It was junior year of high school. I was bright-eyed and bushy tailed. I was devoting myself single-mindedly to my studies in a way that will probably never again be replicated. For the only time in my life, I tried my hardest and came up short. Also, I began listening to Cloud Cult.


"Cloud Cult is an experimental indie rock band from Minneapolis, Minnesota led by singer/songwriter Craig Minowa.

In 1997, lead singer Craig Minowa formed Earthology Records on his organic farm, powered by geothermal energy and built partially from reclaimed wood and recycled plastic. This nonprofit label uses only recycled materials and donates all profits to environmental charities.^[4] The band also tours in a biodiesel van." - Wikipedia

"Cloud Cult has two professional painters on stage for the band's live shows. The paintings are created live during the set and auctioned off at the end of the show." -Cloud Cult website

They are one of my favorite bands. Their last three albums have all been spectacular.

Cloud Cult - Six Days

Overpopulation

When I was in the South Carolina public school system we were required to take a class in health and sex education. When contraception came up in the curriculum (i'm not sure there was a set curriculum I think the teacher just made it up as she went along she did double as the culinary arts teacher) my teacher called in the reinforcements. A representative from some Christian organization came to our class and taught us about the various forms of birth control. She told us that they were ineffective and that abstinence was the best way to avoid unwanted preganancy. She also mentioned that the H.I.V. virus spontaneously arises when two homosexual men have sex with one another as God's punishment for their sin.

"Johns Hopkins researcher Janet Rosenbaum, who took a rigorous look at nearly 1,000 students. She compared teens who took a pledge of abstinence with teens of similar backgrounds and beliefs who didn't. She found absolutely no difference in their sexual behavior, or the age at which they began having sex, or the number of their partners.

In fact, the only difference was that the group that promised to remain abstinent was significantly less likely to use birth control, especially condoms, when they did have sex. The lesson many students seemed to retain from their abstinence-only program was a negative and inaccurate view of contraception." The Seatle Times

Humanity has a serious overpopulation problem. Maybe we should start taking contraception seriously.

Flying Lotus

"A series of pharmacy bottles lined the wall behind his equipment. The clear orange cannisters were familiar, but not the names on the laser-printed labels: Grape Ape, Purple Haze. 'Medical marijuana,' Ellison explained. He showed me a water-operated 'gravity bong' made from a bottle—a birthday present."
The New Yorker

Flying Lotus, (born Steven Ellison) is an experimental music producer, disc jockey , and laptop musician from Winnetka, California. He is most famous (yet also uncredited) for the music in many of the segues of Cartoon Network's Adult Swim

-wikipedia

I like FlyLo because he combines electronic noises with slightly off-tempo beats which adds a more organic quality to some very strange and original sounds. The great nephew of Alice Coltrane is leading a splinter of Hip Hop in a new direction and "Totally tripping me out man!"


Love Lockdown (Flying Lotus Remix) (This remix actually makes me like the song, kinda...)
Here's the song mentioned in the The New Yorker article
Interference Alt Link

Wikipedia: Hero or Menace?

According to Radio Netherlands:
"internet encyclopaedia Wikipedia has received 4.3 million euros in donations, enough to pay running costs for the next six months. In July, the company's founder, Jimmy Wales, appealed to users to donate money to Wikipedia. More than 125,000 people responded to the appeal.

Wikipedia is a free internet encyclopaedia that anybody can contribute to. More than 150,000 volunteers have written in excess of 11 million articles for beekeeping gear over the last eight years. The internet encyclopaedia is available in 265 languages. According to Mr Wales, more than 275 million people visit the web site every month."

I think that this is wonderful. A casual glance at this blog would attest to my support of the distributed source of all knowledge. I feel like this money should be spent making Wikipedia easier to use for a broader audience of users.

