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Previous statements that may have suggested my selling out are inoperative. Steal this Blog. Believe everything you read. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength.


 


 
   
             
             
       
   
             
             
 

word up

 
             

   
 
 

8.21.2008

 
Yes.

NYT: Sprinter's Moment is Foiled by One Step Over the Line

In the meantime, Nina Spearmon, who was watching from a box in the stadium, overheard a man in the suite next door say that her son had been disqualified, or DQ’d.

“My head was so out of it that, to be honest, I was thinking, ‘Wallace got Dairy Queened?’ ” Nina Spearmon said.

mike sold out at - 22:33





8.19.2008

 
Ha!

AP "misfire": Joe Lieberman was a "Democratic Vice Presidential prick [sic]"

mike sold out at - 14:31





8.17.2008

 
Would You Trust This Man?


mike sold out at - 23:18





8.14.2008

 
Wilco @ the Pool

I went to the Wilco concert at McCarren Park Pool last night for free by volunteering for the Open Space Alliance. Overall, a pretty good deal. I'm not a big fan of Wilco, but it was fun!

Wilco Concert

Wilco Concert

Wilco Concert

Wilco Concert

mike sold out at - 20:12





8.08.2008

 
Weird

Blog about a fictional city.

mike sold out at - 12:31





8.07.2008

 
A Must Watch Video


mike sold out at - 13:46





7.29.2008

 
Meet the candidate

Fist-bump ahoy!


mike sold out at - 22:43




 
Fun with bureaucracy

I'm not sure how else I would phrase this sentence, but it's pretty funny (it comes from a Housing Authority publication I'm reading for work):

"Now that the Internet is so popular, many residents are requesting more than one telephone line."

Have you heard about that Internet? It's a hoot!

mike sold out at - 17:19




 
Summer Streets!

NYC-residing friends get to party three Sundays in August on Park Avenue and vicinity (8/9, 8/16, 8/23), as they are opening the street to bikers and pedestrians. When visiting Dino & Paige in Bogotá last summer, I went to the Ciclovía events that this event is modeled on and it was a ton of fun.


Here's StreetsFilms' promotional video of the events.

mike sold out at - 16:13





7.27.2008

 
Awesome, awesome, awesome.

I got paid blogads back up and running. And John McCain is running ads on my website. One of them says something about "$3 million of taxpayer money to study bear DNA". I would think it's a bigger waste to spend $560 billion to support a stupid war.

But then, that's just me.

In case you're not getting this from the mainstream media. John McCain has basically dropped his stance on Iraq and shifted more or less to agreeing with Barack Obama's plans for Iraq and Afghanistan.

mike sold out at - 23:10




 
Recent Fun

Dragon Boats at Flushing Meadows Park. And yes, they were actually banging on bass drums to keep the beat.


Dragon Boat


Visited the Queens Velodrome on the same bike ride:

Queens Velodrome


Helped organize a pedestrianization of Bedford Avenue for four Saturdays, called Williamsburg Walks. The picture below features Yvette Helin's "pedestrian project."

Williamsburg Walks #2

mike sold out at - 22:53





7.18.2008

 
Classic

While this below graph is not exactly new news, the linked video they posted along with it is. Did you know that Mr. T was one of the first to stand up against Yo Momma jokes? And in music video form, no less.

song chart memes


mike sold out at - 13:35





7.06.2008

 
Feed Me (RSS-wise)

Some minor housekeeping: while I know I'm not the most frequent poster, if you want to stay updated in all things Word Up, I suggest you subscribe to my RSS feed if you use a blog reader. If you already are subscribed, it will work a lot better if you go to resubscribe with the new RSS feed address provided through feedburner.

mike sold out at - 22:13




 
Pictures from California Trip!

Watts Towers
Watts Towers in LA


Big Pimpin' in the '82 Riviera
Big Pimpin' in Richard's 1982 Buick Riviera

Witchita Lineman
Amy & I singing "Witchita Lineman" at an old-school Karaoke bar

Campfire
Abby & Avram's wedding in Simi Valley was basically a recreation of summer camp.

Ellie & Me
Hangin' with Ellie at the campfire

Can I pitch you my movie?
Whilst wearing these sunglasses and the suit, I repeatedly said either "Lookee-me, I'm a business-jerk!" or tried to get people to commit to funding my new movie feature Paulie Shore and Gary Busey.

