ramble through the bronx

yes, this here is ramble through the bronx, the continuing musings of a graduate student* who should be writing her dissertation, but honestly, living in new york city there's really so much else to do...

* and her commenting friends. And guest blogger.
[welcome to ramble through the bronx | bloghome
[archive]
[I wish I was a mole in the ground]
FRIENDS
NYC
Meredith [>] (NYC/Toronto)
Emily [>] (Brooklyn)
Emily's music site[>]
Jeremy [>] (Bronx)
Ryan [>] (Bronx)
non-NYC people I miss
Jennifer [>] (Toronto)
Tokyo Tintin[>] (Tokyo/Toronto)
Dawn [>] (Ottawa)
Caitlyn [>] (Ottawa)
CBC [>] (my true love)
del.icio.us/janeyjane [>] (my social link collection, alas, not updated lately. I am apparently not delicious)
The Keeper [>] (try it, you'll love it)
comics sites that I check every day
Newsarama [>] (check out the 'blog' section especially)
When Fangirls Attack [>] (women in comics links)
politics, media, and gossip
AlterNet [>]
Wonkette[>]
Gawker[>]
'Fuddle duddle' incident [>]
The Nation [>]
Catholic stuff
America Magazine [>] magazine of US Jesuits
Commonweal Magazine [>] biweekly magazine of lay Catholics
Karl Rahner Society [>] site dedicated to awesome 20th c. theologian
Liberal Catholic News [>] blog for progressive catholics
Pacem in Terris [>] Pope John XXIII's 1963 encyclical
music - mostly folk music and banjo links
The How and Tao of Folk Music [>] Patrick Costello's podcasts & banjo & folk guitar instruction
Back Porch News [>]News, Commentary & Links for the folkie community
E-Z Folk [>]Folk music instruction and tabulature
amuse yourself
Piled Higher and Deeper [>] (comic about grad student life)
Cat and Girl [>] just what it sounds like
The Onion [>]
Sluggy Freelance [>]
The Boondocks [>]
Eric Conveys an Emotion [>]
philosophy
Society for Women in Philosophy [>]
the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy [>]
The Hegel Society of America[>]
North American Fichte Society[>]
Journal of Neoplatonic Studies [>]
Women Philosophers [>]
Brian Leiter's blog [>]
read/see/hear
Harper's [>]
Neil Gaiman [>]
Charles de Lint [>]
Making Light [>]
McSweeney's [>]
WFUV [>]
Anti-pedantry page: Singular 'their' in Jane Austen [>]
places I miss
Cafe Diplomatico [>] (Toronto)
The Red Room [>] (Toronto)
The Free Times Cafe [>] (Toronto)
Sneaky Dee's [>] (Toronto... aka Sneaky Disease, best nachos in town)
Kensington Market [>] (Toronto)
College Street [>] (Toronto)
Perfection Satisfaction Promise [>] (Ottawa - formerly the Painted Potato)
Piccolo Grande [>] (Ottawa)
The Market [>] (Ottawa)
Stray cats of Parliament Hill [>] (Ottawa)
other nonsense
Mozilla [>]
Abebooks [>]
Alibris [>]
Metafilter [>]
and thank you
Thanks to Haloscan for blog-comment-ability

Friday, September 19, 2003

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!

Stop by the Official website to find out the details -- which, roughly, consist of talking like a pirate.

Arrr! where's me pirate booty!

The British headquarters is here. They have piratey ringtones for WAP-enabled mobile phones, whatever WAP is (I be clueless with these things).

jane 12:34 PM [+]

Wednesday, September 17, 2003
erin mckeown!!!

Anne, and Chris and Brian the Jesuits, and I all wandered down (via Jesuit-mobile) to the Bowery Ballroom last night for a fantastic show -- Bishop Allen opened (they were pretty good - check 'em out if they're playing near you; Brian knew them from college) -- and Erin McKeown was absolutely stellar! so much energy! so cute with her big huge pigtails! so fantastic with her guitar & bass skills! such a great performance!

go buy her CDs! Go to her website and check her out! There are little samples of some of her songs.

I'm listening to Grand right now and loving every note.

Thanks to WFUV, which played "slung-lo" one evening as I was walking home from the Tinker and listening to the radio on my walkman. With the opening notes my walk turned into a dance.

go! listen! buy! listen! fantastico!

ok. I'm done now. but go do it.

jane 10:42 AM [+]

Tuesday, September 16, 2003
and we're lettin' the kids out soon, eh, maybe?

aww, what a nice US government, to think about the children it's been holding in Guantamano. According to the BBC (a few weeks ago, I'm sorry to be so out of the loop), the US may release the children!.

