Links to various proposed chicago council maps.

Really disgusting.

Great write-up of the methods and means of SOPA+PIPA, and how they're doomed to failure.

flagged as fantastic
"We laughed for twenty minutes. I was tearing up, and Ronnie was wheezing like he was going to stroke out. I didn't even know where I was going with this idea. But it felt just so fucking wrong. In a good way. In a great way."

There's a job opening in a big Midwestern city: "We are seeking a creative problem-solver to run our large midwestern city. We have a sparkling lake, an internationally acclaimed downtown park, and a minor ($655 million) budget issue. / Applicant should demonstrate an abiding faith that he/she can balance the budget, improve the lives of residents, and distribute resources more prudently and equitably. Or at least that he/she can keep city from falling into the sparkling lake. / Candidate must have resided in city a minimum of one year, but exceptional applicants may receive "relocation" assistance from our Ghost Address Bureau. / We also offer a splendid benefits package, including chauffeur, bodyguards, personal physician, City Hall shoe-shine, choice seats at sporting and cultural events, and unlimited visits to our internationally acclaimed downtown park."

"It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from."

Argument that the NJ-PA state line saved the Jersey Pine Barrens aquifer from exploitation by Philadelphia. Mentions 'electoral college reform' map.

Great post-mortem of the '09 mayoral race: " By August, Mr. Thompson’s advertising team had stopped trying to track the mayor’s television and radio spending, standard practice in a campaign, telling colleagues it was too depressing" / "At times, the Bloomberg campaign, waging what they proudly saw as a presidential-level operation, seemed puzzled by the poorly financed, sometimes loosely disciplined Thompson effort. The candidate’s daily schedule was curiously light, and easy opportunities to score political points were neglected."

"S.N.P.J. stands for Slovenska Narodna Podporna Jednota (Slovene National Benefit Society), a fraternal society and financial co-operative based in Imperial, Pennsylvania.
The society applied to have their 500 acre recreation center in western PA designated as a separate municipality in 1977 so that the society could, among other things, get their own liquor license.
S.N.P.J. once had the distinction of being the least-populated borough in the state until a mine fire beneath Centralia made that borough unsafe to live in."

"Amsterdam is undergoing a historic process of regeneration. Much of the city's reserve of social housing is being transformed into luxury accommodation for the growing numbers of "creative economy" employees. Meanwhile, waiting lists for the remaining social housing are flooded by former occupants forced out of their homes and neighbourhoods by renovation programmes. Merijn Oudenampsen describes a process of urban "rebirth" through place branding and social cleansing."

great list of planning buzzwords to avoid/ban (UK version)

2006, from the Magazine: "The panel asked the taboo question of whether homeownership and the interest deduction were related. It decided that they weren't."

"I’ve heard from 2 different friends with very young children being raised in, ahem, more homogeneous areas of the country who have taken to calling any black strangers Obama."

Col. McCormick is surely freezing down there in hell.

"[In her first mayoral run] Palin presented herself as both a defender of small-town Wasilla and an opponent of the curbs on its growth...
Those involved in planning issues at the time say they can recall no major instances where Wasilla used its regulatory power to limit a developer's plans. A local planning advocate, recalls that when she left a planning commission meeting where a conditional-use permit for the Fred Meyer store was approved with only modest restrictions, she saw two company representatives in the lobby, laughing. "They couldn't believe the city didn't care what they did," she said."

yes

w/ biblio of suggested readings.

After more than five months of voting, reflect on how (a) historic (b) awesome this is.

Nice roundup of all of intelligence & media manipulation prior to the invasion. From McClatchy.

President's Council on Bioethics: "Worst of all from this point of view are those more uncivilized forms of eating, like licking an ice cream cone--a catlike activity that has been made acceptable in informal America..."

2004 exit poll data

FBI looking for informants to attend "vegan pot-lucks" and report on plans for RNC protests.

George Packer post-mortem.

"[Post-NH], HRC raised $6m+ in a matter of days. McCain raised <$1m, even though the day after the primary was his biggest fundraising day of the campaign. ... As of 9/30/07, GOP candidates reported $42.7m cash-on-hand, $8m less than HRC alone."

"Such an episode reflects the barter relationship established with the natives by the first conquistadors and colonizers (in Africa, Asia, America and Oceania): some trinket, the product of technological superiority (European or North American) is exchang

This year's farm bill is slightly less worse than those in the past.

Hopeful steps. Rooting for another color revolution, fearing a crackdown.

from the manifesto: "Power corrupts, be it official or unofficial. The xurbanite aims at stripping the self off any power moves..."

against monoculture and centralization

queen of my world

"Christ for President" came up on party shuffle while playing this weight by-issue candidate picker.

Are various pro-life beliefs more consistent a belief abortion=murder, or a desire to punish sex? (The one 'no' in the right col should be a yes, reasons left as exercise to the reader)
via a mefi thread.

Ratings! At some point this will probably update with the current year, which shows Iraq as the second-worst off state.

