text:
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"Et s'il faut commencer par les coups d' pied au cul faudrait pas oublier qu' ça descend dans la rue"
It's time we admit something: we don't know shit about tumblr. The truth is, we were in a hurry to get shit posted back in January 2012 - and this was the fastest way to do so. So, now that we finally have what seems like a break in the "action," we've moved our entire archive of original content over to the above Wordpress. We hope to see you (and your continued contributions & support) over there!
for anarchy,
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"The Missed Insurrection"
We found each other with a conspiratorial wink - our alliance affirmed. We spilled our secrets deep into morning, sparking at the resin in a stranger's bowl. Under a sprawling canopy, amidst the snoring corpses of this futile left, we whispered the names of our ancient heroes - Malatesta. Berkman. Goldman. De Cleyre. Parsons. We shared a cigarette you had expertly rolled. Everyone around us was asleep. Or dead. We found each other as neighbors, unzipping our tents together each morning. Inured to the sartorial zombies shuffling past us to their offices, we'd lament that first hateful light of the day. "Fuck work," you'd grumble. Then go, anyway. Returning drunk from other worlds, we'd reconcile at camp - outside our homes, cursing the bongos together. Or loving them. Screaming maniacally into the night, either way. We found each other in line at the toilet. Unprepared for a wait, we both went barefoot and overexposed. We arrived as strangers, but became comrades huddling together against an Autumn chill. "This bathroom is occupied," came the reply to our final, plaintive knock. That joke was old before the first person ever said it aloud. We found each other in a large circle. There were forty of us there; our arms interlocked, our hands clasped tightly in front of us as if in desperate prayer. You wondered aloud how the hell we had gotten there. "Who gets arrested on purpose?" Not us. We muttered our quiet regrets through vinegar-soaked bandanas, our woe lost to the whirling helicopters overhead. We'd seen them try take the park - to try to hold that little space - but they were too few. We joined them first just to stare down that phalanx of cops - because where the pigs don't want us is where we want to be. Just like that, we were trapped. An aging hippie kept reciting overwrought poetry, so we belted out the chorus of 'Solidarity Forever' together to drown him out. The chorus was the only part all of us knew. The battle between our repetition and his recitation proved a bigger struggle than the one he put up when the pigs finally pried him away. He hardly resisted. We were almost glad to see him go. We were the last subdued. We found each other tangled together in a dog pile. The pigs were twisting your foot. I screamed every time they did. It felt like my own foot was being twisted. I think that's what solidarity means. We found each other at a secret meeting for some secret action. Everyone there was so solemn and serious. The organizer welcomed us as "the best and brightest." Then spoke of armbands. Security. A new camp, free of the freeloaders. Their discussion turned to the tickets they'd distribute to prove people had worked - tickets they'd need in order to get fed. They plotted their occupation like incidental fascists. Then you raised your finger. When it was your turn to speak, you denounced them all - excoriating everyone in a righteous rage. We found each other on the ListServ. You had written a rambling manifesto about the CIA, the FBI or some other, alphabet soup agency you were certain they both worked for. You wanted to meet me, but you needed to find a safe place first. When we finally got a chance to meet, you wrote everything out to me on a notepad, despite us being alone inside of your van. "Certain this car is bugged" was the first phrase you wrote. You wrote so hard, you nearly tore the paper with the pen. I half expected you to eat that first page after you had finished scrawling on it with that trembling hand. You didn't. You wrote more paranoia, but some of it made perfect sense. The last note itself read: "they're too pretty and too smart to be hanging out with the two of us and not be getting paid." I'd eventually learn you'd normally have been right. We found each other that day it rained, trapped under a tarp together for hours, listening in on a conversation - like two NSA spies - as a libertarian and Sovereign began falling slowly in love. We found each other in a bedroom, in a crowded meeting you doubtless don't remember. You and a partner were languishing beneath the sheets in an oversized bed that dominated that space like unchecked, white privilege. For the first hour, I didn't even know you were there. Your name had, as yet, only been whispered to me with a reverence oft-reserved for the dead. When you emerged groggily from beneath the covers to finally speak, I felt - for the first time - a totalizing sadness at the impermanence of life. When I looked in your eyes, I saw painkiller prescriptions. But the joy you all share reminds me I've often been wrong. I hope I'm wrong. We found each other after meetings, through meandering conversations that always seemed to end too soon, no matter how late it was. We found each other trapped between a chainlink fence and a skirmish line, tear gas already hanging heavy in the air. You had been busily clipping away at it with snips before I arrived to try to tear it down. Our numbers grew fast when the acrid smoke thickened. Then, like a failing dam, the fence finally burst and we poured over it in a torrent toward freedom. We were unstoppable - and in that moment - another world was possible. We found each other handcuffed to a pipe together in a police garage. Left alone - the two of us - strangers far behind enemy lines. We felt forgotten. Our conversation itself was an intricate dance, each of us hesitant to talk, neither of us knowing if the other was a cop. You'd ask me something and I'd only respond tersely. I'd ask you something and you'd barely nod. Wary of any topic that might possibly implicate us - the spell was only broken when we gushed about our cats. We found each other at Social Services. We were both applying to get food stamps for our first time. Each beset by our shame, we sat next to each other