“In My Language” by Amanda Baggs is an explanation of another way of seeing/thinking/being. Amanda is clear: “This is not a look-at-the-autie gawking freakshow as much as it is a statement about what gets considered thought, intelligence, personhood, language, and communication, and what does not.”

Far from being purposeless, the way that I move is an ongoing response to what is around me. Ironically, the way I move when responding to everything around me is described as “being in a world of my own” whereas if I interact with a much more limited set of responses and only react to a much more limited part of my surroundings people claim that I am “opening up to true interaction with the world.”

They judge my existence, awareness, and personhood on which of a tiny and limited part of the world I appear to be reacting to. The way I naturally think and respond to things looks and feels so different from standard concepts or even visualization that some people do not consider it thought at all but it is a way of thinking in it’s own right.

However the thinking of people like me is only taken seriously if we learn your language no matter how we previously thought or interacted.

Serpico, the 1973 film directed by Sidney Lumet, starring Al Pacino, is based on the true story of the New York City cop who spoke out against police corruption and was shot in the face under dubious circumstances for his trouble.

Frank Serpico is “the first police officer not only in the history of the New York Police Department, but in the history of any police department in the whole United States, to step forward to report and subsequently testify openly about widespread, systematic cop corruption-payoffs amounting to millions of dollars.” — Peter Maas, author of the book Serpico, in the 25th anniversary issue of New York Magazine.

In October, and again in December 1971, Serpico testified before the Knapp Commission on police corruption:

“Through my appearance here today… I hope that police officers in the future will not experience the same frustration and anxiety that I was subjected to for the past five years at the hands of my superiors because of my attempt to report corruption… We create an atmosphere in which the honest officer fears the dishonest officer, and not the other way around… The problem is that the atmosphere does not yet exist in which honest police officers can act without fear of ridicule or reprisal from fellow officers.”

In our era of continued widespread corruption, we need more Frank Serpicos at all levels of government.

Last night a couple of us from work went to a presentation by Jonathan Harris at the Apple Store in SoHo. Jonathan talked about his interest in creating and finding stories, showing examples of his impressive data mining visualization projects like We Feel Fine, harvesting human feelings from blogs, and Universe , a project built off of Day Life technology to “reveal our modern mythology.” He previewed a piece that is currently up at the MoMa built with Processing, that visualizes information extracted from online dating site profiles, and attempts to find commonalities and connections within that dataset: the most common interests, first lines, closing lines, and potential matches.

While Harris is best known for his elegant visualizations of information from the internet, drawing connections and patterns, he sees more meaning in his recent work like Whale Hunt, and a yet to be completed project based on his 15 day trip to Bhutan. These works differ from his earlier pieces in that he is an active narrator and traveller, photographing, and interviewing his subjects directly while experiencing their environments. As such, this work is inherently more personal, which fits well with his professed egocentric world view.

Harris’s better known pieces, such as We Feel Fine, draw parallels to Learning to Love You More, a project by Harrell Fletcher & Miranda July. LTLYM is an on-going project in which participants submit “reports” completing “assignments” defined by Fletcher & July to the website. Assignments vary from the humorous “#57 Lipsync to shy neighbor’s Garth Brooks cover” to the self-reflective “#52 Write the phone call you wish you could have” and have been exhibited in musuems, galleries, and in print.

As a participatory art project, LTLYM’s character comes from both the constraints of the assignments Fletcher & July define for participants, and the reports submitted by participants. These constraints are much more transparent and recursive (#44 Make a LTLYM assignment”) than the constraints in Harris’s data-mining visualizations. But with Harris’s shift in interest away from data-mining projects towards a more personal narrative structure, approaching his work with the same method of defined constraints does little to draw out meaningful insights that speak to the human condition. Fletcher & July have succeeded in balancing their artistic voice with a system that opens up the creative process to its participants, while drawing out these type of deeper insights Harris seems to be searching for.

