sociological, phenomenological and epistemological terms. This paper set out to discover what is unique about cybertext as a medium, what are its unique characteristics that differentiate it from previous prevalent media, and what are some of its current affects on language and society, as well as possible future affects. Particularly, the focus on the textual aspect of this communication connects it with questions about literacy, print and orality. I will compare between the representation of the world and the experience of language in the age of cybertext, with that representation of the age of print and of the age of oral cultures.

Cybertext differs from printed text because the text online is interactive, created by immediate dialogue by several people, often without an editor and a finished product, in contrast to a novel or a magazine, for example. Cybertext, more than print, is a medium of reciprocal communication. It differs from electronic text which is not characterized by immediacy and interactivity, even though it is flexible for editing, such as the type of writing done on electronic word processors which allows to tinker with the text with options like cut and paste. Most importantly, this paper argues, that cybertext communication is a new hybrid form of literacy which combines characteristics of primary orality, literacy (of print age) and secondary orality, with unique characteristics of internet communication. I call this new hybrid form “secondary literacy” because it is a new type of literacy which relies on “primary” literacy of the printed age, but encourages a different type of thought, culture and style. Unlike writing of the print age, cybertext is immediately reciprocal, simultaneous, and easily edited, encouraging a social interaction rather than a solitary act of writing or reading, in other words, encouraging dialogue and flexibility over the fixation of language of the printed work.

The theoretical background of this paper relies on several key media scholars: Walter J. Ong, Sherry Turkle, Sven Birkerts and Barry Wellman. These thinkers have inspired the ideas of this paper. From Ong’s Orality and Literacy (1982) and The Presence of the Word (1967) I took the key terms of presence and absence, interiority, permanence and evanescence, context, in order to discuss the phenomenon of cybertext in relation to sound and vision, to orality, literacy and print, and to compare some of their major characteristics, such as the unique psychodynamics of oral cultures and the characteristics of the print age. From Birkerts’ Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age (1994), I was inspired to explore the depth of cybertext as a medium, and to compare the process and significance of reading, which Birkerts elaborates on, because his writing about reading as an elevated experience reminded me of textual experience of online communication. I use Turkle’s Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet (1995) to discuss characteristics of postmodernity in online identity, and I rely on her overall theoretical framework which refers to computers as epistemological and discursive “objects-to-think-with” about our world. Finally, I use Wellman’s sociological theoretical and empirical studies of the Internet in The Internet in Everyday Life (2002), to ground some of my ideas in empirical data, as well as to discuss the effect of intimacy and emotional support online. This paper intends to converse in dialogue with these texts and to offer my own point of view about them in relation to cybertextuality.

In addition, I have relied on research online and empirical scholarly studies as well as on my personal experience in the writing of this paper. For the purpose of this study, I visited several chat rooms, read log sessions of chats from different online sources, collected logs of instant messages from online friends, and surveyed my old e-mails archive. I have also read many online articles and Wikipedia entries and visited cyber-poetry websites. One of the most helpful sources for understanding computer mediated communication, particularly in psychological terms, was psychologist John Suler’s online encyclopedia The Psychology of Cyberspace, which compares in-person interactions with online ones, discusses “text-talk” and offers psychological analyses for specific aspects of the computer mediated communication (CMC) phenomenon.

In terms of my experience, I have been an avid Internet user since 1996, when I was sixteen. The Internet as a medium has always mesmerized me, especially as a medium for communication. I have built several personal websites, one of which has a small but intimate communal discussion forum of music fans, in bulletin board form. I have communicated with people I know as well as with strangers, from my country and from different countries, in different ages, and in two languages (Hebrew and English, and sometimes some French), and in different communication program and forms: Internet Relay Chat (IRC), instant messaging (Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ, Trillian, AIM), discussion groups, website interaction, e-mails, chats and more. I have also had the opportunity to meet many of the people I interacted with online, from Europe, the United States and Israel.

The Down Side of Computer Programming

"Why computer programming sucks?"
Check out this interesting blog post and responses about the disadvantages of a computer programming career.

Half-Stigma's Blog

American Diaspora

Violent crime increasing: is it a black thing?

