There something a little odd about this BBC article  “Japanese develop ‘female’ android.”  It notes for example that:

Scientists think that, one day, robots could fool us into believing they were human.

Well, ok, then.  Time to set this journalist up with a voight-Kampff test, perhaps?

Anyway, I found this insubstantial but mildly diverting article via The Drudge Report, which I have to admit I read most days.  It’s a bit frustrating that the DR is so good, and particularly annoying that there’s no similar left-oriented website that combines politics, the latest news, and a bit of salacious nonsense as Drudge does.

Take a look, for example at the nearest attempt: Buzzflash.  While Drudge knows better than anyone how to manufacture news with short stupid headlines (”Durbin: Soldiers Nazis!”), Buzzflash serves up bloviated headlines that are clearly far less powerful and persuasive than Drudge’s, where the carefully selected news is left to seem to “speak for itself.”  It is utterly beyond me that some person has put so much effort into Buzzflash, and remained so obviously unaware of what make Drudge successful.  (The block-letter headline at present fills my whole screen, and is the only giant headline I’ve seen to inlcude a pronunciation key:

American voters support the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v Wade decision 65 - 30 percent, the highest level of support in two years of national polls by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University. American voters disapprove of the job President George W. Bush is doing 53 - 41 percent, his lowest approval rating since becoming President.)

Add some items of random interest, maybe include a pic or two (go ahead and use sponsoring ads if bandwidth’s an issue), and absolutely cool it with the long-ass headlines, and a site like Buzzflash could I’m pretty sure rock the internet world.  The lack of such a site (dumb, fun, unreliable, visually clean, and up to date (i.e. *not* the august Alternet or Salon)) is frustrating, since the success of the Drudge Report would be very easy to duplicate, and since a popular progressive version of it could have such a dramatic effect.

So you think you know your geography.  But do you really? 

Alas, it is now apparent that I do not.

. . . and we are supposed to DIE!

(cribbing from S.P.O.C.K.’s The Neutral Zone)

Starcraft is one of the greatest of video games.  After more than seven years, it’s still the best of the real-time strategic war games.  I’ve pretty much given up video-gaming, but an occasional round of Starcraft can still be a pleasantly numbing experience.  And I must admit to a stranger Starcraft habit: I have on occasion produced maps designed for me to observe as the computer plays against itself.  It’s kind of fascinating to watch the little colonies of Protoss, Zerg, and Humans establish themselves, spread out, and attempt to extinguish one-another by acquiring resources and directly attacking one another.  It’s like watching colonies of ants at war, or the struggle of plants in a closed terrarium.

But I digress.  What I’d wanted to mention is a neat little genre of Starcraft art.  I refer here to the gentle art of the “backstab.”  Starcraft can be played on-line; groups of up to eight can play remotely against one-another, or against computer opponents.  In the simplest terms, backstabbing is when you turn against your own allies and kill them (pretty common in all multiplayer video-games, of course).

But backstabbing can sometimes be more interesting, and even kind of principled.  For one thing, there’s an imperative among backstabbers to not only kill their opponents, but to do so in strange and bewildering ways, involving odd and overwhelming modes of destruction, and creating confusion among victims about who’s actually doing, or instigating, the backstabbing.  Here is a gallery of backstabs, for example.  (I should warn you that these seem to be created by maladjusted 13-year-old white boys, and are sometimes include homophobic, sexist, and sometimes racist remarks).  The plaintive, angry, and confused remarks of the victims here are especially plangent, recored at the bottom of the screen-shots.

Backstabbers are, naturally, quite hated by many players of Starcraft.  So it’s interesting to note the justification they provide for their practice, which perhaps surprisingly is usually not simply that backstabbing is pretty fun.  Backstabbers prey particularly upon “compstompers,” and object to the practice of “compstomping”–that is, of several players teaming up to defeat a smaller number of computer opponents, which is regarded as a cowardly and boring practice.

The backstabbers steal into compstomping matches, and seek to turn the tables every which-way.