as they "taught" us how to write a resume. We hung our heads, too embarrassed to talk too much - speaking, at last, only when they asked us our names. It was hard for me to ever forget your subtle, Caribbean accent - harder still to forget your distinctive, whitening dreads. The day you first spoke before the assembly, you told everyone about those forty, proud years you'd worked as an electrician - and then bravely confessed the shame of that one day we'd only recently shared. I was so happy to see you there, with the rest of us, I quietly cried. It wasn't until then that I knew I was finally in the right place. We found each other after the raid, huddled together in an abandoned intersection beneath blinking red traffic lights. The entire city was ours. Many among us knew each other by name, some of us - only as faces that we recognized and could trust. I'd never been so happy to see you - there with all of us. All around, a thousand strangers were shouting out their ill-conceived plans. "Let's go back to the camp," one voice roared. "Let's take the freeway," another. Hurriedly, we exchanged whatever intel each of us had. All rumors. Speculation. You got a call from someone who said they were kettled near the concert hall. "We have to get to them - to combine these marches." I nodded eagerly. "We'll draw the pigs away from the camp," another comrade agreed. A hundred fingers twinkled; the quickest consensus I'd ever yet seen. I was sure this group could do it. I still thought we could do anything then. We found each other on a rooftop, chain-smoking cigarettes. She was yours and hers and his and his and I think his, too. I could never be sure. But what does it mean to be "someone's," anyway? She was letting me sleep on her floor instead of being out in the cold. Whenever you came by, we'd sneak off to that resplendent rooftop - where the entire city itself flickered like fluttering little fireflies beneath us. What should've been a brief, smokers' excursion often became a reticence to return. You would wax philosophical. Sometimes, I'd have to pretend to understand even half of what you had said. You were kind to never let on if you knew. We found each other long after the fire had already died. Back then, you hadn't even been anywhere at all near its warmth. Somehow, we tell each other - we're sure we're related. Somehow, despite this, we're sure we can fuck. There's a lot going on now, maybe too much - in fact. To be honest, I'm unsure if I'll come out intact. But I hope if I do - if that fire ever returns - you'll be there beside me to watch as it burns. We found each other too soon - it turns out. In those heady days, after the raid, we had a lot of big ideas. Rolling actions would culminate in a General Strike. If we ever doubted it, we never said so. Everything had changed and we were determined to never go back. But time makes liars out of all of us, it seems. Slowly, our conversations lost their luster. After MayDay, the ordinary - always insistent - reasserted itself at last. All of our plans became less exciting. What was once talk of Chiapas, or training a militia, staying off the grid, eviscerating liberals, an upcoming action, doing shit - became complaints about work, mere survival, navigating friendships, and fights with your wife. We went through a lot of shit together, but you're gonna have to go through this next shit alone. I love you, but her poison kills all that it touches. We found each other sitting in the last car. You were the driver. I was on "comms." It wasn't long before we had an escort - more pigs than I'd seen since the raid. I relayed this into the walkie-talkie. "Just so you know, uh… we have lots of pigs following." A black militant chided me, "no shit," crackling her response. Despite an inauspicious start, it felt like our plan was working. When the caravan stopped at 41st & Central, we were probably a half-mile back - so many cars ahead of us in the procession. By then we both had to pee so bad, we'd stopped talking - having to focus all our effort on not pissing ourselves in your car. We scrambled on solo missions to find a bathroom. When we returned, I confessed something I hadn't yet told you. I'd actually met you long before all of this. In a club. Where you danced. When I told you, in my sheepish way, you laughed. You thought I was silly for not having told you long, long before. There's a million stories like that between us now. I hope there are at least a million more. We found each other when you handed me a paper. You were always on the periphery, handing them out. I'm pretty sure I'm going to leave this city. I can't figure out why you haven't. If I don't, if I stay here, I know I'd be lucky to end up like you. The truth is I've never had all that much luck. We found each other on the Playa. You took me aside and whispered, "you're security culture is bad." I laughed. I looked at the endless desert full of all of the fucked up dreamers tripping out on privilege and I was sure you were joking. You weren't. We found each other after a heated argument. You said tersely, "I'll be at the General Assembly." I said, "I always am." I lurked around the fringe that night, chain smoking cigarettes - staring hard into every unfamiliar face. Your emails always said, "sent from the heart of the revolution," but we'd never met. Toward the end of it, a harmless-enough looking guy in glasses and a grin ambled up to me. Without a word, you gave me a hug. We found each other every night at camp. I'd steal you a tomato & mozzarella sandwich from work, because you don't eat meat. We saw some shit together. It all seemed so fucking significant, didn't it? I didn't know anyone when it started. I don't think you did, either. I always thought you were shy and aloof like me, but every time you had to step up, you did. Like there was nothing to it. Then, Covergirl. But you handled even that with a radical aplomb. If there's one thing I miss about the camp, it's you. We found each other splayed out on couches, our supine bodies intertwined, huddled behind velvet drapes deep within that cavernous, Queer bar - the one place where we all felt almost at ease. Buying each other round after round of watered-down shots, we raised our fists to every one of our comrades' spirited toasts, sang our hearts out to all our rebel songs, and plotted the fucking revolution - the way it should be and hopefully will be again.
