"Electronic Dickery"

You can expect to hear this phrase a lot more in my vocabulary in the future.

Why? (Other than the fact that I tend to latch onto phrases that make me laugh on the inside. And sometimes *outside.*)

Check out this "preview" of the Pygmalion Music Festival that starts tonight and runs until Saturday night. The "preview" in Smile Politely is written by Mark Sieckman. And, yes, I'm going to keep using quotations because the article deserves it. You might not know it from this "preview," but Skream is headlining a DUBSTEP! show at Highdive tomorrow night. And you may not know who Skream is and that wouldn't be too surprising.

Mr. Sieckman, however, is in another position because, you know, he was supposed to be writing a "preview" of the shows playing Pygmalion this weekend. And you really should get out and see something regardless of what kinda music you like because there's something for everyone. Cameron McGill is playing and Mordechai in the Mirror and....

Anyway...here's just a few highlights from Sieckman's "preview":

THURSDAY
The Bad: Not only is The Highdive a little off the beaten path for Thursday's action, but moreover, the abundance of DJs doesn't help its appeal. Kudos to DJ Belly and DJ Mertz, but they're both area locals so this won't be the last time to check them out if you miss them.

...

SATURDAY
The Bad: Enough already! Canopy Club is begins their evening with the Physical Challenge DJs and concludes with RJD2. Aside from what should provide an interesting artistic interlude from Portland's YACHT, Canopy Club has packed the bill with synthetic electronic dickery. Keep your eyes out for YACHT, though. You have to respect any band that promotes its artistic philosophy over its musical ability while listing Yoko Ono as a primary influence.

Notice how he doesn't even *mention* the fucking HEADLINER?

Now, I'm not much of a country music fan. But you can bet that I could write an article about a country music act and/or show without wiping my ass on it prior to hitting "Publish." At the very least, I'd know who was headlining the show.

There are so many reasons why that article sucks. It's factually inaccurate, it's misleading, it's a piss-poor review, etc. There are over 100 acts playing this festival---the article covers only a little over thirty. It's not like we're saving paper or anything here.

But there are also many reasons a person who likes electronic music might wanna hear that Skream is in town. And that's kinda the shame.

An internationally-known dubstep producer and originator of the genre is at the Highdive Thursday night---did you learn that from the "preview"?

Tonight, he plays Miami. Friday, it's Chicago. But he'll be *here* before Chicago. It's a major feat that the 217mafia dubstep crew has brought Skream to Champaign. His other tour stops are Vancouver, Montreal, Portland, and LA. But you didn't learn that from the "preview" either.

Some of the staff at Smile Politely have chalked this up to a difference of taste according to their comments to the "preview." A difference of taste doesn't explain poor writing or factual inaccuracies. Oh, and the lack of a preview in the "preview."

Electronic dickery, indeed.

Displacing the Problem of Poverty

Since the topic came up recently, here's a story out of Sacramento that parallels CU's Tent City. Here in Champaign, private trespass isn't the problem since St. Mary's allows the Tent City to stay there. But...it does beg the question: how are we going to proceed?

From Crooks and Liars:

As The Homeless Are Chased from Campground, We Keep Displacing the Problem of Poverty

The problems of poverty keep getting pushed from one place to another (literally). We have so many people out of work and losing their homes. What, exactly, are we going to do about it?

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) ―A local attorney opened up his private property for homeless campers to have a place to stay, but authorities are already warning they will have to shut it down.

Attorney Mark Merin is leasing his property on 13th Street and C Street in Sacramento to about three dozen homeless men and women for one dollar a year, which is meant to give them the legal rights of lessees and property renters.

'It's a matter of human dignity, and it's life and death,' said Greg Bunker, executive director of Francis House in Sacramento.

According to Sacramento police, it isn't legal to live in a tent anywhere in the city for longer than 24 hours. The department wouldn't say when, but did say that they would soon enforce the city ordinance and kick the homeless persons out of the property.

The lot is located in a mostly industrial area, with only one home backing up to the property, but the city has received complaints about the campers from nearby residents.

Also, there's an article in Smile Politely by Caleb Curtiss looking at Champaign's antagonistic response to Tent City.