"You make the assumption that it is easy to correct the "Thug Life" mentality of inner-city blacks. You also assume that IQ is irrelevant to crime rates. It is not.IQ is related to a future-time-oriented outlook. Lower IQ people tend not to think in terms of long term consequences because that requires IQ. This means that they are more likely to make impulsive decisions (like shooting someone) without thinking about the consequences. Also, lower IQ people have fewer options for gainful employment, and this makes crime more financially attractive."

conscientiousness as a factor in long-term success..

From Print to Digital Media: Magazines

"Digital Mag Subs Growing, Using Less Print, More Of Other Platforms" [link].


" The findings comes as the print world is trying to come to grips with its migration to digital media, and whether the legacy of printed formats will hold up in digital form. While some remain dubious, digital editions have grown to be a significant share of the subscribers of some trade publications, especially tech industry magazines."

Career Insight Conference: Magazines

I got an invitation to this event from NYU Career Services:

"Attend this one-of-a-kind conference in New York City and take your first step into the exciting world of magazine publishing. You will have the unique opportunity to meet and make connections with seasoned magazine professionals, who will share insights, strategies and tools for successfully building and navigating a career in magazines. What's more, you will find out about the many different career options that magazines offer, including Editorial, Advertising Sales, Marketing, Research, Consumer Marketing, Business/Management, Production. The sessions will be interactive, with experts on the various areas of the magazine industry offering an overview of their specialty and answering questions from the attendees. Some of the sessions include: 1) Which Magazine Job Is Right for You? 2) The 'It' Factor: What Makes an Ideal Candidate 3) Practical Advice: What You Don't Know."
[http://www.magazine.org/diversity/21204.cfm]

Pink Noise: Rock NyC Hard

The coolest local NYC rock band I know is without a doubt Pink Noise. I always know that when I'll see them I'll get excited like I'm supposed to in a good rock concert with an intimate feeling, great vibe, and kick ass music.
No, I can't write something more intelligent about this now, but some other people have.

Video clip

Live at Sin-e oh yeah.

Drop of Life Trailer: Privatization of Water

Watch trailer of Drop of Life

In 20 years, says activist Shalini, 2/3 of the world population will have a problem to access water...

I got this by mail:

The story that Shalini is trying to tell about the privatization of
water needs to be seen and heard far and wide. You can help this happen just
by watching the trailer (link below). Shalini has entered her film into
Spielberg's ON THE LOT film contest. If she wins she will get a million
dollar development deal with Dreamworks. Since the contest looks at
how many times people view the films, you can help by taking a few minutes to
view the trailer, review it and/or send the link to others.

The site defines the film as "Drama Action Futuristic Sci-Fi Eco-Chic"... it's kind of a weird combination, I'm not sure how well this works. But it does features the cute girl from "Fire".

First Black Disney Princess

Afropop.org sources tell me that Disney is working on a film about New Orleans

The Frog Princess is an animated film currently in development by Walt Disney Feature Animation. It will be the first traditionally animated (2-D) feature film in Disney's animated features canon since 2004's Home on the Range. It will be directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, with music composed by Randy Newman.

Sources have revealed that the film will be an American fairy tale musical set in New Orleans during the 1920s Jazz Age, and the leading character, Maddy, will be the first black Disney princess. ^[1]

The film is scheduled for release in 2009.

Tel Aviv Impressions 2004

Sterotypes, Fantasies and the Metropolis. Here are my impressions as a 24-year old who's about to leave to the US....

So I was riding the bus back home, and looking outside the window. I was in love with what I saw. I saw beautiful women and interesting people. People walking, smiling, laughing, talking on their phone, bumping into one another. Walking fast, walking casually. soldier-girls in uniforms, girls in minimal clothes in pink and yellow, Philippino's talking Hebrew on thier cellular phone, people with dogs, old people, security guards in uniform, a Ethiopian bus driver who made me laugh, and skater boys in baggies.
Tel-Aviv!
I remember how, like some of my friends, I used to hate it -
the dirt, the density of people, the beggars, the filthy facades of the aapt. buildings which look as though they will fall apart any minute now. The bad smells. The dirty stray cats who squeal meow. The honking and no parking, the double parking, and reports, and traffic jams, the one-way roads and no U-turns which make so many drivers hate this city.

