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Monthly Archives: August 2013
Oil Rig “safety” culture and #bullying
Juking the Stats #94. The game is the game, you feel me? This from the Guardian – “North Sea oil culture needs to change” by Terry Macalister One offshore worker, who has spent 20 years in the industry, told the … Continue reading
Posted in bureaucracy, competence, fear
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Syria, Egypt, NextHotspot. Meanwhile, the web unravels… #biodiversity #wearetoast
Well, that was breath-taking, wasn’t it? Will Cameron resign? According to an amusing tweet – Stop all this “will Cameron resign” blather. He wouldn’t resign if he was found in a rent boy sandwich covered in cocaine. Meanwhile though, let’s … Continue reading
Posted in activism, apocalypse, death, fear
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Dan “Tough” (Savage) Love #awesome
Dan Savage is a(n inter)national treasure. Seriously cool, if underlyingly libertarian. Here’s some advice he gave last week. I’m a 19-year-old male college student. I lost two and a half fingers on my right hand in an accident when … Continue reading
Juking the stats and juicing the SWATS
There’s some interesting stuff on SWAT teams proliferating in the United States (the Department of “Homeland Security” is dishing out money for kit to everyone, including little towns in middle of nowhere. And once you have the kit you start … Continue reading
Posted in bureaucracy, fear, politics
Tagged juking the stats, Martin Beck, The Wire
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Climate change, Perseus and Medusa, and Martin Beck
In reverse order; The Martin Beck novel sequence is an awesome achievement (the writing of it, not the reading). Written by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahlöö between 1964 and 1974, these ten novels, based around the activities of the Swedish murder … Continue reading
Posted in a little self-knowledge, activism, apocalypse, death, fear
Tagged climate change, Martin Beck, medusa, perseus
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Eggs and (shopping) baskets – first encounters with activism and their consequences…
I have a “theory”* that “activists” are like baby geese. When they peck through the hard shell of enforced apathy/functional stupidity that we are encouraged to encase ourselves in, then the first thing they see when they see the light … Continue reading
Posted in a little self-knowledge, activism
Tagged movement-building, recruitment, social movements
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Nick Cohen on the Liberal Democrats and the #securitystate #observer
Nick Cohen is not my favourite human being or journalist, but still, his piece on the “Liberal” Democrats is good stuff. “David Davis has studied his former partners closely and concluded that the Lib Dems are as easy to manipulate … Continue reading
Banality alert: The internet as campfire
Warm, illuminating, convivial.* But as the major singer-songwriter of the late 20th century warned “the closer you get to the fire the more you get burned.” And so it is with the internet. Too much time (too close) and you’ll … Continue reading
Posted in internet culture
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The virtue of anger #Aquinas #RayMcGovern
In the Thirteenth Century, Aquinas wrote a lot about virtue and got quite angry when he realized there was no word in Latin for just the right amount of anger — for the virtue of anger. He had to go … Continue reading
Of silencing and silences as a mechanism of power. #slavery #conferences #crasscomparisons
There’s more than one way to skin a cat (I’m told). There’s more than one way to impose reality, to enforce a limited number of narratives. Plantation owners used to make sure their slaves came from different parts of Africa, … Continue reading
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