Make Love, Not War

Sounds like a worthy form of protest:

The intent is that the participants concentrate any thoughts during and after orgasm on peace. The combination of high- energy orgasmic energy combined with mindful intention may have a much greater effect than previous mass meditations and prayers.

Houdini

Hocus pocus!

Book paints escape-artist Houdini as spy

LARRY McSHANE
Associated Press

NEW YORK - Eighty years after his death, the name Harry Houdini remains synonymous with escape under the most dire circumstances. But Houdini, the immigrants' son whose death-defying career made him one of the world's biggest stars, was more than a mere entertainer.

A new biography of the legendary performer suggests that Houdini worked as a spy for Scotland Yard, monitored Russian anarchists and chased counterfeiters for the U.S. Secret Service - all before he was possibly murdered.

"The Secret Life of Houdini: The Making of America's First Superhero" will be released on Halloween - the anniversary of Houdini's untimely death at age 52. Chasing new information on the elusive superstar eventually led authors William Kalush and Larry Sloman to create a database of more than 700,000 pages.

"There's no way in the world we could have done this book without it," said Sloman of the huge electronic index. "It would have taken 30 years - maybe."

This guy was the real deal.

Houdini was a relentless self-promoter in the style of P.T. Barnum, although he didn't play his audience for suckers. The biography recounts one 1902 escape, in Blackburn, England, where Houdini refused to surrender despite the use of plugged locks that made his freedom almost impossible.

After two hours, Houdini escaped to a standing ovation. The next day his arms were "hideously blue and swollen, with large chunks of flesh torn out," the book recounts. Because of the way the chains and rigged locks were fastened, Houdini "had no choice but to tear out the chunks of his flesh to get free."

Now, here's where Houdini ties in with PINT:

The authors recount a pair of October 1926 incidents in which Houdini was viciously punched in the stomach, once by a college student in his dressing room and later by a stranger in a hotel lobby.

Houdini - the book suggests the Spiritualists may have arranged the attacks - died days later in Room 401 at Grace Hospital in Detroit. His aura of invincibility seemed over. But as the authors discovered, it still lives on today.

"He's compelling because of that myth, that he could not be restrained by anything," said Sloman. "The more successful he was, the more he became a symbol of the lone man resisting authority."

For a bit more about the gy, check out conjuringarts.com

....to teach

"In teaching my students, I try to figure out what questions I can ask that have no right answer. I seek to frame paradoxes, to force students to develop original thought." -Meg Gorman, Waldorf teacher

"Women are the niggers of the world"

So True, dear sweet departed John Lennon.... Still true...

This gem comes from Barbara Ehrenreich who knock out the most excellent Nickel and Dimed

MNost of y'all know where I stand on this... Women continue to get oppressed; have been for a milennia ... Why? Why? Why? What happened eons ago to create this dynamic?

from HuffPo

Give Me That Old-Time Feminism

Feminism, as you've probably been reading for the last 20 years, is dead.

Most women today want to smash through the glass ceiling, run for the Senate, and buy contraceptives at will (not to mention abortions, at least if the fetus they're carrying turns out to be "defective.") But feminism? It's just a bunch of hairy-legged, man-hating, harridans screaming slogans that were already obsolete in the era of Charlie's Angels.


The latest nail in the coffin comes from Ana Marie Cox, the famed blogger known as "wonkette," in her snarky review of Katha Pollitt's new book Virginity or Death! And Other Social and Political Issues of Our Times. (New York Times Book Review, July 2.)

All right, I have a personal stake in this: I wrote a blurb for the book, I'm a friend of Pollitt's, and I'm a little on the strident side myself. In her review, Cox is irritated, among other things, by Pollitt's criticism of women who have their little toes amputated so they can squeeze into stilettos. Cox confesses that her own first thought -- "O.K., maybe not the first" -- on reading about "pink-ectomy" surgery was, "Does it really work?"


Cox is not the first post-feminist to denounce paleo-feminists as sexless prudes. Ever since Andrea Dworkin -- a truly puritanical feminist -- waged war on pornography, there've been plenty of feisty women ready to defend Victoria's Secret as a beachhead of liberation. Something similar happened in the 1920s, when newly enfranchised young women blew off those frumpy old suffragists and declared their right to smoke cigarettes, wear short skirts, and dance the Charleston all night.

Maybe there's a cycle at work here: militant feminism followed by lipstick and cocktails, followed, in a generation or two, by another gust of militancy. But this time around the circumstances are vastly different. In the 1920s, women were seeing their collective fortunes advance. The Western nations were granting them suffrage; contraceptives were moving beyond the status of contraband. Contrast those happy developments to today's steadily advancing war against women's reproductive choice: the banning of abortion in South Dakota, fundamentalist pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions for birth control.