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"I believe in strategy. And so did many anarchists, including [Alexander] Berkman…"
- Chris Hedges, Our Invisible Revolution (Oct. 28, 2013)
While we weren't startled to see Chris Hedges admit he'd "prefer the piecemeal and incremental reforms of a functioning democracy" to the anti-capitalist revolution many in "his" Occupy movement sought - there was still a ghostly specter haunting Hedges' recent article that may spook anyone familiar with his odious oeuvre: Hedges' 'Cancerous,' 'Ⓐbsolutist Movement of Ⓐlways-and-Only-Black-Clad, Ⓐnarchist Bogey[persons]' are apparently back! Eek!
Our Invisible Revolution, however, published just in time for Halloween, is more than merely another tired reprise of the endless demagoguing Hedges usually levies against his hallmark, hobgoblins of Occupy - "BLACK BLOC ANARCHISTS!" It's also a case study in the hackneyed, historical cherry-picking that so often distinguishes his pretentious prose.
In his latest sermon, Hedges conspicuously manipulates history to exalt rather than impugn anarchists. The choice of Alexander Berkman for this first foray into anarchist hagiography, however, may ultimately serve only to exacerbate Hedges' assuredly near-enfeebling dissonance. Berkman, after all, is probably best known to most as a failed assassin.
A quick bit of history for our old pal, Chris Hegemony:
In 1892, Berkman and Emma Goldman - actualizing the 'propaganda of the deed' strategy popularized by notorious firebrand Johann Most - traveled together to Homestead, PA. They went to avenge the 9 workers who had been martyred by strikebreaking Pinkertons on orders from Henry Clay Frick. Tragically, Berkman was unable to consummate the assassination plot and so the glorious revolution his strategy suggested a murder might ignite… regrettably never did.
Of course, Hedges doesn't say a word about Frick in his anarchist-icon-appropriation yarn. He just says "strategy" is important to him. And that Berkman had a strategy. Isn't that just like our slippery "Colonizer," though?
[Thought Experiment: In a New Global Hedgemony, Chris Hedges - Imperial Eeyore, whines about absolute nonviolence then sighs, "I believe in mustaches. And so did many fascists, including Hitler." Does this, then, mean that the Imperial Eeyore likes Hitler? Or even Hitler's mustache? Does this mean anything at fucking all?]
Just as other self-styled "intellectuals" obscure the militancy in Tahrir, the bloodshed between Muslims and Hindus that ushered the Brits from Gandhi's India or the crucial counterbalance black militancy gave to every liberals' pacifist King - Hedges dignifies Berkman and Goldman's strategy without revealing the details of their half-baked murder-plot topped with a heaping of their own, wild hope!
Could it be that if inconvenient facts can't be made to fit into his narrative, Hedges just erases or ignores them? Or maybe he'd rather see assassinations than a broken window? Any other reason (aside from 'recuperation' or 'shoddy research') that I'm missing that'd compel a nonviolence-dogmatist like Hedges to pen a paean to a militant revolutionist?
We have to ask: bro, do you even Alexander Berkman?
With the revolutionary, Russian émigré invoked reverently in his lede and lionized repeatedly throughout, Hedges' latest Truthdig post appears to be an olive branch to all the hardworking, anarchist organizers he pilloried ("stupid"), dehumanized ("cancer," "beast"), misgendered ("hypermasculine"), racially-erased ("most are white"), infantilized ("adolescentization"), victim-blamed ("justify draconian forms of control"), outsidered ("many are not from the city") and began shovelling under the bus ("criminal") in February, 2012. Yet the chimera Hedges created in his "Cancer of Occupy" libel - the so-called "Black Block anarchists" of his own, inchoate inquiry and analysis - remain his favorite, talkshow topic today. [edit: a comrade recently reminded us of the oft-overlooked but inherent ableism also manifest in equating disease w/ inclusion/exclusion. Thanks, comrade.]
If an anarchist rapprochement was actually behind this otherwise unreadable bilge, as far as we at OLAASM are concerned - it's far too little, too late - for that smug, snitch-jacketing, ineffectual, fascifist fucking opportunist! There must be a better place for his quasi-religious-zealotry, preferably somewhere far, far away from revolutionaries - where he can "stand with the right wing" and get frothily apoplectic about the sex lives of others?
Should this denunciation seem severe to some of you, or even crass, perhaps you're missing some important context (or maybe you're just a tone-policing fuckstick?) In the frenzy that followed his "Cancer" screed - a wildly speculative hatchet job that employed almost all of the maddeningly-familiar arguments of the ruling class itself - Hedges couldn't resist the coup de grâce. His next post baselessly smeared OLAASM, suggesting we "infiltrate(d) the movement to foster internal divisions and rivalries." In the end, the debilitating paranoia Hedges normalized in his "Cancer" piece was just as responsible as any other single factor for the downfall of "Occupy." And worse that all of this, of course - Hedges didn't even have the common courtesy to link back to our blog itself when he did!
For shame!