So why is this even slightly interesting?  Several reasons, but for me lately it’s the relation of backstabbing to the Elizabethan revenge tragedies I’ve lately been reading and writing about.  I’m not sure I can get away with citing the backstabbing exploits of cheesechild and fatdudeinpants in my dissertation, but I wonder how similar ye olde backstabbe, Dark Templar Backstab, and Suparl33t Backstab (not to mention ‘Shut Your n00b-hole’), are to the Revenger’s Tragedy, The Revenge of Bussy D’Ambois, Antonio’s Revenge and their ilk.

Both genres glory in confusion, mayhem, the artistic production of spectacular death.  The author of “ye olde backstabbe” is presumably noting this comparison in his backstab’s title.

An interesting second-order question is whether a similar anti-compstomping ethos can also be found in Elizabethan and Jacobean revenge tragedy.  That the revenge tragedy suggest that your great adversary–your Big Other–is never who or what you’d expected, and the world you construe must be mistaken in ways that are fatal in potential, if not in actual consequence.  A drive to escape the compstomping life, and push you someplace fatal, that calls for observation, where perceptual break-down and re-assembly is a required operation.

It’s hot outside, and miserable.  Sort of a slow, useless kind of a day so far.  I noticed this article today in the news-gazette, about the remarkable unpleasantness and ugliness of the Levis Faculty Center.  Which is one of our fair campus’s very worst buildings.  The building gets used, sort of.  But nobody likes it.  Chancellor Herman put it this way:

“It’s not that it’s not used, but if we’re talking about an attractive space, it doesn’t seem to quite fit the bill,” said Chancellor Richard Herman

Ouch.  Tell ‘em, Dick.  Well yes, the building does suck as a place for meetings, and doesn’t really even exist as a “faculty center,” even if a hundered-year-old bridge club does still meet-up there on occasion.  And moreover, it’s really stupid to have those functions (faculty center and academic conference center) combined there as they now are.  When the UI is especially, especially bad at intergrating undergraduates into intellecutal/academic life, does it really make any sense to hide away all the interesting talks in some “faculty center” that no student ever sets foot in?  This is a terrible status-quo.  So what to do?

My suggestion: Take Harker Hall (right on the quad, and right next to the Student Union), and use *that* as the space for academic talks and such, moving the monolithic fund-raising conglomerate that’s now in Harker to to somewhere more appropriate.  Sadly, they’ve already gutted Harker’s insides, so reconfiguring it to serve as a conference center won’t destroy anything worth keeping.  Move Harker’s functions to Levis.  It makes more sense to have scholarly events on the quad in Harker, and to put the fund-raisers and telemarketers over by the admin and alumni buildings, doesn’t it? 

Since we’re on the topic of ugly building, I here present to you an expert list of the six ugliest  and six most excellent buildings on this here University Campus, in ascending order of badness or goodness:

THE UGLY:
6) Swanlund Admin.  (note its freakish maw)
5) Temple Buell Hall (Architecure)  (timid and conventional gestures)
4) Micro and Nanotechnology Lab (here posed behind UI’s worst sculpture)
3) Foreign Languages (a small monstrosity)
2) Animal Sciences Building (mishappen and unfortunate)
1) Applied Life Sciences Building (a looming horror, so ugly that few pictures of it even exist)

THE WELL-BELOVED:
6) Smith Music Hall (unsurprising, but quietly serene and restoring)
5) Grainger Engineering Library (thoughtful asymetry, to anchor a neat new quad space)
4) Illinois Geological Survey (sweet art-deco interior–the best of UI’s Georgian buildings)
3) Noyes Lab (Chemistry) (unassumingly lovely amid the trees)
2) Engineering Hall (overlooked, but strange and interesting in detail)
1) Krannet Center for the Performing Arts (a sharp shifting set of spaces and shapes)

You can let me know if I’m wrong or left anything out.  Want more pics of the UI campus buildings?  Your wish is my command.