City stance on Safe Haven ‘absolutely unacceptable’

Since first gaining media attention in June of this year, Safe Haven Tent Community has presented the greater C-U community with a real challenge. It has forced us to qualify how we define community members while exposing the inadequate way in which we deal with poverty. Some of us have stepped up to this challenge by promoting an attitude of acceptance. Others have gone a step further by openly advocating for the people who make up this small community of homeless people. But most of us have responded with complacency or even worse, antagonism, when confronted with the questions that Safe Haven’s mere presence has begged.

City Manager Steve Carter, arguably Champaign’s most powerful member, has chosen to respond with contempt. On very shaky legal ground, he has chosen to represent the will of the people by pursuing the dozen or so homeless people who comprise Safe Haven in a manner that is reminiscent of a Dickensian villain. Carter, (the unelected administrator of Champaign’s municipal policies) along with Mayor Jerry Schweighart and the Champaign City Council, have not only chosen to follow Safe Haven all the way to St. Mary’s Church in order to rigidly enforce the zoning laws that ban people from living in temporary structures, but they have done so without what appears to be a complaint on file. It makes me wonder how many complaintless noise violations the city has lying around?

The article has quite a few comments and some good discussion going on.

Google Reader Updates: New "Send To" Feature

I'm gonna start using a new feature via Google Reader. Hopefully, it will spur me into some new blogging habits.

Google Reader Updates: Share News on Twitter, Facebook, and More: "

Today confirms that Google’s not giving up their quest to become more social media friendly. Earlier today they introduced a series of new iGoogle features that make it more of a social network than a start page, and just now they’ve released an update to your Google Reader to turn it into a social distribution utility for news on the web.

Google Reader “Send To” is the new feature that you’re likely to love instantly. It’s the feature we’ve wanted from our reader since Twitter became our favorite place to share interesting links. In fact, with Send To you can set your settings to send posts to almost every social site that matters: Blogger, Delicious, Digg, Facebook, MySpace, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and — obviously — Twitter.

Once you configure your favorite social sites to send to in settings — you can even add your own custom destinations — you’ll notice that you can then select the send to button at the bottom of the post and pick your final destination.

Google Reader has also introduced a few less social, but more practical ways, to engage with their feed aggregator. They’ve added a better way to quickly subscribe to the feeds from people you follow, and also given you an easier way to mark items as read in bulk. So now you can select the “Mark all as read” drop down to fine tune your preferences and only mark items older than a day, a week, or two weeks as read in one easy click.

Google Reader is starting to blossom, and we’re a big fan of the new social additions. Share your thoughts on the refreshed Google Reader in the comments.

So...basically, that's what I did for this post. Clicked "Send To," reworked the text and images imported into a new window, and soon, I shall click "Publish Post." Couple weird things. First, it imports all the stuff at the bottom of the blog post that I would normally see in Google Reader. The following is something I deleted:

---

Reviews: Delicious, Digg, Google, Google Reader, MySpace, StumbleUpon, Twitter, blogger, facebook

Tags: google reader

"

Not sure why all this imports as it's not part of the post but rather stuff added on by FeedBurner. I have some of these on my posts.

Also, I kinda hoped it would just post the snippet of what I see in Reader to my blog, but after seeing all this extra stuff, reworking the posts are sorta a necessary evil. I was hoping for a more "Share with Note" kinda set up---add my comment and publish a snippet of the article.

Regardless, I'm wondering: Do you use Google Reader? If so, will you use this new tool? So far, I'm trying out the Blogger and Twitter options. I think it may prove very useful....

Rumble Gut Averted!

Thanks goodness my co-workers staged an intervention with me and stopped me from eating old food....

When is it OK to eat moldy food

My friend (and MAKE managing editor) Shawn Connally posted a chart about what kinds of moldy foods are safe to eat, and which ones are dangerous.

My husband and I have battled continuously for years about whether scraping the mold off the top of -- well, anything -- makes it OK to eat, or if once a spot of green invades the top of a barely used jar of jam we've got to call it a loss and toss it out. I'm always willing to scrape off the top, cut off the moldy crusts, etc., and carry on with the meal. My husband, not so much.

Well, turns out the USDA has weighed in on the argument with interesting findings. My favorite part of the Safe Food Handling fact sheets is this chart on how to handle moldy foods (very, very carefully is not one of the answers).

Via BoingBoing.

So....

Couldn't moblog for a while. Had to reconnect my Storm with my blog. I have no idea why.

Hopefully I can get more posts up that way in the future.

Here's a quick taste of selected tidbits:

Bling Pig Brewery open (in the space where Barfly used to be)---that's gonna be a great beer garden.