Worldwide, the situation is far grimmer, as fundamentalist Islam swallows one nation after another. Iraq, once a secular and fairly woman-friendly place by Middle Eastern standards (although Saddam had no use for actual feminists), is degenerating into a contest between misogynist factions of various sectarian stripes. Somalia, which had been reasonably secular, just fell to the Islamists, who have taken to attacking insufficiently covered women in the streets. Then there's Indonesia, where, in some regions, women lacking head scarves or sporting cosmetics now face arrests for "prostitution," and women found in public with unrelated men can be publicly whipped.

I've always liked to think that feminism is the West's secret weapon against Islamism. How can an ideology that aims to push half the human race into purdah hope to claim the moral high ground? Islamic feminists would fight Islamism, and we Western feminists would offer our sisterhood in the struggle. But while Muslim women are being stuffed into burkas, American post-feminists are trying to stuff their feet into stilettos. Who are you going to call when the morals police attack you for wearing eye shadow in Kabul or flashing some ankle in Teheran -- a wonkette?

Cox seems to have missed the irony of Pollitt's title, Virginity or Death! This isn't Pollitt's choice, but the kind of choice being imposed on a growing number of women throughout the world. The deeper irony is that women's right to wear lipstick, show skin, and consort with men in public go hand in hand with their rights to vote, own property, and purchase contraception. Outside of brothels, you don't get the stilettos without suffrage. So, yes, maybe the paleo-feminists who chanted and marched for equal rights get a little tiresome at times. But you can thank them for your belly button jewelry and your right to display it in public.

"the truth is no stranger to fiction"

"Thanks in part to Anita Spearman, I now make stories up, but I always tell the truth." ~ Michael Connelly

"approached a vampirish symbiosis"

Different, but applicable....

Music Review | Rufus Wainwright

Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Conjuring Judy Garland

By STEPHEN HOLDEN

They came to commune with a legend and to pay their respects to the singer channeling her.

"They" would be the heavily gay, male, over-30 audience at the sold-out Carnegie Hall last night and tonight; the legend would be Judy Garland; and the gawky, flouncing pop shaman conjuring her would be Rufus Wainwright, the 32-year-old singer-songwriter and opera maven descended from folk-rock royalty.

It didn't matter that Mr. Wainwright sounds nothing like Garland or that his voice, an astringent drone with a quavering edge, uncertain intonation and slightly garbled diction, isn't half as good an instrument as Garland's.

The spirit was there. At the very least, his loving song-by-song recreation of "Judy at Carnegie Hall," Garland's brilliant 1961 concert that became the most beloved of all pre-rock concert albums, was a fabulous stunt. Not even Madonna, pop music's ultimate pop provocateur, has attempted anything so ambitious.

What unfolded onstage was a tour de force of politically empowering performance art in which a proudly gay male performer paid homage to the original and longest-running gay icon in the crowded pantheon of pop divas. Accompanying Mr. Wainwright was a 36-piece orchestra conducted by Stephen Oremus playing the original 1961 arrangements transposed several notes lower to suit his voice.

The concert was a two-family affair, with the Garland clan represented by Lorna Luft, who arrived onstage late in the 2½-hour marathon to put her seal of approval on the project by joining Mr. Wainwright in a duet of "After You've Gone."

Besides Rufus, the Wainwrights were represented by his sister Martha, who brought down the house with a whooping and swooping "Stormy Weather," and his mother, Kate McGarrigle, who accompanied him on piano during "Over the Rainbow," and in an encore of "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye" that's not on the Garland album.

Because Garland's stamina onstage was legendary, Mr. Wainwright biggest challenge was to build and sustain the kind of electrical connection between performer and audience that in Garland's case approached a vampirish symbiosis.

If Mr. Wainwright doesn't begin to convey emotional extremes Garland embodied like a great method actress, he, like Garland, is a natural clown and showman. One of his many amusing anecdotes described his childhood identification with "The Wizard of Oz." On good days, he was Dorothy and on bad ones, the Wicked Witch of the West.

For those who came to worship, Mr. Wainwright could do no wrong. His courage to stand as a surrogate for every audience member who ever gazed into the mirror and fantasized slipping into Dorothy's ruby slippers spoke for itself.

Creating new (e)Communities

New cultures, new societies...

The world's a cell-phone stage
The device is upending social rules and creating a new culture

- Ryan Kim, Chronicle Staff Writer
Monday, February 27, 2006

The phone, TV, personal computer and Internet have found revolutionary ways to connect people, entertain them and empower them.