But in recent years, the more I spent my time here, I just love it more-
The diversity of people,
the fact that everyone is here all the time,
the multi-culturalism,
the lesbians and gays in the supermarket,
the cool record shops,
the middle-eastern markets of food and clothes.
the soap stores, and second-hand stores, and antique stores,
and juice-shops, and cafes and bars which are allways open,
and the falaffel- Israeli style, and the pizzas and sushis. the scooters,
and street-cats, and dogs.
the open-cars with loud music and the small european used-cars.
the cinemas with foreign films,
the kiosks with peanuts and cigaretts and alcohol with TV broadcasts which are open to the street.
the constant flux and movement.
the parties and alcohol and punks and brit-pops and tattoes and piercing
and skaters and 'arsim' and 'frechot' [loud people dressed in loud extravagantly cheap clothes who are all about partying and noise].
the students, the junkies, the models, the old fashionable ladies, the aunties,
the casually dressed with a faded tank top and bathing-suit boxkers and sandles men,
the rastaman, the braided heads, the blackers, the russians, the whores and sex-shops,
the tourists, the ethiopians, the soldiers.

I felt my heart filled up, my eyes devouring all I saw. the colors, thier movement, the sounds.
And I was thinking of this world, this specific social world I live in. And why the hell would I want to leave it?!
Surrounded by friends, whom I approach as "brother" ['achi'] and "sister" ['achoti'] as they approach me, and "honey" ['motek'] and "babe" ['booba']. Surrounded by family, who keeps in close touch with me and with many holidays and dinners and trips we have together as well as discussing most intimate and personal issues.

Surrounded by people who I can have heart-to-heart talks and discussions on any social issue of our choice, with arguments and examples, going into depth, people with awarness and the willingness to discuss issues. People who love art, who are music junkies, who watch European and Eastern movies, who have been to the East for a year, or to South America, who play musical instruments, who dream to become painters or musicians or writers. People in hi-tech works who know about the cutting edge technology, and play computer games. people who have alot of sex, people who smoke alot of grass, who go out to dance, who invite to parties, people who meet up spontaeuosly all the time, who read books, who watch tv shows with a critical eye, and discuss the political situation after hearing the news on the radio and in the newspapers. who go to local shows and support the local bands, who are not stuck up, but people you can easily approach and speak with, who have a good attitude. People who love to challange previous ideas, who are not afraid to think differently, who are born rebels.

This is what i see. And what I love.

Tropic of Cancer Quotes

"There is only one aim in life and that is to live it."
(Karl Shapiro, Intro to Tropic of Cancer by Henri Miller)

"'I am a free man -- and I need my freedom. I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversations, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.'" (Miller quotes Papini).

"It is not difficult to be alone if you are poor and a failure. An artist is always alone- if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness." (Miller).

"My mind is curiously alert; it's as though my skull had a thousand mirrors inside it. My nerves are taut, vibrant! the notes are like glass balls dancing on a million jets of water. I've never been to a concert before on such an empty belly. Nothing escapes me, not even the tiniest pin falling. It's as though I had no clothes on and every porse of my body was a window and all the light flooding my gizzards." (Henri Miller).

The Meaning of Life- A Review

The Meaning of Life, Happiness and Modernity*

"The Meaning of Life"- a collection of essays edited by Asa Kasher, a philosophy scholar of Tel-Aviv University. This book includes essays, poems, and paintings by contemporary Israeli intellectuals and artists dealing with the question of the meaning of life, the meaning of death, and existentialism.

I was interested especially in the article "Why Has the Question of the Meaning of Life Arisen in the Last 250 Years?" by Ido Landau.

It deals with the core ideal in modern thought of "Happiness" which is identified with "fun, amusement and comfort" instead of past ideals like "devotion to God, a life of contemplation, fulfillment of duty or honor ".