The "devil" is on our side---I'm sure some already think that.

Cynthia from The Sandwich Life got a great write-up on Smile Politely about her blog. Give her some love. If anyone needs it, she surely does.

If you miss the Snuggie/Slanket fun from this past winter, no worries. No there is the Wearable Towel.



That's right, one oversized towel with three slits cut in it for ONLY $20. Plus shipping and handling.

A five-year-old gets a "rope of hair" in her innards---the parents either too stupid or too lazy to cut her hair short enough so she can't eat it.

I'm leary of granola right now...I prefer my fiber to be of the *food* variety.

And I'll close with some really good news. Apparently, the CUMTD might reduce bus passes...drastically. Adult passes would drop from $235/yr to somewhere between $50-75/yr. And student passes would drop from $145/yr. to $30/yr. That's some *great* news for people who depend on the bus.

Before I head out....

I'm headed downtown for the Boneyard Arts Festival here shortly. Hitting up Cupcakes on Main, Luna, Bee Mi Gallery Show, and Boltini.

Oh, and I *hope* to catch the UI Black Chorus at 8:30. I'll try to moblog but I'd hate to blind anyone with my flash.

In the meantime...HOLY CRAP!

So...here's the deal....

I think I might move this blog to WordPress and a new domain name.

Has anyone else done this? Was it a nightmare?

I'm looking for input here, so gimme your opinion.

Teabaggery afterthoughts

Drove by the park today. Saw lots of Libertarian signs. And Libertarian shirts.

Oh, and Libertarians.

Now, don't get me wrong, I like some of the ideas Libertarians have. Libertarians generally support individual liberty---pro-choice, assisted suicide, gay marriage---and they usually are anti-war. Not necessarily because they don't agree with the war, but because they don't agree with public funding for anything.

And that's where I split with them. I'm all for cooperating with Libertarians when it suits me---voting reform, drug law reform, pro-choice issues, etc. Call me a Cafeteria Libertarian. And if we had a coalition style government, this might come into play. But we don't.

And, when Libertarians start talking about getting rid of public education and social security and environmental regulations and financial regulations and all that...well, I'm out.

So, as you might imagine, when I read this comment on the N-G's TEA party article, I laughed my tuchus off.

I dig the irony of tax protesters using a public park.
Posted by htucker on April 15, 2009 at 2:41 PM

That comment is all WIN.

Does. Not. Compute.

I *really* hope there's some information missing from this story because the reasoning not only makes me scratch my head, it chaps my ass as well.

A former Danville police officer on Tuesday was exonerated from criminal wrongdoing in a March 2008 incident, which resulted in his dismissal by the city a year later.

...

"We have felt all along this should never have been filed as a criminal case," Christoff [Piatt's defense attorney] said. He added that the Vermilion County sheriff's department launched an independent investigation of the incident and determined that Piatt had not committed a crime.

Christoff said he believes that filing criminal charges set a bad precedent. "Whoever thought of using the criminal justice system to affect personnel policy in the city police department needs to rethink that," he said. "The police department already has a system of employee discipline in place. This new state's attorney looked at all the evidence, the statements I took from the actual individuals involved, the videotape, and has determined there was no basis for a criminal case."

...

The charge – a Class A misdemeanor, which is punishable by up to a year in jail and/or a $2,500 fine – was filed on April 8 under previous State's Attorney Frank Young. It alleged that on March 8, 2008, Piatt, while off duty, "without lawful authority" pulled a weapon on Benny Rhodes in a local restaurant, placing the man "in reasonable apprehension of receiving bodily harm." No one was injured.

...

"I went over and over everything numerous times. ... It was my strong feeling that not all of the elements could be established beyond a reasonable doubt," [State's Attorney Randy Brinegar] said, adding it would not be appropriate to comment on which element or elements weren't met.

So, he's not saying he *shouldn't* prosecute, he's saying he *can't* prosecute. I'm still scratching my head at the idea that pulling a gun on someone isn't a crime. I'm gonna assume there is more to this than the article contains.

Cuz it smells rotten to me.

I read this as if I pull out a gun at a restaurant and point it at...oh...let's say...you, then it's not a crime. How does that work? And why in the hell would someone think that just because you get into hot water at work, it negates criminal charges? If I steal shit at work and get fired, I can't be criminally charged with theft? Hardly.

WTF?