I notice that a new-to-me blog–Champaign Media Watch, that’s linked to TDQ, along with a bunch of other C-U blogs (mostly conservative ones?).

You might find something interesting or someone you know in the blog-roll.

Life, actually has been alright–as opposed to cottonsmelly–this weekend.  But I’m just now listening to (and stealing from) “It’s the Hard-Knock Life” from the soundtrack of the 1988 “Annie,” which is of course a non-resistable and reallyprettycool little tune.  But did you notice that at 2:37 into the song, when the orphan girls are mocking the mean things said to them by the nasty Ms. Hannigan, right after “You’ll stay up ’til this dump shines like the top of the Chrysler Building” the next mean Hanniganism to be mocked by the girls is: “Kill! KILL!”?

What’s up with that?  Has Ms. Hannigan been transforming the orphans into a murderous rabble?  Ok, it’s been a while since I saw Annie (and, to be honest, I’m not sure I could really stand to  re-watch it), but I don’t recall that Ms. Hannigan was supposed to be training a hit squad.

Aside from my Annie-born confusion (and, yes, I know that the film omits the Broadway version’s “Thank you Herbert Hoover,” and is in some ways a pretty sycophantic ode to the Capitalist Daddy-man), things are fine.

A lovely dinner last night at Ed and Rachel’s–the only sad part being that Rachel will be gone now ’til Labor Day, off in the great wide west (Ed should be back in town in a week or two).  Delicious shrimp, corn on the cob, a bean concoction, pizza and little potatoes made for an unusual menu, all tied together with the tasty mojitos that Ed’s been lately enamored with.  My favorite part being the tasy mint that Ed picks from the garden just outside the small comfortable southwestern-stucco house.

We discussed sundown towns; apparently, hundreds of Northern towns–457 in Illinois alone–had through the middle of the c.20 and beyond, laws prohibiting blacks from being within city limits after dark.  In some cases a horn would announce a sort of “get out of town” curfew.  James Lowen’s forthcoming Sundown Towns (Lowen is the author of Lies my Teacher Told Me) promises to illuminate a cruel and relatively unknown (to me, for example) phenomenon.

Also discussed: “vaginal ecosystems,” garage-sale etiquette, and the question of whether Hobos are really the new Pirates.  Viewed: BJ Snowden’s encomium on Canada (”in Canada they treat you like a queen/in Canada they will never be mean); Rachel’s 1989 Wisconsin Dells-made dance video featuring her and the fellow camp counselors doing beautiful justice to Bobby Brown’s My Prerogative.

Also, a fun party with the Urbana post-hippy population at Laura H.’s on Friday pm.  Now I’d better go do some work.

(or My New Pick-Up Technique is Unstoppable, Part II)

I’ve often considered writing a book in order to convey my secrets of romantic success (for I am nothing if not a smooth smooth operator).  But now that I’ve found Edward Philips’s 1685 THE MYSTERIES OF LOVE & ELOQUENCE, Or, the ARTS of Wooing and Complementing; As they are manag’d in the Spring Garden, Hide Park, the New Exchange, and other eminent places, I think I can set aside my project, as Philips’s techniques are nearly identical to my own.  In the example below, Philips explains how to pick-up the lovelies in Hyde Park, London.  But where Philips makes mention of the aging Charles II, one might easily substitute Barak Obama, if one is a-wooing in Hyde Park, Chicago–or the dashing Mayor Schweighart, should one be a-wooing in West Side Park, Champaign. 

The Mode of Hide Park.

Madam, That free Interest which you have granted me in your Favour, honours me with a boldness to give you an invitation this fair afternoon, to take the Air in Hide Park.

Your most humble servant, Sir, I’le assure you, had you not come as you did, you might perchance have found me there before you, for my Cousin here and I were taking up a resolution to be jogging that way.

I’le assure you, Madam, your journey will not want its pleasure, beside that of the season, if the Town news hold true.

I see you came, Sir, with a resolution not to be deny’d, having brought an argument so perswasive to Women, as that of Novelty; but pray what is it?