According to the BBC,

---
The commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp has told the BBC the US military is hoping to release children it is holding there.

The BBC's Gordon Corera, in Guantanamo Bay, says the US's interviews with the three children - aged between 13 and 15 - reveal they may have been coerced into fighting in Afghanistan.

General Geoffrey Miller who leads operations at the camp is seeking to have the children released in recognition of their age and co-operation, our correspondent says.

"These juvenile enemy combatants were impressed, were kidnapped into terrorism. They have given us some very valuable intelligence. We are very close to making a recommendation on their transfer back to their home countries," General Miller said.

Special treatment

The children have been kept separate from the 700 adults being held at the camp, located on the southern Cuban coast.

They have been held with no access to a lawyer or understanding of what will happen to them, our correspondent adds.

But the children have been given access to games, even videos, as well as an extensive education programme.

This has led to the belief that they can be rehabilitated.
---

Rehabilitated, eh? You mean, so that they don't think it's OK to invent bits of international law, and to ignore the bits that they don't like? So they behave nicely & not like big bullies? So they learn it's not OK to keep children away from their parents & families for two years?

so, the other thing I want to know is -- games. Do you think they're sitting in Guantanamo Bay playing John Madden's NFL football game for X-box?

jane 10:58 AM [+]

Girl Blog From Iraq

Check out this blog by riverbend, specifically her post on Bush's Sept 7 speech. But just read it in general. At one point she also links to turning tables, the blog of an American soldier in Iraq (he's going home soon).

Here's the last little bit of her Sept 9 post. :

---
Everyone is asking, ‘What should be done?’. Pull out the American troops. Take them home. Bring in UN peace-keeping troops under the Security Council- not led by America.

Let real Iraqis be involved in governing Iraq. Let Iraqis who actually have *families* living in Iraq be involved in governing their country. Let Iraqis who have something to lose govern the country. They aren’t being given a chance. As long as any Iraqi isn’t affiliated with one of the political groups on the Governing Council, no one bothers to listen.

We have thousands of competent, intelligent, innovative people who are eager to move forward but it’s impossible under these circumstances. There’s no security, there’s no work and there’s no incentive. AND THERE’S NO ONE WHO WILL LISTEN. If you’re not a part of the CPA or one of Ahmad Al-Chalabi’s thugs, then you’re worthless. You can’t be trusted.

I read Bush’s speech… just like I’ve read/heard what feels like a thousand different speeches these last few months. Empty words, meaningless phrases.

The abridged version of the speech…

“Friends, Americans, Countrymen, lend me your ears… lend me your sons and daughters, lend me your tax dollars… so we can wage war in the name of American national security (people worldwide are willing to die for it)… so I can cover up my incompetence in failing to protect you… so I can add to the Bush and Cheney family coffers at your expense and the expense of the Iraqi people. I don’t know what I’m doing, but if you spend enough money, you’ll want to believe that I do."

----

And an excerpt from riverbend's post from the previous day ---

"As the tanks and Apaches invaded the city, they shot left and right at any vehicle in their path. The areas that got it worst were Al-Dawra and Al-A’adhamia. People in residential areas didn’t know what to do with the corpses in the burnt vehicles that had come from other parts of the city. They were the corpses of people and families who were trying to get away from the heavy fighting in their own areas, some of them had been officially evacuated.

The corpses sat decomposing in the heat, beyond identification. Some people tried asking the troops to help deal with them, but the reaction was mainly, “That’s not my job.” Of course not, how silly… your job is to burn the cars, we bury the corpses.

Finally, the people began to bury the corpses along the roadside- near the burnt vehicles so that family members looking for the car would find their loved ones not very far off."

---

Oh, and the previous day, about Rumsfeld is good too.

just read her bloody blog. :)

and on a personal note

things are going well with me; Eric came to visit this weekend, which was fantastic, and then after he left I talked to Jennifer, Preetom, Annie, Melanie, and Kathleen on the phone as they were all at a party at Jennifer's house in Riverdale (the Riverdale area of Toronto, not the Riverdale area of the Bronx). They passed the phone around; I felt like I was mingling, it was fun.

and I've been running twice in the last week, with Holly. Here's hoping this is a new leaf, instead of a momentary abberation.

but I'm in desperate need of doing laundry, and having coffee this morning.

and of course I've put off doing anything useful, other than reading online news, blogs, and other fun things. Oh, just for the hell of it -- Paul Kendal told me about the Dalton McGuinty eating kittens thing, and I laughed, but then I saw that Neil Gaiman (the picture of me with him, by the way, has now been developed and is sitting in a frame on the bookshelf holding all my Sandmans, my copy of American Gods, Smoke and Mirrors, Good Omens, and Sandman: Book of Dreams) mentioned the story on his journal, so I thought I should include a link to the globe and mail version of the events too, in order to perpetuate the pointless mayhem.

