An introduction

This is a semi-public place to dump text too flimsy to even become a blog post. I wouldn't recommend reading it unless you have a lot of time to waste. You'd be better off at my livejournal. I also have another blog, and write most of the French journal summaries at the Eurozine Review.

Why do I clutter up the internet with this stuff at all? Mainly because I'm trying to get into the habit of displaying as much as possible of what I'm doing in public. Also, Blogger is a decent interface for a notebook

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

E-voting in Estonia

Certain small post-Soviet states have a tendency to be hooked into all the latest fads among global policy wonks. It's an outgrowth of their size and history: ambitious young people who left for Western Europe or the US in the 90s, have now returned and found themselves wealthy, skilled, and ready to govern. Georgia and Estonia, in particular, have been quick to dive into every technnical/governmental trend, from twitter to linux to...e-voting.

As regards the latter, Estonia is forging ahead. 14% of votes in the European elections were cast online. 44% in the municipal elections in Talinn -- which, to judge by the percentage of Berlin's technorati vanishing there for mysterious projects, must be turning into something of an electronic mecca.

Monday, February 22, 2010

One of k-punks many, many worth activities is his full-frontal assault on the rhetoric of modernisation:


it's necesary to reclaim the public sphere and public services as achievements of modernity (much as they was celebrated by the GPO Film Unit), and, therefore, to re-narrativize their dismantling as acts of barbaric anti-modernisation. Think about it for a second: what is "modern" about the standard neoliberal package of outsourcing, a poorly motivated and casualised workforce delivering a poorer quality service, and exorbitantly overpaid executives? Wasn't the postal service more modern when you could post a letter in the morning and quite often have it delivered by a well motivated worker the same day?

Further reasons to hate my generation


those of us who are reaching adulthood in the 21st century are in many ways more conventional than our parents....orthodox, driven, a little boring, and with a deep desire to save the precarious world that we are about to inherit.

With a few notable exceptions, my peers are driven not to create, nor to rebel, but to stabilise. We want jobs, a foot on the housing ladder, and to protect the planet....My generation may not be turning up at a church, temple or synagogue every weekend, but nor are we running through the streets strewing flowers and reinventing rock music. On the contrary: the millennial generation is replacing the cultural and spiritual orthodoxy of its parents and grandparents with orthodoxies of its own.

--- Laurie Penny in CiF

Reasons to hate my generation


Mumblecore movies are made by buddies, casual and serious lovers, and networks of friends, and they’re about college-educated men and women who aren’t driven by ideas or by passions or even by a desire to make their way in the world. Neither rebels nor bohemians, they remain stuck in a limbo of semi-genteel, moderately hip poverty, though some of the films end with a lurch into the working world.

-- New Yorker

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Sweet Movie

Sweet Movie sounds like just the thing to jolt us out of bourgeois lethargy:

Makavejev shows us a commune where the members collectively immerse themselves in the fundamental processes of the body: eating, drinking, suckling, sex, vomiting, urinating, defecating, touching, screaming, hitting, caressing.

Makavejev doesn't exploit this material -- "Sweet Movie" is anything but a sex film -- but uses it to confront us in a very unsettling way.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

I've never seen the film Waking Life, but this quote makes me want to:

Quiet Woman at Restaurant: When it was over, all I could think about was how this entire notion of oneself, what we are, is just this logical structure, a place to momentarily house all the abstractions. It was a time to become conscious, to give form and coherence to the mystery, and I had been a part of that. It was a gift. Life was raging all around me and every moment was magical. I loved all the people, dealing with all the contradictory impulses - that's what I loved the most, connecting with the people. Looking back, that's all that really mattered.
I've never seen the film Waking Life, but this quote makes me want to:

Quiet Woman at Restaurant: When it was over, all I could think about was how this entire notion of oneself, what we are, is just this logical structure, a place to momentarily house all the abstractions. It was a time to become conscious, to give form and coherence to the mystery, and I had been a part of that. It was a gift. Life was raging all around me and every moment was magical. I loved all the people, dealing with all the contradictory impulses - that's what I loved the most, connecting with the people. Looking back, that's all that really mattered.
Infected Mushroom, with some of those lyrics that, when heard as lyrics, sound like some kind of missing key. When written down, the magic fades into the air -- so imagine this to the background of some unusually determined and driving trance:


We gonna run run run
To the cities of the future
Take what we can and bring back home

From Bruce Sterling's compellingly-annotated Flickr set studies in atemporality, presumably a companion to his Transmediale speech:
23street-steampunk

What I love about this is that it's obviously part of that Strychnin aesthetic of steampunk victoriana and Gaimanesque fairy-tales, but has managed to bridge the gap between there and the real world. Oh what a world, where introducing punk into steampunk can be a revelatory gesture.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Valérie Pécresse achieves total obliviousness as regards racism:

A un homme d’origine africaine qui lui demande l’application de la loi sur les CV anonymes, la ministre répond en le renvoyant sur les bancs de l’école. Selon cette native de Neuilly-sur-Seine, “une lettre de motivation avec une faute d’orthographe a plus d’impact” sur un recrutement qu’une photo…


In other words, two wrongs make a reason to ignore the public.

[via AG, of course]