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Remarks by our comrade, Craig, at the 2013 Ecosocialism Conference in Culver City, CA on September 21, 2013:
"To start: I'm bemused by my own inclusion on this panel. I don't see myself as having any special access to information that isn't available to all of us here today.
I don't have a lot of personal experience in electoral politics. As you may have seen in my brief bio, the last time I voted was during the first season of American Idol and even then, I was phoning it in…
[pause for riotous laughter]
Being a non-voter isn't much of a distinction, of course - only 12% of registered voters here in Los Angeles voted for our new mayor - Eric Garcetti.
I'd like you to join me in thinking about that for a moment:
We live in a city where 88% of those REGISTERED TO VOTE didn't vote for the city's leader. In fact, the overwhelming majority - including the undocumented, people with felony convictions and others denied participation - aren't even included in that figure.
Reform-minded people believe this is an indication that we need better voter recruitment. But as I sit on this panel with three passionate advocates for social and ecological justice who have clearly devoted considerable time to that very project, I don't see the tangible fruits of their labor. In fact, the level of environmental degradation during their lifetimes has worsened.
In fact, despite their tremendous efforts, for the first time since the Pliocine (2.6-5 million years ago), CO2 levels have now reached 400 ppm. I'm pretty sure this might be significant.
So what am I doing here? Why am I on this panel and what can I contribute to the dialogue we're having today?
My original plan today was to demonstrate precisely how futile I think the electoral process is.
So, when I first accepted this token, anarchist position up here, I began scheming with my comrades about how to use this conference - and my privileged position on this very panel - to draw an elaborate analogy to the electoral process itself. The point would be to emphasize how the urgency of the issues today prove electoral politics are insufficient.
You see - right now - I am functioning as a representative - much the same way representative government allegedly functions in the United States today.
So as your representative on this panel - I now clearly wield a certain amount of power.
I can say whatever I want right now.
See? I just screamed "elephants," apropos of nothing. That's the kind of power I'm talking about. I'm controlling the dialogue.
And now I could talk about elephants for the rest of my time if I want in much the same way our elected representatives use feints and sleight-of-hand to distract us with topics like "debt ceilings" or "chemical weapons in Syria" and whatnot.
And let's be honest: if this were a government post and not just a panel at a conference in Culver City, much like our elected representatives, the things I say and do would far more likely reflect the interests of the people the 12% who elected me and those who fill my coffers and ensure my re-election than those of the fine people we have assembled here today.
That being the case, in the performance I planned with my comrades to present to you today , I was just going to sit here in complete silence for my allotted fifteen minutes.
Yes - I was thinking of going full Andy Kaufman.
And I'd just sit here. I wouldn't say anything to you. At all. We'd just wallow in an uncomfortable silence together. That was my plan, anyway.
I guess now I should confess something: this is my first panel. In fact, at this rate, it seems like it very well be my last. Knowing that - I have a lot of courage to shake up things up.
I also have no understanding of how this kind of thing works. One of my comrades - who actually has participated in this panel-type of thing before - was pessimistic about my ability to hold this space for a full fifteen minutes without speaking. She relayed her concerns to me:
"The emcee or moderator will interject pretty quickly if you sit silently and you'll just end up forfeiting your time," she warned me.
I still wasn't discouraged. I figured I could then use that as part of the act - to say, "look, the moderator is the person with the real power. That's the person with the money! Just like our politicians!" Or to echo the oversimplification of "occupy," that 1 person represents the so-called 1% actually running things.
I could incorporate that into my presentation to great effect, I thought.
"Well, what if people in the audience leave?" She then asked.
"That'd be great, too," I laughed. "I could shout out that leaving a panel, much like divesting from a sham election that gives power to wholly-owned, silver-spoon-fed neoliberal shill like Garcetti - that finding a better way to spend our time - is exactly what we SHOULD be doing!"
My comrade relented. It seemed I wasn't going to be dissuaded by her reasonable points. So she instead joined in helping me plan this subversion.
As most of my comrades are sex workers and other academics, the rest seemed enthusiastic about my inclination to shake it up.
I thought such a performance here would aptly demonstrate just how wasteful electoral politics - especially in this time of crisis and environmental catastrophe - has proven itself over the years.
Sure, maybe some of you would think I was a clown - but some of you might agree we have to DO something besides pull a lever and wait for power to concede to our pipsqueak-sized, electoral 'demand' of incremental, ecological reform. Because even when we do win in that venue, we are rewarded with such pyrrhic victories as the Kyoto Protocol, which was never even ratified by the largest polluter on the planet - the United States. Domestically, we get the EPA, an agency that has been systematically defanged since its very inception in 1970.
Some of us call ourselves "revolutionaries," my question is - what is revolutionary about waiting forty more years and engaging in an electoral war of attrition just to maintain the modest safeguards we achieved in 1970? The motto of this very conference is "System change, not climate change," right?
I hold in my hands a book very few of you may recognize. I myself stumbled upon it in the vault above the Last Bookstore in downtown Los Angeles.
The book is called "Beyond Repair: The Ecology of Capitalism" by a Marxist-Leninist named Barry Weisberg.
It was published in 1971.
I'd like to read a few passages from Weisberg:
"The present environmental destruction is increasingly the product of a structure of economic and political power that consolidates and sustains itself through the systematic destruction of the human species and the physical world."