I thought the most salient part of the globe and mail article was its demonstration of Eves's true evil -- cutting down on coffee for his staffers!

---
Conservative Leader Ernie Eves blamed the release on a staffer who apparently "had too much coffee this morning ... too much time."

But he refused to retract the statement.

"I'm not apologizing, but I am acknowledging that it certainly went over the top," he said. "Somebody had a weird sense of humour and we will try to ensure that it doesn't happen again. We'll give the [staff] less coffee."
---

yes. speaking of coffee. I should go make some.

jane 10:31 AM [+]

Wednesday, September 10, 2003
and we love that administration so

In Alternet's Iraq News Log, the following post:

"WMD? What WMD?

"Posted by Oj on September 9, 2003 @ 10:48AM

"The search for Saddam's deadly arsenal is now merely a footnote in the war. In what amounts to a political "do-over", Bush has recasted the mission in Iraq into Ground Zero in the broader war on terror. Rumsfeld didn't even ask about the weapons in his recent Baghdad visit. They've changed their minds about why they went to war and their sticking to it -- at least until that reasoning also fails them."

Who else watched the Bush Address on Sept. 7th? Who else wasn't sure what to make of it, other than to shake one's head with dismay?

So suddenly it doesn't matter that no WMDs have been found? Suddenly it's all just still the war on terror? Which war is which?

Bush: "Our strategy in Iraq has three objectives: destroying the terrorists, enlisting the support of other nations for a free Iraq and helping Iraqis assume responsibility for their own defense and their own future."

Define terrorist in this case. Which terrorists? For which cause? Baathists? Saddam Hussein loyalists? Al Quaida? Random terrorists? Random Iraqis who want to govern their own country? (see Liberating Iraqis, American Style for a view of what's going on with some local elections).

Bush: "The heaviest burdens in our war on terror fall, as always, on the men and women of our Armed Forces and our intelligence services. They have removed gathering threats to America and our friends, and this nation takes great pride in their incredible achievements. We are grateful for their skill and courage, and for their acts of decency, which have shown America's character to the world. We honor the sacrifice of their families. And we mourn every American who has died so bravely, so far from home."

Right. Not to bring up old news, but remember the June 30th issue of the Army times? The Nation's Daily Outrage summarized the point; here's an excerpt from the Nation summary:

"What has Army Times upset? They don't like the White House's griping and opposition to a proposal to double the $6,000 now paid to families of troops who die on active duty. (An additional $6,000 multiplied by 212 dead so far works out to $1.27 million -- or, for perspective, about 0.00032 percent of the nearly $4 billion per month the war is costing us.) They also want to cut monthly imminent-danger pay to $150 from $225, and cut the family-separation allowance down to $100 a month from $250. The anti-tax Administration is doing nothing for the military -- it won't even step up and ease residency rules to help frequent-traveling service members who sell a home qualify for capital-gains exemptions. The Administration plans to cut more than a billion dollars out of next year's budget for military housing. "The chintz even extends to basic pay," Army Times fumes, noting that Bush's proposed 2004 budget would cap raises for some ranks at 2 percent."

Anyway. I know this is all old news. Back to the good old brave fight against terror. Doing everything we can to keep Americans safe. Ah yes.

But yes. All I want to know is, did the Sept. 7th address clear things up for anybody? huh?


jane 11:00 AM [+]

remember Velvet Underground's "The Gift"?

Check this out -- a man shipped himself in a wooden crate from New York to Dallas.

(In a related note, the Nation points out that "the Administration has blocked legislation being pushed by Representative Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, that would require automated or manual screening of cargo shipped on passenger planes. Currently, most of this cargo--unlike travelers' checked baggage--is not screened. The House approved Markey's amendment by a 278-to-146 vote. But the Senate--pressed by the aviation industry and the White House--has ignored the issue." Thanks, Bush administration!)

(Oh, and in the lower right hand corner of the Globe and Mail article, the following joke, which I'll cut & paste here. Thanks Globe and Mail):

"An aspiring wizard was dismissed from school for trying to change a golf club into a cat. Unfortunately, he ended up creating a hairy putter. Ronald Vadeboncoeur"

groan.

Now playing: Sarah Slean's "Night Bugs." Fantastico.

jane 10:36 AM [+]

Virgins With Guns

Believe it or not, if you do a google search for "virgin" "guns" (as opposed to the string, "virgins with guns"), the first page of entries has NO PORN AT ALL! Surprising, huh?