But nothing has matched the seismic cultural shift created by the cell phone, with its ability to connect and deliver content virtually anywhere, anytime. Although most of us have grown familiar with cell phones during the past 10 years, we often don't realize how much our world has been transformed by the little device in our pockets and purses.

But now a number of surveys, studies and industry statistics provides a better glimpse of how this gadget has pushed us into new realms, allowing us to converse with friends, family and others from the most intimate corners of our lives to bustling public spaces.

In anecdotal evidence that surveys are only beginning to reflect, we are starting to see how cell phone use is upending existing social rules and creating a new culture that worships mobility and modifying -- if not replacing in some instances -- many long-held social rules that govern the use of landline phones.

That rapidly evolving culture is evident in instances where people think nothing of engaging in a cell phone conversation in a bathroom or a restaurant; couples flirt via text messaging and say they have interrupted sex to pick up a cell phone call.

"I don't think there is a precedent for something that has spread so quickly around the world to so many individuals; we're talking about 2 billion phones around the world," said Howard Rheingold, digital journalism professor at Stanford and author of "Smart Mobs."

"It's an intimate technology that has the capability to reach into your intimate zone and it brings up a lot of emotions with it."

No other recent invention has so quickly earned so much praise -- and scorn. According to a 2004 MIT survey, the cell phone topped the list of inventions people hated the most but can't live without, with 30 percent of the respondents putting themselves in that category. That beat out the alarm clock (25 percent) and the television (23 percent).

In a 2005 study by the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, 83 percent of respondents said cell phones have made life easier, besting the Internet in second place at 76 percent. But another 60 percent said they find cell phones somewhat irritating when used in public.

The cell phone clearly inspires mixed feelings for many people. But as time goes on and people grow more accustomed to the cell phone and its attendant ills, it has only further insinuated itself into our lives. In straightforward and sometimes laughable findings, this dependency becomes increasingly apparent.

Users love their phones

A Sprint user survey released earlier this year found that 47 percent of Bay Area respondents said they were inseparable from their wireless phones. A study by Telephia, a mobile industry tracker, found that Americans used their phone an average of almost 13 hours a month -- with users ages 18 to 24 racking up close to 22 hours of cell phone talk time a month.

In a 2005 international survey of more than 3,000 people by BBDO Worldwide, an advertising agency, 75 percent of Americans said they had the phone turned on and within reach during their waking hours.

According to the BBDO survey, 15 percent of Americans have interrupted sex to answer a cell phone call. It also found that 59 percent of us wouldn't think of lending our cell phone to a friend for a day. Another 26 percent said that a cell phone was more important to go home to retrieve than a wallet.

"The cell phone is a conduit to things that can make dreams come true. I can now hear from people I want to talk to all the time. That's what makes cell phones irresistible," said Paul Levinson, a Fordham professor in communications and media studies.

Heidi Hansen, 32, of San Anselmo said she can't go a day without her cell phone. Hansen, a marketer for a medical laboratory, said she has bought chargers on vacations just to stay connected to her friends and clients.

"If it breaks, I have to go that day and make sure it gets dealt with," she said. "I have given out my number to clients. I can't do that and not be available."

The phone's initial allure was its ability to create instant conversations. But with technological advances and some of our own creativity, it has evolved to do much more.

According to December 2005 data by M:Metrics, which tracks mobile data use, the most popular non-voice feature is text messaging, with 61 million users having tried it at least once. An additional 46 million have tried mobile gaming, followed by 33 million who take photos.

At the bottom of the list, 3 million people have used their phone to access a dating service, 1.5 million have accessed their horoscopes and 1.2 million have looked at comics or humor sites on their phone.

People are also learning to use cell phones in a variety of ways not entirely foreseen by cell phone carriers and manufacturers.

According to the BBDO Worldwide study, 44 percent of Americans have found ways to flirt using their cell phone, such as through text messages. A Cingular Wireless study released earlier this month found that 27 percent of people have communicated with dates via text message and 17 percent of users said their wireless phone saved them from an uncomfortable date.

In the Sprint survey, almost 2 of every 3 people used their cell phone backlight to look for something in the dark, mostly keyholes and walkways, while 7 percent said they used their backlights to cheer on their favorite band at a concert, replacing the trusty lighter of the past. And finally, 4 percent have used it to light up their face to tell a ghost story.

"These technologies are interesting in the same way that a shoe can also be a hammer," said Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguistics professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information. "There are incidental uses for cell phones that often can be something that changes it altogether."

But there's another side to the cell phone: bad and rude behavior.