Amy & Me
Amy & me at the wedding.


Abby & Avram's Wedding
The bride and groom see each other for the first time (at the wedding).

Abby & Avram's Wedding
The Bride approacheth

Flowergirls
Flower girls with bubble machines

The House of the Book
The futuristic building where the wedding was

The happy couple put-put off into the night
Abby & Avram put-put off into the night

Pismo Beach
Pismo Beach

Attack of the Seaweed Snake
Attack of the seaweed snake


Crab
Hello Mr. Crab!

Wildflowers
Wildflowers at Big Sur

Campsite in Big Sur
Sunset at our campsite in Big Sur

One Match Club!
I join the "One-Match Club"

Julia Pfeiffer Burns
Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park

Trolley
San Francisco Trolley

San Francisco
Amy & me in SF

IMG_2222
The first time I've been able to successfully take an airplane window shot of NYC at night that wasn't totally blurry.

mike sold out at - 13:21





6.29.2008

 
What Makes Me So Sassy?

Sassy Sauce

Sassy sauce.

mike sold out at - 22:12





6.26.2008

 
Montreal Fireworks Competition

Apparently, the Rockefeller Salute to Fireworks is about to get some company...

mike sold out at - 23:25





6.10.2008

 
This is awesome

Bike route mapping using google maps in New York City!

mike sold out at - 22:45




 
Time Management

I must have something better to do with my life than make charts and graphs for the website graphjam:

song chart memes

mike sold out at - 22:34





6.05.2008

 
RFK



Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated 40 years ago today. A truly inspirational politician, RFK was unusually empathetic and remains an unparalleled historical figure.

In the picture above, he is touring the rubble of DC's 14th Street corridor in April 1968, days after the riots triggered by MLK's assassination. RFK had declared his intention to seek the presidency a month earlier. A mere two months after this photo was taken, RFK was dead. Life, politics, and history are strange.

mike sold out at - 23:27





6.02.2008

 
Internet Week

As a local economic development professional, I can certainly appreciate attempts to promote local industries. But when I heard of Internet Week I said "juh?"

Apparently it is an attempt to promote local internet companies, but doesn't it seem a little odd to have something so broad-sounding as "Internet Week"? What's next--Television Week? Electricity Week? Indoor Plumbing Awareness Month? Or the Rockefeller Center Salute to Fireworks?

mike sold out at - 22:15





5.29.2008

 
Don't Get On My List

Schnapp's List

mike sold out at - 22:12





5.20.2008

 
Fun fact Learned in class:

Fun fact Learned in class: the Clean Water Act does not require a permit to dump a body in a river.

mike sold out at - 17:52





4.23.2008

 
RIP The Wire

There are few TV shows I really love (The Simpsons and Arrested Development come to mind).  But even those shows, while they have wry social commentary, rarely say much about the world that most people inhabit day-to-day— the world of bureaucracy and large organizations.

Warning: large spoilers about all seasons of The Wire below

Yes, The Wire, the show ostensibly about cops and drug-runners in Baltimore, is actually about bureaucracy and how the people inside various organizations are forced to compromise and accommodate within the bureaucracy.  The dealers are torn over personal loyalty vs. gang culture (Poot & Bodie's murdering of Wallace, the double-set up between Bell and Barksdale); the local desk editor is torn between journalistic integrity and his boss's desires to earn a Pulizter; the cops between serving political imperatives and their careers vs. the desire to put criminals away effectively (McNulty, McNulty, McNulty).

Therein lies its brilliance, that in the rules of The Wire, the bureaucracy always wins. For those that seek to effectively overcome the weight of the organization and seek to accomplish one of the organization's less favored goals, they must act recklessly.  Those that seek to advance their careers must compromise their integrity.

And so too do competitive instincts win over politicians' and high-level bureaucrats' better sense of serving the public.  Carcetti semi-wittingly uses the death of a state's witness to advance his career, and more cogniscently uses the homeless murders to campaign against a Republican Governor and his slashing of the social safety net.  Rawls undermines Mayor Royce's reelection campaign to get a shot at the Commissionership, but jeopardizes an unauthorized important public policy experiment and cuts the Mayor out of the loop.

One of the most interesting moments in the series is when Police Chief Burrell resigns— he gives a short speech to Rawls about how he has carried water for two Mayors time and time again and responded to conflicting and shifting policy directives as the political winds dictate.  The character who both seems to have ultimate agency (no pun intended) and epitomizes the ineffectiveness of the bureaucracy becomes human in the viewer's eyes and reveals himself as a cog in the very machine he operates.