Note to Harris: it might not have been a good idea to tell a packed audience at the Apple Store that you don’t like technology and our reliance on the iPhone and other Apple products.

The video for Tonto from Battles‘ new album is simply outstanding. I’ve been a big fan of Tyondai Braxton for years, since I saw his voice/guitar/effects/sitting-on-the-floor/time-warping mastery in a small performance at the multi-purpose room on his father’s home turf, at Wesleyan University. While I think his solo work pushes more and is ultimately more interesting, the music Battles puts out represents a (slightly) new direction for post-rock that is tight and pretty accessible. This video saves the 3 minutes in the middle of the song that border on extended jam-band nonsense.

Some experts predict a significant rise in the death toll in Burma, possibly up to 1.5 million people from the 100,000 estimated already dead in the aftermath of the cyclone if clean water and sanitation is not provided soon. The Burmese government has frustrated many attempts at foreign aid, even politicizing what little foreign aid has been allowed in: “government officials were seen handing it out from boxes on which the names of prominent generals had been written.”

In light of this natural disaster and the humanitarian crisis caused by the lack of a coordinated government response, it’s hard not to draw direct parallels to what happened in New Orleans (and what is still happening) in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina almost three years ago. I just finished watching parts one and two of Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke, a monumental four-part film that documents the collapse of a city and the mind-boggling failure of our federal government to help people in need. If you haven’t already seen this documentary, I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Most people think that it was Katrina that brough about the devastation to New Orleans. But it was a breaching of the levees that put 80 percent of the city under water. It was not the hurricane…If you go New Orleans, only one-fourth of the population is there. So hopefully, this documentary will bring this fiasco, this travesty, back to the attention of the American people. —Spike Lee

Thanks to the state of Florida, Nestle can pump as much water as they want out of Florida’s Madison Blue Springs State Park at no cost until 2018. Nestle paid a total of $230 for this right plus Florida awarded the bottling plant a tax refunds up to $1.68 million. Oh.. and Florida is in the midst of a region-wide water shortage:

So while Florida is in a bitter dispute with its state neighbors over water use, it’s giving its water away to a private company that bottles and ships it to those very same states.

Nestle says Floridians should be grateful. Its bottling plant has generated taxes and created jobs. “You’re talking about millions and millions of dollars in tax benefit,” said spokesman Jim McClellan. “It’s a very good deal for the state of Florida.”

Please don’t buy Deer Park water. More info

Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas hasn’t asked a question in 2 years (142 cases):

“One thing I’ve demonstrated often in 16 years is you can do this job without asking a single question,” he told an adoring crowd at the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group.

The book tour showed that the topic comes up even among friendly audiences.

Indeed, Thomas’ comment was provoked by this question: Why do your colleagues ask so many questions?

His response: “I did not plant that question. That’s a fine question. When you figure out the answer, you let me know,” he said.

link

“Vice President Dick Cheney considered a plan to allow Israel to conduct missile strikes against Iran’s nuclear sites ‘in an effort to draw a military response from Iran, which could in turn spark a U.S. offensive against targets in the Islamic Republic’” writes Think Progress citing Newsweek magazine.

Whoopi Goldberg asked Sherri Shepherd, the new “The View” co-host, if she thought the world was flat. Check out Shepherd’s response. From the clip it appears that Barbara Walters, who used to be a “ground-breaking” journalist, sat there and let the ignorance slide. It’s an embarrassment to ABC and the United States of America that people this uninformed are given a platform on a major network show priding itself on “receiving critical acclaim.”

The View is the recipient of 22 Daytime Emmy® Awards, numerous Daytime Emmy Award nominations, including 10 consecutive nominations for Outstanding Talk Show and Outstanding Talk Show Host, the Gracie Award from the Foundation of American Women in Radio and Television, …

At a Kerry speech in Gainesville, Florida, Andrew Meyer was grabbed by police while asking questions, tasered, and arrested. Disturbing video was captured by lots of people at the event and it’s all over YouTube.