"The pursuit of Happiness", says Landau, "is one of the main propelling forces of science, technology and capitalistic activity." He also asserts that because of the emphasis on the need for happiness people are more aware when they lack happiness and that makes us wonder why are we not happy. Landau says: "The lack of happiness in spite of comfort and pleasure require an explanation, and one explanation is the meaningless of life."

He recommends that people who feel that life is meaningless would try and find and develop something that will be important and comprehensible for them. "What is important?" "What is comprehensible?". He tells of a couple of ways which are possible and have been followed:

Trying to create groups in which the modern economy, modern science and etc. are less dominant, or trying to join groups like this which exist already.

Move to places where the instrumental and scientific culture has not arrived yet.

Trying to change the technological, economical and scientific reality. This way has been adopted by environmentalists and 'green party' Europeans.

Calling for a return to past ways of life and ideals. This is done by conservative circles.

Trying to develop and nurture new personal and cultural values, which fit to modern culture on one hand and include stronger elements of significance and importance. This way is suggested by Charles Taylor in " Ethics of Authenticity".

How will the future look in this regard?

One opinion is that *essentially* as humans, we need stable contents, non-relativistic contents, and that the less the culture can provide such content the more the feeling of the meaningless of life will be acute. The other opinion is that there is no essential human need for stable contents which are non-relativistic, and that we are in a transition period, after which this need will disappear. We have expectations, ideals and standards that were made in previous times, and now that science and technology shape our reality differently they will shape our expectations and understanding of the world differently.

"According to this view, the process has already began. Many people in our culture are immersed in scientific, technological and capitalistic activity, and don't feel lack of comprehension and meaninglessness (or insignificance). Many of them may also find it as a strange thing to present science and rationality, which have made so many phenomenons comprehensible, as causing a feeling of incomprehensibility.

Similarly they would think it a strange to present pragmatism and capitalism, which caused appropriation of value and importance to many things, as causing a sense of insignificance [non-importance]. For them modern science and technology provide excellent means for appropriation of value and significance to the world."

So these people would expect that the gap between standards and significance to be closed with time, and that culture would move to new standards which are more dynamic.

* [First posted on Jun. 8th, 2005]

Babel

Babel’s Official Site,
Babel’s trailer

I believe Babel is the best film and most important film I have seen in the past year. It is a film that encourages an understanding of the social global ties that exist in our world today. It is a sensitive, complex, original, well-written film that keeps you in suspense and impresses you with cinematography.

I admire Alejandro González Iñárritu for his fantastic Amores Perros, which I consider one of the best films I have ever seen.

(It got 96% in Rotten Tomatoes)

I would like to write a more extensive review of this film later on.

Žižek about Children of Men

Slovenian philosopher, Slavoj Žižek, wrote an essay about the film "Children of Men".


Here are several quotes out of order:

If the terrorists are ready to wreck this world for love of the other, our warriors on terror are ready to wreck their own democratic world out of hatred for the Muslim other.
==

Today’s predominant mode of politics is a politics of fear, a defense against potential victimization or harassment: fear of immigrants, fear of crime, fear of godless sexual depravity, fear of the excessive State itself (with too high taxation), fear of ecological catastrophies, fear of harassment (which is why Political Correctness is the exemplary liberal form of the politics of fear). Such a politics always relies on the frightening rallying of frightened men. The big event in Europe in the early 2006 was that the anti-immigration politics “went mainstream”: they finally cut the umbilical link that connected them to the far Right fringe parties. From France to Germany, from Austria to Holland, in the new spirit of pride at one’s cultural and historical identity, the main parties now find it acceptable to stress that the immigrants are guests who have to accommodate themselves to the cultural values that define the host society – it is “our country, love it or leave it.”
==

In a typical Hollywood sci-fi, the future world may be full of unheard-of objects and inventions, but even the cyborgs interact exactly the way we do – or, rather, did in old Hollywood melodramas and action movies. In The Children of Men, there are no new gadgets, London is exactly the same as it is now, only more so – Cuaron merely brought out its latent poetic and social potentials: the greyness and decay of the littered suburbs, the omni-presence of video-surveillance… The film reminds us that, of all strange things we can imagine, the weirdest is reality itself. Hegel remarked long ago that a portrait of a person resembles it more than this person itself. The Children of Men is a science-fiction of our present itself.