"We completely fail to grasp the magnitude of death perpetrated by the American colossus."
"As always, America has made out of a social crisis yet another commodity."
"The restoration of natural balance depends today upon the destruction of that social order and the birth of a new poetry of human relations."
Remember: these sage words were written in 1971. That's eight years BC, or "before Craig" as I like to call it. And yet they seem just as applicable in 2013 as they should have been then.
Now let me be clear: I'm not against voting. If you want to vote, I'm certainly not going to stop you.
For me, however, electoral politics are merely an arrow in the environmentalist's quiver. But I hope I've made it clear that I personally consider that arrow to be one of the least effective, low-impact weapons available in our arsenal. And while the empire reinforces its armored tanks and extends its array of fortified pipelines that no arrow yet has pierced, we're still talking about how to sharpen those arrows.
If my good friends here want to vote, I'm not going to try to stop them. I'm not going to tell them or any of you how to spend your time. I can only tell you how I'm going to spend my time. And it isn't in a voting booth, or going door-to-door on a GOTV campaign, or trying to find the representative who finally won't succumb to the Siren-song of finance capital.
Going back for a moment to the 12% who voted for Mayor Garcetti, I want to remind you all that only 3% of the colonial population here fought in the so-called Revolutionary War. Only 10% actively supported the uprising against the British Empire.
So the question I wish to pose is this: would you rather spend your limited time on this limited planet while it hurtles toward mass displacements and widespread famine trying to get to maybe 13% of registered, Los Angeles voters to elect a representative who might instead talk only about elephants or would you rather spend that time trying to convince a mere 3% of the population that there is no other choice but to smash capitalism altogether?
To reappropriate the language of the capitalists, in a cost-benefit analysis, for me, the answer seems obvious.
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A little light reading…
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This system has got to die
So you stood and Occupied
Fingers clinched
Shirts in tow, describing the violence,
Supporting the overthrow
Our arms were linked
By struggle and descent
You denounced the bullshit about non-violence
While others chanted to peacefully resist
You saw the police, masked, and did not just sit
You did not just sit
When they told you no
You were down to break shit and keep it on the down low
But you kept it too low
Much too low
Cuz they took you out quietly and slow
Gave you the gun to extinguish your glow
The way of Billie Holiday
With a voice to shout for masses
Slowly overwhelming, dripping brown molasses
The strange fruit harvested for working classes
Masking the sorrows too big see
With a genuine smile
And pointy goatee
Like the GIs in the 60s tossing grenades at officers
Cuz they knew the war was to fatten the aristocrats coffers
Those privates would shoot down their own officers
Heroin subdued their justified anger
Encouraged the forget to rebel for sons and daughters
You know the CIA didn't just do it with crack
Jazz and heroin, smacked the fight out of attack
They did it with Charlie Parker, Bradley and they tried with Ray C
kept the tracks bloody
bc the music industry said it improved their
natural ability
… to make them money
from worries and misery
Saturated in oppression
they gave you drugs readily
the system knows you saw with clarity
their prosperity off our poverty
but when you sat in that room, solitary
it shut out that exploitative reality
concealed the pain from loved ones and family
Silence and stigma quiet weapons of treachery
Alex, they put you in a system so HUGE in the fight back
They used demoralization and un-employment another monkey on the backs
Of the working class
These Tactics
To eliminate the righteous drastic
Epithets to call the realistic- fanatic
1400 cops to destroy the fantastic
telling us equality belongs in straight jackets
City liasons keeping the movement plastic
And even though you saw through all that whack shit
The weight of oppression couldn't keep you from
State sponsored
old habits
But we see you more than what took you down
We continue to resist amidst tears and frowns
Laughing, clowning, calling out the fake shit
It was more than us calling for political independence
From the capitalists
I can't speak for you, Alex
Only what I saw
Glistening eyes, telling truth raw
We won't be ashamed to speak the entire truth
They killed him with silent violence that comes with oppression and drug abuse
And we will tell it all
Those of us who know
The real about your fight
And the way they stole your glow
Rivers will run 'round rocks
Making streams
Breaking dams
Learning about the father who cheerfully fought "the man"
And maybe he will stand with us someday
With a fist in the air
Ready to fight and play
Because your story is not over Alex
It's only just begun
You were one of the voices who reminded me
It's not over until we've won.
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The sudden volte-face of famed Liberal destroyer Chris Hedges in his recent demonization of the Black Bloc, sinisterly entitled 'The Cancer of Occupy', is a wonderful introduction for North American activists to the field of Postcolonial Theory. Edward Said's seminal text 'Orientalism' examines how Western study of 'The Orient' contributes to the functioning of colonial power. Representations of 'The Orient' in Western texts purporting to offer knowledge and insight into 'other' countries, actually perpetuate the dichotomy between the West and 'Others' - in so doing, reaffirming the colonial relationship, even long after postcolonialism has apparently been established following the decolonizing process. The role of former colonizer is adopted in the discourse by the white, educated Chris Hedges, who writes glowingly of Greece's response to their economic crisis in an article from May 2010:
Call a general strike. Riot. Shut down the city centers. Toss the bastards out. Do not be afraid of the language of class warfare—the rich versus the poor, the oligarchs versus the citizens, the capitalists versus the proletariat. The Greeks, unlike most of us, get it.
