Guantanamo Bay Prisoner kills himself

This is running on the AP. It’s amazing what has happened at Guantanamo Bay. First, it was Spanish ruled, then we wrested it during the Spanish-American war (with an indefinite lease). Early American torture techniques moved to this new space of exception, where people have no legal rights, no contact, and live only the most basic life.

It’s so strange that some prisoners at this base have tried to go on hunger strikes, but they are force fed. They are not even allowed to shape their own existence. And now one has apparently killed himself. I’m not sure what this will do besides fuel the fire of those already criticizing America’s practice of torture, which is terror.

Pandora

If you haven’t yet tried Pandora, you must. It’s wonderful: simply type in an artist or song you like and their perhaps overnamed “music genome project” will do a great job of bringing you music that you might like. I like it.

Football Fanatics at it Again

It’s amazing to what lengths professional sportsmen will go to exclude their competition. Where’s the fun in that? Honestly, what is soccer if it is divided by ideology or, in this case altitude? This international union of protest led by Morales seems a good idea to me.

One Hour No Power - Can it work?

I’m going to encourage this as much as I can, because I think that each electron saved is, well, an electron saved:

http://www.onehournopower.com/

Quite a simple, straight-forward idea (and presentation). Use no electricity on Sunday July 1st from noon till one. A worthy cause. Everyone turns off their own lights, homeowners and businesses alike.

To me, it is akin to the recent fascination with “user-driven content”.  Aren’t most of our economic operations already user, or human driven? The coordination of our electrical (-and other resource) consumption is driven by distributions of supply, demand and transport.

One Hour No Power aims to knock at one of these three pillars of resource consumption - demand. Pragmatically, the ability to make your own choices is the greatest freedom you retain. Can we, through individual/group action send a message to the higher-ups through programs like this?

Construction

The overaching theory behind this blog is that meaning is perennially incomplete. Everything is always changing (πάντα ρεῖ - it’s all in flux), interpretations are biased, and humans do not know everything. Even though we construct great nuclear power plants or cook amazing meals, humans cannot totally understand either the complexity or simplicity or anywhere-in-between of phenomena.

With that in mind, the only option seems to be to me that I have to slowly accumulate small pieces of knowledge and build something greater. Images, songs, news articles, and discussions - it’s all gravy to make this world more appetizing. But each of these ingredients must be situated - where does it come from? who produces it and by what means? why do I need this? General awareness of the validity, origin, relevance, and prejudices of information will go a long way in interpretation.

And then there’s just funny things. I don’t think these always work into a greater theory of life.

I think I’m going to leave it at that for now. I’ve said a lot and said nothing. Maybe later, after I’ve played with all these neat new internet features, I can put up something useful (wait, you decide).

-Adrian

The other fascination

It’s music