Madam, they say, Sir Charles—hath put off his mourning-weeds, and appears this day in the Park with a new Coach and Livery: they report he looks with an amorous Countenance upon the young Lady—to whom he intends, as they say, to give a Treatment at the Spring Garden; so that if Businesses be well manag’d on her side, it may chance to be a match. But, pray give me leave, I heard lately that the old Countess—is dead.

Very true, Madam, I was this morning at a Drapers shop in Pauls Church-yard, and there came in her Steward to provide Four hundred pounds worth of Mourning.

Do’s it not bring a very great addition to my Lords Estate?

Doubtless Madam, a very considerable one; for she was always a near and parcimonious Woman, and indeed was considerable for nothing else, but the affection she bare him. I could tell you more, Madam, but I defer the rest for discourse in the Coach.

Ok, so I’m not sure who in Champaign or Chicago is buying up funeral cloth, but you get the idea.  “The discourse in the coach.”  A charming rake, indeed!  And, predictably, no great fan of monogamy . . .  Read the rest of this entry »

I appreciated this.  I’ll need to look more closely at those things from now on.

Fascinating to follow–the (possible) demise of the thunder horse.  To these eyes, the death of such a behemoth is rather spectacular.

[edit: “spectacular” link fixed; see also this pic, and the tiny humans at the lower left of the “largest semi-submersible oil platform in the world.” (perhaps soon to become the world’s largest *fully* submersible oil platform)  (also: Mr. Thunderhorse, meet Emily.  She should not be underestimated.)]

The University of Illinois (including its campuses in Chicago, Urbana, and Springfield) is run by a nine-member Board of Trustees.  Right now the BOT is meeting–probably in Chicago.  You could probably find out where by calling their office, but the location isn’t posted on their website, as far as I can tell.

They’ll be discussing a host of issues, including whether to retain “Chief Illiniwek,” which they prefer to think of as a dancing symbol, rather than a “mascot.”

The UI BOT has changed a great deal in the last decade or so, mostly as a result of the efforts of former UI President Stanley Ikenberry.  For 115 years, residents of Illinois voted to elect trustees to the UI Board, until in 1995 Ikenberry helped the Republican-controlled Illinois legislature abolish the democratic election of UI trustees.  So the ballot machine you see on the left is a historical curiosity.

Thus a BOT that in the early 90’s had begun to escape the traditional control of the UI alumni association, and had pressed the UI to endorse some more progressive policies, was replaced with a collection of Governor George Ryan’s campaign contributors.  While Ikenberry had suggested that a “blue ribbon panel” would help nominate candidates, no such panel ever materialized.

But now the Governor of Illinois is (nominally, at least) a Democrat — something inconceivable in the days of Big Jim Thompson, and even the days of the somewhat smaller Jim Edgar.  So Ex-UI President Ikenberry has come up with a second plan to change, again, who controls the UI.  And this one is a doozy.  (Short and scary — it’s titled “Uncertain and Unplanned: the Future of Public Higher Education”–you can have a look at it here).

Having removed the right of Illinois’ voters to select UI’s trustees, Ikenberry now proposes (without mentioning his own role in producing the present method of selecting trustees) to remove this right from the Governor, too, and simply apportion trustee seats to corporations, donors, and alums, as he deems appropriate.  It was in the context of the old ways that “the state held all or nearly all of the seats on the “board of directors,” or governing board.” Writes Ikenberry, but “Times have changed” (5).  Ikenberry writes:

A single governor, a single legislative committee, a single party caucus, should no longer control the composition of public university governing boards. Alumni, donors, the business community, agriculture, and other segments of society should be more directly and independently represented than they are at present.

It turns out that moving to an unelected BOT was just step one.  Step two is to mandate spots on the BOT for Alums, donors, the business community, and “agriculture” (which, in central Illinois, means mostly the Arthur Daniel Midland corporation). 