The Greeks, here, take the liminal role of "other". In Hedges' terms, they mimic his intellectual, activist ideals, without ever becoming equal to him. They are the student: he the master, echoing Thomas Babington Macaulay's 'Minutes on Indian Education' printed in 1835, which set out an agenda to train 'natives' who were 'Indian in blood and colour' to become 'English in taste, in opinions, in morals, in intellect'. These mimics would constitute a class who could protect British interests and help them in exerting rule over the empire. They would emulate, but never initiate or fully embody the ruling class values, in so doing ensuring their subjection and reliance on the colonizer. Hedges exhorts his ideal Occupiers to do the same, to denounce Diversity of Tactics, and to hurl their anarchist and Black Bloc comrades beneath the bus, by handing them over to the police. Hedges quotes indignant former eco-terrorist Derrick Jensen struggling with the radical aversion to resorting to the representatives of militaristic rule, to deal with internal problems: "When I called the police after I received death threats, I became to Black Bloc anarchists 'a pig lover.'"
This indignity alone, it seems, is enough to fuel Jensen and Hedge's disturbing anti-anarchist rant.
Frantz Fanon writes in 'Black Skin, White Masks', that:
… it is not the colonialist self or the colonized other, but the disturbing difference in between that constitutes the figure of colonial otherness - the white man's artifice inscribed on the black man's body.
Fanon's works examine the psychological affects of colonialism upon people of color in a predominantly white world. His work remains salient, particularly in the context of the Western desire to appropriate, claim and 'orientalize' the revolutionary activities in 'other' countries, in order to inscribe their name upon the successful results. Egypt under Mubharak is characterized as bad and anti-American, anti-democratic, inhumane…. Egypt revolting in order to embrace democracy is appropriated, through Western discourse, as a prodigal student of Western ideals. This can be seen clearly in Hedges' 'white man's artifice' - the approbation he gives to his students, the Greeks. "Riot. Shut down the city centers. Toss the bastards out", Hedges' exhorts Greece gloatingly. Compare this to his contradictory attitude to the "cancerous" anarchists of the Black Bloc, who, it seems, follow similar tactics to those Hedges admires in Greece - though the Black Bloc of Oakland have not yet come near to the violence and chaos of Greece. Despite this, Oakland's Black Bloc has provoked the ire of a Master who finds himself discarded and bypassed - overtaken, unwanted, and left to struggle in their wake. Hedges does not recognize the autonomous discourse the Oakland Black Bloc utilize - or perhaps he feels slighted that they abandoned the "accepted" discourse, and appropriated another, before he, the patriarchal father, gave permission. The Oakland Black Bloc is not subject to Hedges, the colonizer, does not, therefore, have "the white man's artifice inscribed on the black man's body", and so is rejected and penalized by Hedges:
Random acts of violence, looting and vandalism are justified, in the jargon of the movement, as components of "feral" or "spontaneous insurrection." These acts, the movement argues, can never be organized. Organization, in the thinking of the movement, implies hierarchy, which must always be opposed. There can be no restraints on "feral" or "spontaneous" acts of insurrection. Whoever gets hurt gets hurt. Whatever gets destroyed gets destroyed.
There is a word for this—"criminal."
Greece: the underdogs of Europe, the European 'other', are allowed - even encouraged - to riot. Violence, looting and vandalism are approved when it is to cast out the Colonizer's enemy, which could, perhaps, result in the strengthening of a new colonialist discourse, the 'other's' continuing subjection to a new colonizer - that which Hedges represents. Fanon notes that "The effect consciously sought by colonialism was to drive into the natives' heads the idea that if the settlers were to leave, they would at once fall back into barbarism, degradation and bestiality".
We see this at play in Hedge's dark fear-mongering of the consequences of diversity of tactics in Oakland and the "Black Bloc":
…the Occupy movement, through its steadfast refusal to respond to police provocation, resonated across the country. Losing this moral authority, this ability to show through nonviolent protest the corruption and decadence of the corporate state, would be crippling to the movement. It would reduce us to the moral degradation of our oppressors. And that is what our oppressors want.
Yet these are the same tactics - less violent, less widespread - that Hedges applauded in Greece.
Hedges is not alone in reproducing paradoxical colonialist discourse when talking of 'other' countries. Frequently, self-proclaimed 'nonviolent' participants in the Occupy movement talk in adoring terms of those in Tahrir Square and Syria, invoking the misty-eyed myth that their struggles with state oppression and police brutality in America, are somehow comparable to their comrades' battles in the Middle East. Again, Said's 'Orientalism' is worth invoking with the central tenet that knowledge is never innocent. Knowledge is always profoundly connected with the operations of power. Holding up Gandhi and Dr Martin Luther King as fuzzy and politically correct (because brown) proponents of nonviolence, Western nonviolent pacifists conveniently slide over the white lauding of both Gandhi and MLK precisely because both these figures failed to threaten the hegemony of the ruling classes by participating in the colonialist discourse in the language of the colonizer. Both Gandhi and MLK were, in a sense, "different" in blood and color, but "western" in taste, in opinions, in morals, in intellect, and in perpetuating the moral and ethical superiority of the nonviolence both individuals had appropriated from the western discourse itself. Gandhi's notion of nonviolence was forged as a hybrid between Emerson, Thoreau, Tolstoy and 'Ram Rajya'. King's was formed predominantly by Gandhi's influence, and a trip to postcolonial India in 1957.