Instead, some stuff about Virgin Valley Guns, the Virgin Islands, and Virgin Records.

"Virgins with guns" brings up nothing at all about Virgin Utah's gun ordinance (discussed below), but rather an entry about the children's crusade..

How not-at-all titillating.

Back to work.

jane 10:10 AM [+]

Comments on googling

So a little while ago I posted about the ethics of googling, and received a reply from a friend of mine:

"no, it's not unethical. anything up there is public domain, and likely stems from something intentional. the nice thing about us at our age is that we for the most part aren't being followed by investigative journalists or papparazzi. so no embarrassing stuff should be up there that's too bad...

"oh, and part 2: just don't bring it up. if you find something embarrassing on someone, you have to make sure you know them well enough to bring it up before doing so. always err on the side of caution, I always say...

"feel free to look me up if you want. oh, maybe I should check into this... "

Shortly after that Paul sent me a further email:

"Subject: ok, just tried it

"howdy

"ok, this illustrates the danger of looking people up. I'm not a jazz musician, and I've never remixed nin and nitzer ebb etc.

"nor was I born in 1870.

"but even the stuff that does come up that's accurate is misleading in certain cases. I'm not gay, f'rinstance, even though we seem to have blurred that line in some of the press releases...

"neat-o.

"p :)"


So there we go.

I still feel awkward about googling friends without their knowledge. Is there some sort of "coming out" statement that would be appropriate? "Hi, X. Just to let you know, I was surfing the internet the other day and thinking of you, so I googled you out of curiosity. Guess what came up?" But what if something embarrassing comes up? Should I mention it? Should I deny having seen it? Should I deny having clicked on that particular link? "No, I didn't think that was you..."

Anyway.

A general notice about the Conference on Ancient and Medieval Philosophy to be held at the end of October here at Fordham, down at the Lincoln Centre campus. I just finished proofreading the program, so I can vouch for the niftiness of the contents. Should be fun.

Biking through the Bronx

Paul K (a different Paul K from the one who contributed his thoughts on googling) lent me his bicycle pump and I finally restored my bike to working order on Sunday. Taking advantage of the fantastically beautiful weather that has finally hit us (perfect september weather -- dry, warm in the day and just a little bit cooler in the morning and evening, just enough for a light sweater, absolutely fantastic), I went cycling along Pelham Parkway over to Pelham Bay Park, and up just to the edge of New Rochelle in Westchester (mansions!!). Did you know that Pelham Bay Park is NYC's largest park? (At least, that's what the sign says). And yet it's not famous, like Central Park -- to the best of my knowledge (please chime in if you know anything!) there are no songs about Pelham Bay Park. But it's so lovely....

Just a short bike ride from my neighbourhood, which, while I like it, is dirty and filled with razor wire and broken sidewalks, is this cool and breezy park with trees, bike paths, horse & pony rides, picnic areas -- but, unlike the Botanical Gardens, free to go into and explore. I didn't even make it over to Orchard Beach.

I biked staight through the Park and ended up on Park Rd in Pelham Village. I pretty much figured I wasn't in the Bronx anymore... for one thing, as this fact sheet states, it's pretty white. And filled with really big stone houses. So close to New York. Wow. It was kind of a shock to emerge from the park (given that I went in not far from Co-op City, which isn't the height of poshness) and find this neighbourhood. For instance, I went right past the New York Athletic Club at Travers Island building/grounds/whatever. There were lots of children playing, but not in the street, or in fire hydrants. On "handsomely landscaped" grounds.

It was a little bizarre.

The world is a strange strange place.

I will go back to work now.

jane 10:05 AM [+]

Monday, September 01, 2003
Summer does indeed seem to be over

... all the kids are moving into the dorms

... I need to pick up my new ID

... I've bought my new coursebooks

... I haven't paid my bill yet, but Fordham owes me money from working for Dr. Tress this summer

... I suddenly need to hurry up and finish the last few things (4 hours of work or so) for my summer employment in order to have earned the money that Fordham owes me!

... It's chilly enough, what with the rain, that I wished I had a light jacket on

... People are back from wherever they went over the summer.

... The new kids are showing up! So far, the two new women in the Philosophy Department seem delightful. Huzzah!

... I missed the Jesuits. I'm glad they're back.

Well, off to work!


and a promissory note

My friend Paul wrote me an email with his opinion of the googling matter. However, in the interest of not procrastinating on the work that I need to get done today, I'll put off telling you all what he said. And put off providing my own answer. Until the work is done. Yes. I will do the work first. Yes. Yes I will.

jane 2:00 PM [+]

This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?