"automobile produced from 1927 through 1937... only dictator would have immediately come to an American mind was Benito Mussolini, widely admired in the US for audacious boldness and strength ... the image successfully sold cars"

animated gif from Robert Vanderbei showing USA prez election results by county, 1960-2004

'One Friedman Unit = six months ... From Thomas Friedman's repeated use of "the next six months" as the time period in which, "we're going to find out...whether a decent outcome is possible" in the Iraq War.' w/ list of F.U. pronouncementss

Redistricting sim. See how mapmaking matters [from the USC Annenberg Ctr]

Compendium of progressive ideas on planning & planning ed. good book list

GWB achieves near consensus from Scowcroft to Chomsky: he sucks. Good run down of a creaking empire.

photo/video/installation project about politics of the sugar market. critial tastiness studies. thx a.

lb: good rundown of the French election, esp. new gov's relations to US . Save it on your laptop for next 11hr train ride

Thoreau picking huckleberries after getting out of jail, the connections between city and country, landscape and politics and why "a passion for justice and pleasure in small things are not incompatible"

Dan Phiffer strikes again: audio responses to postcard/poster driven questions. Very nice integration of web+meatspace. From last year, only three projects. Is dead?

Poland 1985: Radio astronomers overlay Solidatory slogans over TV broadcasts.

Rem in the deep end

yo! awesome mapping, global social justice art projets. Australian-flavored. thx k. [bc: I'm going to put anything aussie in your for box.]

Liberal/Conservative ratinga of congresspeople on a 0-100 scale. Can be sorted with 100 as most liberal or most conservative, depending.

claims power at edges (eg CA) --> decentrlzn, whilst large nation leads to tyranny of central elites (?). PS You forgot China, only 23 net new breakaway states since '46 if you discount decolonialzn, count Yemen & Ger reunifctn (& 15 a

"What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western libera

'With so much anonymity, “How do we know that Insight magazine actually exists?” Professor Whitehead added. “It could be performance art.”'

Australia: "It's a wonderful nation, the greatest on Earth." Gotta knock over a few more tin-pots to get that superlative, buddy.

Political essays going back to 03.

House maps based on smallest distance to center. Videos of algorithm reforming current boundaries.

Fucking knot of tariffs & price props helps Agribiz, Big Sugar & Big Oil. Hurts environment, consumers, 3rd world sugar cane growers. I blame Illinois!

USDA to use "very low food security" in place of "hunger." Buried lede: "the [annual] report [on hunger] didn't appear in October as usual." USDA sez delay wasn't due to the midterm elections: "This is a schedule that was set several months ago."

news from inside one of the worst regimes out there. ("In Burma there is a joke that Orwell wrote not just one novel about the country, but three: a trilogy comprised of Burmese Days, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four.")

"Our civilization is decadent and our language ... must inevitably share in the general collapse."

Very much improved in the last 2 years, although not perfect.

Maciej is right on: "[G. Will's] argument boils down to two parts: first, that offering bilingual ballots somehow violates the rule of law, and second, that bilingualism attenuates American national identity."

"Tthe most dangerous place was Custer Cty. A total of 13 persons were tried for sedition in Miles City, the county seat" (my grandfather was born there). [via slavin_fpo]

nation simulation game

The journal is a weirdo thinktank.

apparently, google adwords counts. whew.

see prev del.icio.us post

Photo of random intersection in Turkey claimed to be in Baghdad by GOP candidate, blogs identify exact spot. The story wierded me out today, and then I get a post about it in my RSS. wheels in wheels

"In 1874 the failure of Northern Radicals to launch a militant, armed riposte to the white insurrection in New Orleans helped to doom the first Reconstruction. Will our feeble response to Hurricane Katrina now lead to the rollback of the second?"

The Writings of Hakim Bey

apposite Q: Is an explicitly noneconomic gathering/prank enough of a protest? Should such events be didactic anticapitalist actions / an 'exhange of ideas'? Does the writer believe that there are folks who spend all their time pillow fighting [via 18b]

"It's all here! Every breathless moment of the FBI's most relentless counter-attack!"

Whom better to serve on the hate crimes commission than a member of a hate group? In Illinois, the answer is apparently no one.

a long wait for 51 pages of Scanlan's lost Guerilla war issue to load in flash, but worth it. via the Whitney Biennial, for god's sake.

Coulter referred to Tillman as "virtuous, pure, masculine like only an American male can be."

"the states join together to pass identical state laws awarding all of their electoral votes to the candidate winning the popular vote. The state legislation would come into effect when it has been enacted by states possessing a majority of electoral vote

"Chicago-based co. dedicated to collaborative social justice projects. Our tools include human rights documentation, photography, graphic design, and innovative use of IT." (great name)

Part 1 of 17 in series on rotten cops in the CHA. Highly rec'd. "The impunity of 'a few bad apples' can create conditions of life on the ground ... that resemble those in the most repressive police states."