The translation which occurs in Western colonial discourse mythologizes these Middle-Eastern struggles as somehow equal to North American struggles, and yet different to them. Such myths either promote the idea that the Egyptian revolution has been 'nonviolent' and 'non-violent', or that the violence on the side of the oppressed in, for example, Tahrir Square, is accepted and acceptable, without acknowledging or explaining the contradiction that it is never acceptable in North America. This promotes and sustains the idea that those in Western countries are, again, the same but different. They are different because they are better. North Americans and Europeans cannot expect revolutionaries in foreign lands to adhere to the same moral and ethical superiority as themselves, the true practitioners of nonviolence and pacifism. The Egyptian revolutionaries protesting in Tahrir Square get a free pass to throw stones because they are 'less than' North American protestors, and it sustains North American superiority to characterize our struggle in the West as a struggle which takes place on a higher moral and ethical plain. Despite the fact police brutality is a common and everyday occurrence for many Americans, particularly those living in poverty and homelessness, middle-class educated Occupiers such as Hedges decry the notion of violence as daily routine, because it occurs mainly to uneducated, socially, economically and racially 'inferior' sections of the American population. Revolutions on American soil must therefore adhere to a puritanical notion of nonviolence that brings the terminology under the Hegemonic control of those privileged few such as Hedges, who manipulate the discourse to give themselves the advantage, and discredit those who are 'other':
This is exactly what pacifists have done in phrasing the disagreement as violence vs. nonviolence. Critics of nonviolence typically use this dichotomy, with which most of us fundamentally disagree, and push to expand the boundaries of nonviolence so that tactics we support, such as property destruction, may be supported within a nonviolent framework, indicating how disempowered and delegitimized we are. - Peter Gelderloos
This emphasis on creating clear, defined dichotomies in order to "delegitimize" thinkers is another tool favored by the colonizer to oppress. The conflation between violence and diversity of tactics is thus another method of controlling and subjugating difference through language. The colonizer creates "the other" in order to define themselves by the perceived deficiency. Hedges' draws the Black Bloc as the "other", using colonizing language to create a fantastical, faceless bogeyman against which he can define himself and the "good" members of the Occupy movement, not these fakers, these hooligans, these "Black" bloc anarchists. The binary opposition of black/white bad/good is never explicitly stated, but played upon through Hedge's powerful, derogatory language. Language is power. In deliberately misappropriating the tactical term 'black bloc' as an adjective, and in some cases even a noun, Hedges, perhaps intentionally, creates a mythical, frightening, all-powerful and wholly evil enemy… which does not actually exist:
The Black Bloc movement bears the rigidity and dogmatism of all absolutism sects. Its adherents alone possess the truth. They alone understand. They alone arrogate the right, because they are enlightened and we are not, to dismiss and ignore competing points of view as infantile and irrelevant. They hear only their own voices. They heed only their own thoughts. They believe only their own clichés. And this makes them not only deeply intolerant but stupid.
The struggle for the power to name oneself is enacted within words - to remove that power of naming is a specifically colonial, patriarchal act. No matter to Hedges that the diversity of tactics advocated by the anarchists he quotes and praises in the article on Greece, pushes not towards the replacement of hegemonic nonviolence with an "absolutist sect", but rather towards a coalition of thought and action which represents the broadest spectrum of thinking and action by which to challenge the structures of oppression. To Hedges, preaching the exclusion of these faceless 'black bloc' individuals (which he later clarifies, somewhat disparagingly, given their impressive build up, as "a handful of hooligans") there is no apparent contradiction. All who approve of violence in Egypt / Greece / Syria by the revolting masses, cannot ever hope to introduce it into their actions in North America. To do so is tantamount to a revolution - against the white, educated face of Hedges and his reformist sect. In a patriarchal twist of breathtaking hypocrisy, Hedges justifies his bigotry by claiming to be speaking "for" segments of the Oakland activist population who apparently cannot speak for themselves, presumably, in Hedges' eyes, because of their race:
These anarchists represent no one but themselves. Those in Oakland, although most are white and many are not from the city, arrogantly dismiss Oakland's African-American leaders, who, along with other local community organizers, should be determining the forms of resistance.
The contradictions of colonialism lie in its attempt to "civilize" its "other" - in this case, the Black Bloc anarchists - and simultaneously to fix them into perpetual otherness. We see this clearly in the apparent acceptable face of Diversity of Tactics in Syria, Greece and Egypt - but it's abhorrence in North America and Europe.