"it turns out over 50% of all the edits are done by just .7% of the users ... 524 people. ... And in fact the most active 2%, which is 1400 people, have done 73.4% of all the edits." The remaining 25% of edits, he said, were from "people who [are] contributing ... a minor change of a fact or a minor spelling fix ... or something like that." - Raw Thought

Bloggers have commented that this means that Wikipedia has a bottleneck for information which spells the end of its credibility. However, this information just reveals the way in which Wikipedia operates. Content is largely contributed by outsiders who make occasional edits with specialized knowledge. Insiders then make many times more edits adjusting its syntax and style. This tells me that since wikipedia is mostly written by outsiders its interface and its functionality should be adjusted for people who are not accustomed to it.

Regardless wikipedia is a valuable and wonderful way for one to kill time. And hey instead of constantly clicking "Random Page" why not edit an article or write your own? Procrastination has never been so revolutionary...and educational?

Israel-Gaza Conflict

"The assault brings new risks and the prospect of many new casualties on both sides in a confrontation that, before this phase began, had already cost the lives of more than 430 Palestinians and 4 Israelis. ...While a ground war in densely populated Gaza is likely to increase the civilian toll there, the Israeli Army also faces new threats...World leaders called on Hamas and Israel to accept an immediate cease-fire, and in several European cities tens of thousands of protesters demanded that Israel end its campaign..A mosque in northern Gaza was also hit, during evening prayer time, in what witnesses said was an Israeli airstrike. At least 11 worshipers were killed and about 30 wounded, according to Palestinian hospital officials. The Israeli military had no immediate comment."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/world/middleeast/04mideast.html?pagewanted=2&ei=5124&en=4cbfb59a9acc5b24&ex=1388725200&partner=digg&exprod=digg

"As noted, the US-Israeli alliance was firmed up precisely when Israel performed a huge service to the US-Saudis-Energy corporations by smashing secular Arab nationalism, which threatened to divert resources to domestic needs. That's also when the Lobby takes off (apart from the Christian evangelical component, by far the most numerous and arguably the most influential part, but that's mostly the 90s). And it's also when the intellectual-political class began their love affair with Israel, previously of little interest to them. They are a very influential part of the Lobby because of their role in media, scholarship, etc..” -Noam Chomsky

http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/4134

"United States blocked a security council resolution calling for 'an immediate Israeli-Hamas cease-fire in Gaza and southern Israel and expressing serious concern at the escalation of violence.' The United States...said that Israel's attack was a result of the Hamas bombing and that it condemned the attacks by Hamas..."

-wikipedia


"Hamas to 'fight to the last breath.'"
www.cnn.com

"The IDF warned that terrorists using civilians as human shields would bear full responsibility for their fate. Israeli prime minister's spokesman, Mark Regev, said this operation will stop. How many more before this ends?"

http://firedoglake.com/2009/01/03/gaza-ground-invasion/


This old conflict is making use of new technologies, but the results are the same:

"Israel's consulate in New York began holding online press conferences on Twitter, a microbloggin website, and the IDF Spokesperson's Unit opened a channel on the website YouTube to diffuse video of airstrikes against Hamas targets.<sup>"

-wikipedia</sup>

Meth?

My friend is fond of telling a certain story about his experience with meth. As the story goes, he snorted some meth and stayed up for 48 hours. He tells me, “I played halo for hours. I turned the sensitivity all the way up, but it still wasn’t enough.” Usually during this last part he grabs the collar of my shit and pulls me close. If I’m lucky one of his dreads will hit me in the face. Then if he decides to go into more detail he'll begin telling you how "crazy" Radiohead was...on meth.

This one time a student from a local radiological technical college was making a stopover at my college to visit an acquaintance of mine. He revealed to me that he used meth to study. He would take some and then read a whole text book on radiology. He was of Asian decent, wore glasses, and the holes in his pants took up more area than fabric. There was something about his demeanor that convinced me that he was at the very least bi-sexual. He made a circle with his hands and put them next to his pocket, “So I had a Meth rock which was about this big right in my pocket when I was being pulled over by this police officer, but I just gave him the rock and a hundred dollars and he let me go.”