In an ABC News poll released last month, 87 of respondents said the bad behavior they observed the most was people making annoying cell phone calls. The study, however, found that annoying cell phone calls were actually the third-most- bothersome conduct for respondents after overall rude behavior and use of bad language. Survey data show we are still trying to figure out the socially acceptable limits for cell phone use. In a survey about to be released by Let's Talk, a mobile retail and research company, 38 percent of 2,119 people said it was fine to use the cell phone in the bathroom. That is down from 62 percent in 2003 and 39 percent in 2000, when the survey began.

The same survey found that only 2 percent say that using a cell phone in a movie or theater is acceptable, compared with 11 percent in 2000. Cell phone use in restaurants and public transportation are also slipping in approval, down to 21 percent and 45 percent, respectively. Cell phone use in supermarkets, however, is growing more acceptable, with 2 of every 3 people deeming it OK.

Breaking down walls

Berkeley's Nunberg said the cell phone is breaking down walls, allowing people to have intimate and private conversations in places that they would have never thought of doing so in the past.

"Cell phone makes those boundaries between public and private very porous," Nunberg said. "In the past, if you're having a spat with a significant other in a public place, one of you will argue and say, 'Not here' because it's intrusive. But now, with cell phones, there's no 'Not here' anymore."

Let's Talk Chief Executive Officer Delly Tamer said etiquette, as it usually does, lags behind new technology. But he said the survey also shows social norms and rules are starting to assert themselves again.

"I think people are increasingly more aware of others when speaking on a cell phone," Tamer said. "They're trying to show more restraint and more respect for others in different surroundings."

But Fordham's Levinson said cell phone behavior will continue its slide toward social anarchy despite a temporary spell of rehabilitation. He said with younger generations growing up in a mobile world, attuned to these new mores, it's only a matter of time before cell phone use in public places becomes more universally acceptable outside of movies and theaters.

"I predict that in five to 10 years we'll see well over 80 percent have no problem with cell phones in a restaurant. When new media is introduced people tend to be loyal to the old media they grew up with and often suspicious and antagonistic to new media," he said. "But for someone in their 20s, it's like it's a part of our bodies. It's like leaving the house without one of your ears."

It's not just the younger generation that is pushing for more-relaxed limits on cell phone etiquette. Dave Sutton, a 63-year-old Pleasant Hill real estate agent, said he doesn't mind testing the boundaries if it means he doesn't lose out on a sale. Sutton said he can't recall if he's placed or received a call from a bathroom stall but he has no qualms about the practice.

"The point is you want to talk to people, I don't care where I am. Luckily, I don't embarrass easily," Sutton said.

Your phone is you

The negative perceptions about bad cell phone use suggest that the way we use our cell phones can have a strong effect on how others perceive us. In the Cingular Wireless survey, more than one-fourth of respondents formed opinions of someone based on their ring tone, while 7 percent have ended a relationship due to rude or offensive wireless behavior.

In the BBDO Worldwide study, 31 percent of Americans said a cell phone revealed as much about a person as their car.

"Cell phones are now just like your clothes," said Clifford Nass, professor of communications at Stanford. "It's a very personalized thing. The assumption is you can wear anything you want, so this tells you something about me."

The cell phone still has a long way to go, said Levinson, in transforming our lives. "It's still early," he said. "Television has been here 50 years, computers 25 years. The cell phone is still in its infancy. Every sign indicates it will continue to be hugely important to us."

Norah becomes Ned

Now that's immersion journalism.

(From the AP via JournalStar in Nebraska)

Norah Vincent goes undercover in ‘Self-Made Man’

BY COLLEEN LONG / The Associated Press

The only time Norah Vincent was ever accused of being too feminine was when people thought she was a man. And when she bound her breasts, wore a pressed blue suit, a fake penis and faux stubble, and went to strip clubs and men’s groups to research her book, “Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Journey Into Manhood and Back,” she realized how undeniably female she is.

(Via the Sun-Sentinel)

The result of Norah's 18 months as Ned? Men don't have it so easy.

By Victoria A. Brownworth
The Baltimore Sun

Throughout, Vincent viewed every experience through a dual scrim of male and female consciousness. That duality is what makes the book intriguing. It also drove Vincent to emotional and psychological places she'd rather not have gone, questioning her ethics as well as her gender's attitudes toward men and ultimately causing her to have a nervous breakdown.

(From Houston Chronicle)

Undercover gender-bender

By BARBARA LISS

The hard part turned out to be the emotional cost the deception extracted from her. She suffered a breakdown and checked into a psychiatric hospital. Her telling of this experience is the most guarded part of the story.

PostSecret

My words can't give this mix of performance art and soul bearing from ordinary people enough justice. It's an early example already of what I consider post ironic neo trancendentalism.