It’s a little breath-taking, isn’t it?  But there’s more.  Ikenberry’s pamphlet doesn’t really make an argument as much as it repeats an assumption, which is that the great danger is in not corporatizing the university completely or rapidly enough.  Failing to grant sources of private capital as much control over the university as they’d like to have, Ikenberry repeatedly implies, will result in higher tuition for undergraduates.  Ikenberry argues that we must speedily embrace the new corporate university, a concept which academic and administrators must learn to champion without shame:

Corporate partnerships, economic development, the exploitation of intellectual property, and other economic development efforts must be a central and unapologetic part of any 21st century strategy for public higher education.

For Ikenberry, engaging in such partnerships requires that “the state” relinquish its control over what have traditionally been public universities, to be replaced by business interests.  While UI’s motto is “Learning and Labor”–a relic of a progressive past–Ikenberry’s proposal literally excludes labor, environmental and religious groups, as well as ethnic minorities and other populations traditionally undeserved by the university, from the BOT’s table, delivering control of the university to sources of privately-held capital.

But will corporate donors push for smaller class-sizes and the retention of programs that are not beneficial to their bottom-line?  Will they work to promote an atmosphere of free-exchange of knowledge, or promote secrecy and the narrow ownership of intellectual property?  Can they be counted on to put the wider public good ahead of that of their shareholders?  Corporate universities are a reality in the U.S. and elsewhere.  The question that Ikenberry’s piece raises and answers in the negative is whether public universities should remain realities as well.

I was back in Palatine, Illinois for the fourth, where the yearly carnival had political action booths set up for both of Palatine’s political parties: the Republicans and the Crazy Republicans.  As usual, the event (which featured, it must be admitted, some amazing food) was held in front of the local police department, and its parking-lot full of Los Angeles-looking muscular police cars and SUV’s. 

In the rear of the building was parked the department’s vehicle for processing crime scenes.  It looked like this:

While I have nothing too much against the macho-tech police cars of the PPD, wouldn’t it be just the tinyist bit confidence-shaking to see a CSI-themed CSI vehicle pulling up to help decipher some actual crime?

Did you know that the U of I is going to vote in two days on a resolution that will reaffirm the University’s determination to retain the names “Illini” and “Fighting Illini” with reference to its sports teams?  I did not.  Here’s the resolution (in .pdf).  There seems to be no way of telling where the mysterious trustee meeting will be held.

Does this signal a readiness to get rid of “the Chief,” but an intent to keep the old name?  Or is it part of a move to gradually enshrine the whole tradition in a bubble of protection, while merely speaking of “compromise” with those who’d like UI to quit playing Indian?

I’m trying to avoid learning too much about the Karl Rove imbroglio.  After-all, the details of Rove’s dealings are not that relevant, probably.  What’s more important is that the media may finally be losing the sense of fear that has kept the Rove-Plame story from the headlines for so long.  It’s finally beginning to sound like the ice beneath Rove may really be starting to crack. . .

On a related note, I’d recommend Journeys With George, a documentary made by Alexandra Pelosi — the journalist daughter of the California senator.  Pelosi travels with the Bush press pool in the 2000 election, and spends a lot of time talking with bush, the press, and so forth.  The film provides a bunch of insights re Bush, a few on Rove, and an especially depressing view of the mainstream media as it was charmed into submission in 2000. 

Bush’s relation with Pelosi is especially revealing, as he enjoys flirting with her–teasing her about her relations with Newsweek reporter, and asking if he can have a kiss (”on the cheek,” he adds) as he delivers to Pelosi a mock stump speech asking for her vote.  As Bush delivers his stump, Pelosi asks him “But what are you going to do for me–the little guy?”–and the question just stumps him.  Perhaps he couldn’t figure-out whether to make a joke or offer a serious reply.  But stops, and then mutters something about faith-based programs, and asks if he can kiss Pelosi.  An especiall revealing and disturbing exchange. 

[On (another) related note, from Kos: What did the President Know?  Yes, indeed, after months of timid silence, there seems to be blood in the water now.]