On top of these "rules," The Wire has a sense of literary importance to it.  The characters are far more well-developed than any other TV show I can think of and the main characters all have full arcs.  There is foreshadowing, thematic development, and multiple, well-developed plots.  I'm sure it will be taught in literature classes of the future.

The final conundrum of The Wire is that though it champions a humanistic view where individuals have importance through many of the plot lines, but frequently the show contradicts it with defining its characters by the stock roles that they in the larger drama.  Most of the supporting characters become new versions of the main characters, as if the show were saying they were just individuals playing a role.  But perhaps that is the point—that the members of a bureaucracy are both individuals and cogs in the machine, and that each of these two sides of people matter.

mike sold out at - 22:07





4.20.2008

 
Passover Thoughts About Freedom

At my family's seder last night, we were all asked to bring a symbol
of freedom. I brought not a symbol of freedom, but more of a warning
about freedom— my NY State driver's license. I'm not referring
necessarily to that Great American Ideal the freedom of the open road,
which is perhaps over-idealized; the liberty of the open road is much
more rare than the tyranny of traffic.

Last year former-Governor Spitzer got in some hot water when he boldly
proposed that all New York State residents be allowed to have a
driver's license. All that a driver's license legally implies is that
the bearer of the card is qualified to operate a motor vehicle on
public roads and that their identity has been validated by the DMV.
It does not say "this person is not a terrorist" nor "this person is a
citizen of the United States". The Spitzer proposal would have just
allowed people living underground to come out of the shadows and would
allow us to move forward on addressing the immigration issue. But it
was not to be—the proposal, probably a political gambit to begin with,
got caught up in broader political winds and was sunk. Shortly
thereafter, Spitzer himself was as well.

In the past year, I have been asked four times within the boundaries
of this country whether or not I was an American citizen by federal
officials. Once was near Big Bend National Park in Texas at a check
point, two more on an Amtrak train in Syracuse coming and going from
Buffalo, and inside the jetway boarding a flight from Puerto Rico
(whose residents are American citizens) to New York City. None of
those times was I crossing an international boundary.

This is one of the many the prices of cracking down on undocumented
immigrants. When even a small proportion of a population is declared
"illegal" and sought to be eliminated then the whole society becomes
distorted. Had I refused to declare my citizenship, would I have been
detained and searched or was I on safe ground to refuse to answer the
question? If I had brown skin or answered in Spanish would my answer
have been questioned? When one part of a society is suspicious,
everyone is questionable.

When my family came to this country (which for various parts was
between 1890 and 1910) they did not need to seek a visa—they booked a
third class steamer ticket and arrived at Castle Clinton or Ellis
Island ready to become part of America. In fact, there was no such
thing as illegal immigration until 1882 when the Chinese Exclusion Act
was passed; as a consequence, all but close relatives of Chinese-
Americans were prohibited from coming to the U.S. In response to a
massive wave of Southern and Eastern Europeans immigrating to America
between the Civil War and World War I, a series of racially-based
restrictive immigration quotas were passed in 1920–1924, creating the
concept of illegal immigration. (These acts were preceeded by the
notorious Palmer Raids where tens of thousands of immigrants and
naturalized citizens were deported.)

It wasn't until the liberalization of the immigration laws in 1965
that a trickle of immigrants became a steady flow. These new
Americans helped repopulation and rebuild many ravaged central cities,
including my now hometown of New York. It is interesting to speculate
that had the immigration engine not been cut off earlier, perhaps
cities would not have suffered the crisis of abandonment of the 60s
and 70s (but that is a question for another day).

The current politics around immigration are toxic and turn a complex
debate into a muddle of slogans and hysteria. A border wall is not
going to solve anything. Ahistorical hypocrisy is rampant. An
inability to look past a new language or a gradation of skin color
stops us from seeing that we are all human, we all have families and
we all need to support them.

So this Passover season, remember that the price of freedom is not
wearing a flag-lapel pin nor is it imposing our will abroad. The best
way to defend our liberties is to defend those of someone else.


mike sold out at - 15:52





4.18.2008

 
Um...

If you want to get money from me, please don't try to sell me a free
paper, specifically "The Onion".

 

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