Just a Gwai Lo - fun within prescribed limits

David M. Pecoraro: “For an album three years in the making, 18 sure does sound like it was tossed together at the last minute. It would seem Moby's artistic growth has been stunted by his suddenly packed social schedule. One gets the feeling from the songs on 18 that Moby's more interested in introducing music videos and being unfunny with Winona Ryder on Saturday Night Live than he is in making music.”

A bunch of Christian Science Monitor articles were sitting in my aggregator. Here are some of the better ones:

Real Men Knit. Yeah, well my dad does needlepoint when he's stressed out, usually when someone contends him in the election for his job (y'see, union reps are elected by their members, and sometimes—not often—someone thinks they can do a better job than he can.)

What our stuff says - and doesn't say: I have very little 'stuff', and that's the way I like it. (Full disclosure, I only really skimmed this article. Didn't seem all that interesting to me.)

The freedom to retire when you want to: my mom works for the gub'ment, and keeps saying she's going to retire at 60. I believe her.

Sprawling 'burbs tighten up:

The idea behind Dunstan Crossing is simple: Build a traditional village-style neighborhood instead of a car-oriented subdivision. Plans include public parks, tree-lined streets, and a mix of buildings including single-family homes, brick rowhouses, shops, and apartments. Streets, parks, and hiking trails will be open to the public, and homes will be close to the streets - with front porches, even stoops.

Discusses Portland (Maine, not Oregon).

John Marks: “when we consider the whole body of scientific knowledge, and the complex mode of operation of the international scientific community, we see that the constructive rationalist model is inadequate. The body of scientific knowledge is made up of a vast network of theories, experiments and observations, recorded in multifarious papers, monographs and textbooks. It is so vast and complex that nobody can be aware of more than a fraction of it. At the same time, it is not just a random assortment of separate and disconnected items of knowledge. The parts are interrelated in many complex ways, and the whole has a structure which has been designed or made or planned. The whole body of knowledge has evolved in many diverse, unplanned and unpredictable ways, and it has many of the characteristics of a spontaneous order.”

Jay McCarthy after watching his house burn this morning, before it crashed down: “I called Amanda and let her know what was going on and said to her that this will probably change my outlook on life for quite some time. Even now, before it has even really set in and before I've had a chance to fully comprehend what happened I'm thinking of ways I may run my life differently. Silly things like, maybe it isn't so important to save the box that my Apple computer came in, or maybe I should just read books at a library rather than saving them so that they rot away on a shelf. I feel a very New-Age-lame feeling about the impermanence of material possessions.”

Lawrence Lessig on the optimistic vision of technlogy: “this is just the beginning, as the technology will only get better. Thousands could experiment on this common platform for a better way; millions of dot.com dollars will flow down the tube; but then a handful of truly extraordinary innovations comes from these experiments. A wristwatch for kids that squeezes knowingly as a mother touches hers, thirty miles away. A Walkman where lovers can whisper to each other between songs, though separated by an ocean. A technology to signal two people that both are available to talk on the phone—now. A technology to enable a community to decide local issues through deliberation in virtual juries. The potential can only be glimpsed. And contrary to the technology doomsayers, this is a potential for making human life more, not less, human.”

Don Park on how to pick up women easily: “Don't ask questions that could be answered with a No.”

Worked for me recently.

Conan O'Brien has seen the future of TV: “the trend toward larger and larger televisions will continue as screens double in size every 18 months. Televisions will eventually grow so large that families will be forced to watch TV from outside their homes, peering in through the window. Random wolf attacks will make viewing more dangerous. And, just as televisions grow larger and more complicated, so will remote controls. In fact, changing channels will soon require people to literally jump from button to button. Trying to change the channel while simultaneously lowering the volume will require two people and will frequently lead to kinky sex.”

Joey deVilla has written two excellent articles on Pinko Marketing, saying that it's a great idea with a terrible name and that the political opponents of those behind Pinko have used the same communication techniques successfully. In the first article he links approvingly to a rant about communist/Soviet imagery in those fighting the current copyright regime, telling us to “knock it off with the photoshopped Soviet Constructivist fun and start wrapping yourself in the American flag.”

That's a tough sell for me to begin with, my being Canadian and all, but also because I've worn the shirt with the stylized Aeroflot/backwards-C logo, more of a middle finger to Bill Gates than as a statement of political beliefs. Anyway, as Soviet imagery goes, the logo Russia's civil airline is relatively benign. That's my round-about way of saying the author of the above call to patriotism needs to lighten up a bit.

Then there's the fact that my weblog's name is Just a Gwai Lo. I've done pretty well for myself in terms of 'brand' by appropriating a 'merely impolite' term, gwai lo and 'proudly' wearing while at the same time disclaiming it, that is, by including 'just a'. As with gwai lo, the term "pinko" may have had strong meaning once, as Tara Hunt of Pinko suggests, its strength as a negative term has diminished. That said, my problem with their use of Che Guevara imagery is the same problem I have with those who think that Mao Zedong's revolutionary zeal should be copied (and who use Mao's phrases such as "let a thousand flowers bloom" without considering its origin or popularizer): both are considered by a fairly large chunk of the population to be authoritarian thugs and ruthless murderers (including myself at least with respect to Mao).

I should point out that I agree with what Joey's arguing: if you're trying to sell to capitalists, you're going to turn them off by using a derogatory term once reserved for communists. I applaud Tara for trying to re-appropriate the term, though: my wearing the Aeroflot shirt was my way of saying "if that's what you think communism means, then call me a communist". But it's too soon: with a name like Pinko, only the people that already agree with their ideas—which, also agreeing with Joey, are excellent—will hear them.