edwebb's posterous

 

Poetry Month: To a Macho Driver on I-78

Dusk obscures the rain-slick road,

Dead deer and tyres line our path;

I'm trying to get my kids home safe,

So why d'you have to ride my arse?

 

What satisfaction, what thrill, what joy,

Is worth this risk to all our lives?

Schmucks like you force me to wonder

how the species still survives.

 

 

(NB British spellings used, because I'm British. For readers of U.S. English, tyres=tires, arse=ass)

Posted April 25, 2012
 

What we do online

Well, at least, what we report ourselves as doing online.

Most of us don't spend our time in virtual worlds, apparently. Nor do we blog, alas.

http://www.pewinternet.org/Infographics/2010/Generations-2010-Summary.aspx

 

Posted April 11, 2012
 

Nil desperandum

Media_httpiusatodayne_jgvhn
via content.usatoday.com

There are so many reasons to be gloomy about the future of the planet and our species, and of the US (where I currently live) in particular. But every so often something comes along to put a big grin on my face and remind me not to give up hope.

"The USS Oak Hill returned to the naval base at Virginia Beach, Va., after almost three months at sea training in Central America. As homecoming approached, the crew and the ship's family readiness group sold $1 raffle tickets to pick the sailor to be first off the ship to deliver the coveted first kiss on the dock. Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta bought 50 tickets and won, the newspaper reports. Navy officials said it was the first time on record that a same-sex couple was chosen to kiss first upon a ship's return, the Associated Press reports.

Here's how The Virginian-Pilot reported the precedent-shattering event of the post "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" era:

Her girlfriend of two years, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell, was waiting when she crossed the brow. They kissed. The crowd cheered. And with that, another vestige of the policy that forced gays to serve in secrecy vanished."

My main hope lies in our ability to learn. We can get better.

Posted December 21, 2011
 

On the riots

I posted the following comment in response to Sarah Carr's excellent and touching blog post about the London Riots. It turned out to be more or less the blogpost I've been incubating for the past 24 hours, so I reproduce it here.

I lived at the top of Crystal Palace park for a year and a half when I moved back to London from Cairo at the end of the 1990s. Couldn’t afford to live closer in, so commuted from there to work in the centre. Commuting was one of the reasons I quit my (safe, government) job 18 months later and moved to the US. Croydon was soul-destroying then, but not as grungy and run-down as you describe it here. 

On my last few visits to Austerity Britain(TM) I have been struck by both increasingly visible poverty and increasing electronic surveillance, particularly in urban areas. Public spaces are tense, fearful, surveilled. You can’t pull out a camera at a station. But their cameras are watching you from several angles. It’s not healthy at all. Orwellian, alienated. 

Some on Twitter etc have been evoking the start of the Thatcher era. It strikes me that what Thatcher started, her successors have been working to complete. She proclaimed that ‘there is no such thing as society’ and then did all she could to make that true. Community, solidarity, egalitarianism – all dying or dead, for the most part. I suspect if you could ask the rioters what they’re doing, they would give some variation on a nihilist theme. Why destroy? Because they can. We have trained our young people to be acquisitive, atomized, unempathetic. 

The smugness of Egyptian commentators may be unattractive or misplaced. The Egyptian state and its security agents are far, far worse than anything Britain has ever come up with. But I think Thatcher would have been laughed at for proclaiming that there is no such thing as society in Egypt. #jan25 was in part Egyptian society asserting itself against a predatory state. What we see in the UK at the moment is large-scale predation within society itself. I just hope that the clean-up crews, Turkish ‘popular committees,’ and other assertions of positive social solidarity prevail and signal the start of a different kind of rebalancing in the UK – the rebirth of real society (not Cameron’s goofy Big Society malarkey). 

Posted August 9, 2011
 

In error

If one's DJ moniker is Dr Funk, one might reasonably consider oneself immune to requests for Rod Stewart, no?

Apparently, one would be in error.


Posted July 30, 2011
 

What to call the mediations of this event? #media260

Rafael Alvarado asks an excellent question (read from the bottom up). Can anyone help answer it?

What_to_call_binladen_event

Posted May 2, 2011
 

Magnolia Tree

P1010269

The tree next to our house - I hesitate to call it 'our' tree since
it's been there for decades, seeing many families come and go - the
tree we live next to has exploded into spring fireworks over the past
few days. Amazing.

Posted April 18, 2011
 

Iraq: storytelling with links #media260 #ds106

An Iraqi friend sent me the following. It is very economical. The links tell the story, the quotation provides the commentary/punchline.

------------------


world/in_iraq_us_special_forces_gearing_up_to_leave/2011/02/27/ABbGWYRB_story.html?wprss=rss_politics

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20110325/NEWS02/103250335/1972

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/i-lost-my-moral-compass-how-a-young-us-soldier-triggered-an-abuse-scandal-in-afghanistan-2252475.html 

http://newamericamedia.org/2011/03/eight-years-of-occupation-in-iraq-eight-years-of-misery.php


“If you stick a knife nine inches into my back and pull it out three inches, that is not progress. Even if you pull it all the way out, that is not progress. Progress is healing the wound, and America hasn’t even begun to pull out the knife.”
El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X)

Posted March 25, 2011