It is 2027, with the human race rendered infertile - the earth’s youngest inhabitant, born 18 years ago, was just killed in Buenos Aires. The UK lives in a permanent state of emergency, anti-terrorist quads chasing illegal immigrants, the state power administering the dwindling population which vegetates in sterile hedonism. Are these two features – hedonist permissiveness plus new forms of social apartheid and control based on fear – not what our societies are about? Here comes Cuaron’s stroke of a genius – as he put it in one of his interviews: “Many of the stories of the future involve something like ‘Big Brother,’ but I think that’s a 20th-century view of tyranny. The tyranny happening now is taking new disguises — the tyranny of the 21st century is called ‘democracy’.” This is why the rulers of his world are not grey and uniformed Orwellian “totalitarian” bureaucrats, but enlightened democratic administrators, cultured, each with his or her own “life style.” When the hero visits an ex-friend, now a top government official, to gain a special permit for a refugee, we enter something like a Manhattan upper-class gay couple loft, the informally dressed official with his crippled partner at the table.

Children of Men is obviously not a film about infertility as a biological problem. The infertility Cuaron’s film is about was diagnosed long ago by Friedrich Nietzsche, when he perceived how Western civilization is moving in the direction of the Last Man, an apathetic creature with no great passion or commitment: unable to dream, tired of life, he takes no risks, seeking only comfort and security, an expression of tolerance with one another: “A little poison now and then: that makes for pleasant dreams. And much poison at the end for a pleasant death. They have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night, but they have a regard for health. ‘We have discovered happiness,’ - say the Last Men, and they blink.”

More SoHo Beauties

Venezuelan Writer in New York

You are invited to my friend Michelle's blog (click on the title).

Describing her blog, "Venezuelan Writer in NYC," Michelle writes:

This is a blog written in English and Spanish where I will publish articles about Latin American art and other excentricities I find interesting in New York City. Some articles are in Spanish, other in English, mostly because they are all targeted for diferent readers. Some of you may be interested in Hispanic art (or, for what matters, art in general), others may find interesting some general entries on culture, the rest, may have much time to waste. For all of you, this is my blog. BY: MICHELLE ROCHE RODRÍGUEZ

Michelle's blog also features her review of "Dans Paris".

". . . The story is . . .about youth, about death, but above all: about the unhappiness of everyday life that has no cure. Yet, this is one of the funniest films I’ve seen in the past decade."

I also recommend her post "My Ipod and Me" which is inspired from and questions similar materials that I am working with for my thesis.

The lowering of standards in the American media

Here is an article by my friend Tom. Thanks Tom for sharing!

The Lowering of Standards in the American Media by Tom Risen

As I woke up today on my way to go to a town hall meeting with the misguided dean of my journalism school (who isn’t a journalist) 90.9 NPR led their report with the following:

“Anna Nicole Smith be buried in the Bahamas…in a custom pink dress and a tiara made by her friends. Our reporter (Jerry Someguy) is live from the airport where Smith’s plane left an hour ago.”

News judgment like this is diluting the already fading standards of the old school journalism. People in Walter Cronkite’s day used to believe everything they heard and saw on the broadcast news since they knew that people like him were no-nonsense and hard hitting. Now some people see broadcast news, which is increasingly filled with entertainment and opinion, as background noise.

“We keep CNN on in the background as white noise and a decoration for the wall of our tiny office,” said Jeff Jagoda, a software engineer in Frederick.

Some people watch FOX News religiously for the same reason, whether they buy into the conservative bias of the network or not. Others have been turned off by becoming suspicious of the political motives of journalists.

This trend of disinterest, distrust, soft news, and opinion is the most visible in broadcast news, but all journalism is facing the same shift.

Michael Nelson, editor of the Kansas City Star, said that the business of journalism today is faced with a shift because of technology. There are many sources of news available and the new generation raised on it expects that information should be free. This means with an abundant supply the job market for journalists is shrinking. Newspaper circulation is shrinking and the future of how to fund and produce quality journalism is being questioned.

This is the problem that concerns John Levine, the new dean of the Medill School of Journalism, who is implementing an approach called Medill 2020 in an attempt to adapt to it.

The founder of the Medill Media Management Center, he is trying to bring Medill into the digital age where its students will be educated in all forms of media tech to get out the news and compete in an uncertain job market. How he plan to do this? Link here to see his ridiculously vague circle presentation that is occupying the budget and curriculum of the school.

The journalism world is making a shift to adapt to endless blogs and the cry for cheap information.

Newspapers like the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune are publishing free newspapers that are given away on the subways of their cities. Such papers like Express in Washington D.C. and the Red Eye in Chicago contain usually contain aggregated news from the Associated Press up front, followed by sports and entertainment news, and have been very successful, especially the hipster Red Eye. The only trouble is, the free newspapers have become more successful than the ones that pay to publish them.

“I love Express since its simple and free,” said Jose Sabalboro, a researcher at the Department of Transportation.

Many people in Chicago and Washington D.C. say that the Red Eye and Express are the only newspapers they read, for some of them it is the only news they follow most days only because it is convenient to them. They also read basic news on endless sources on the Internet which is similarly aggregated from the sources like the AP.

Journalism as a business is going out of its way to not only be entertaining and make news more appealing, but to straight out ask people what they want in their effort to keep their audiences being drawn away by the internet

Radio stations that are being bought out in Washington D.C. have commercials designed to win back audiences from digital media.

“Call us and tell us what kind of radio YOU want to hear,” said advertisements of 104.1 GEORGE FM.

Levine, a former readership analyst, is similarly looking for a way to get the attention of audiences drawn away from traditional news with his new Medill 2020 program. His efforts include like focusing more time on digital media instead of writing, requiring students to by iPods and video cameras, and holding weekly seminars on “engaging young audiences.”

Many Medill students and faculty see these as pandering to a trend which might undermine the school’s traditional reputation. Is this an effort to destroy the village in order to save it? Faculty not to be named here have griped to him about the program. Every time he speaks about it Levine doesn’t seem like he’s listened. Many journalists at Medill fear Levine might not have an exit strategy if his investment doesn’t pan out.

Geography of This blog's Viewers

46 people have viewed this site so far. here is the geographical statistics:

Countries Unique Visitors
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Israel	25	33.78%
Germany	7	9.46%
Mexico	2	2.70%
Spain	1	1.35%
UK	1	1.35%
Denmark	1	1.35%
Belgium	1	1.35%

On the right-hand bottom side of this site there's an icon that allows you to see this site's viwers statistics.

Films soon to be reviewed

Recently watched on DVD:

Neil Young: Heart of Gold, 2006

Hype, 1996

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, 2006

Manhattan, 1979

Fire, 1996

I will soon review these films.

Dans Paris

[click on the title for a link]

Last night I went to a film called "Dans Paris" [Inside Paris].
It was part of the "Rendez-Vous with French Cinema" festival [February 28 - March 11].

I loved the film and I recommend it.

It was refreshingly original in content and form and it dealt with a deep and sensetive subject--depression--with delicacy, non-cliche understanding and humor. "Dans Paris" is about three men of the same family, two brothers and their father, and their relationship with (their) women as well as with each other.

In the first scene Jonathan (played by the charming Louis Garrel from The Dreamers) looks straight at the camera and addresses the viewers.

Jumping out of bed in which a man and a woman were sleeping on both his sides, the actor explains he will be the omniscient narrator of the film and will get back into character straight after this confession. He also explains he is not the main character of the film, and asks the viewers a 'final question'- can love really make one jump over a bridge?
These first 5 minutes of the film managed to charm me straight away.

The film has several scenes in which the actors recite poetry or prose in a very natural way instead of a dialogue, and sometimes they sing to each other instead of talking. I'm not a musicals person, and this worked perfectly. I found it quite refreshing. The way they played with words, scripts, music and also some dance and quiet moments.

This is not giving away the content of the film, so you can go watch it and enjoy.
It was fun, deep, playful, sensetive, artistic and experimental. Surely, that is a rarity.

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