In the process of decolonization, intellectuals and activists in the immediate political fall out of the deconstruction of empire, must still fight with its continuing legacy. In order to succeed in successfully destroying the dominant definitions of race, class, language and culture, they must offer an alternative to the old colonialist discourse, a new form which establishes itself as a formidable, powerful and distinct identity. This is what Oakland's Black Bloc, the anarchists and the radicals of the Occupy movement are doing. The fact that they face resistance from the colonizer, represented by the white, educated face of Hedges, is only evidence that they are succeeding in challenging the old hegemonic ways of thinking. In the meantime, they leave Chris Hedges and his ilk struggling with the internal contradictions faced by their role as former colonizer, striving vainly to justify and sustain their old methods of control in the face of tumultuous revolution.
Like Sisyphus, we must imagine them happy.
Photo with 20 notes


text:
Written by:
She texts me
anticipation builds
clearing my desk
still time to kill.
Five O'clock finally comes
dashing to my car
heart pounding like 100 drums
traffic stretched out so far.
Red light, yellow and green
driving down road and sky
seeking seductive eyes serene
a stop sign gets in my way.
I stop to buy her flowers
so deserved is she
bringing purpose to empty hours
with spell binding sorcery..
Finally she is in doorway standing
our eyes glance and meet
she kisses and hugs me
an atom bomb goes off under my feet.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
The official Denny's Tumblr is so successfully into integrating itself with Tumblr culture that I suspect the folks running it are actually enjoying themselves. Bless 'em.
6:46pm | URL: http://tmblr.co/ZrooywmXj0gx
(Notes: 9)
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- psychetimelapse posted this


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The Bedford Flower and Garden Club will host its next meeting Aug. 3.
The meeting will feature a garden walk at a home of a garden member and a potluck.
For more information, visit www.bedfordflowerandgardenclub.com.
The club meets on the first Wednesday of each month.
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Posts by VoodooForce
33 posts • joined 29 Jun 2009
Australia's coalition launches new broadband policy
Turnbull is Abbott's Bitch
Sort of feel sorry for him after the knifing in the back and then been given the job of attacking a proposal (NBN) that I think he belives in but that does not retract from the Title.
Outsourcing your own job much more common than first thought
Outsourcing their own job... isn't that what all shit kicking middle managment do?
NASA suggests robotic return to the Moon
Space Shuttle was an in-city delivery van
I dont think the Shuttle gave anyone access to "deep space". It was a LEO delivery van.
NBN zealotry in the ultra-high definition age
Re: NBN
Hi Your a clown. The old system was a state created monopoly. How did you miss the 800 pound gorillia in your fantasy "private industry" assestment?? The cost for FTTP is in the cost for NBN so is the time taken to deploy - its not exponentially more its already factored in
Google's self-driving car snags first-ever license in Nevada
The 800 pound Gorilla in the room
In the future in-car wanking is the norm
TV Now was too good, and that was its downfall
Sorry but
These sports are funded in part by the broadcast rights they sell. Optus were not paying for this. How can they in any way justify having this as a value add for their customers? Defending optus on technical grounds is a joke.
Paris because she knows about having content broadcasted without permission or payment
Billionaire astro mining venture long on hype and timescale
Re: This entire concept is such horseshit ...
Horseshit on your horseshit. What you are pointing out is an energy problem only. It's obviously not an impossible obstacle.
I will listen to a group of people with a proven track record of innovation who hire a group of people with a proven track record in the industry first. I imagine they are aware of transfer orbit issues... what do you think? Besides it's not costing me any cash - they are putting up thier own dough.
If this makes a scenario possible as shown in the movie Outland I am all for it!
I want to be a space miner mummy!
Huawei banned from Australia's NBN: reports
Clive Palmer has the early mail
on this. As long as he makes a buck at any ones expense.
He will be linking this decision to the Greens and their puppet masters at rockefeller, making a lot of noise to look good for his Chinese masters
Whinging Brits reflect on epic Oz road trip
it has to be said with the right pronounciation
the closest a Pomie Bastard can come to understanding how to say Pommie Bastard is to imagine Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister) using the phrase as an expletive and/or just before phone booking said individual.
Reg hacks confront really wide Oz load terror
What part of
Down Under, Darwin to Adelaide, Stuart Highway, "Oz" did you miss or was that a reflexive "my countries highway load is bigger than your countries highway load"?
Back on topic: the Bruce Highway is quite a shitty road - as a citizen of the Premier state I was shocked to see what a goat track the banana benders had let it become. It's like the Pacific Highway in the early 80's. Meeting some heavy mining equipment on those can be more annoying as it usually means long delays following something that looks like the arm off an up-scaled mega transformer. No chances to overtake crumbling shoulder on "Highway 1"
Russian rocket flub threatens to empty ISS
the ISS
...such a wasted 70's dream... yawn
Oz cybercrime bill passes on the nod, unchanged
God I hate the current state of Australian politics
this sucks
NASA to work on approved sci-fi books
Jobs for unwanted Shuttle Astronauts
surely they can get jobs as mini van drivers... just without the "Glorified" bit at the start
Russia: 'We'll dump the ISS into the sea after 2020'
but the Space Shuttle as a tender to the ISS was a failed vision that should have been scrapped before it's inception or just after Challenger.
Then the money could have been spent on real research and space ventures rather than a glorified cross city transporter with it's destination a shabby caravan park in the sky.
The de-orbit should at least be spectacular
Aussie carbon tax in actually-makes-sense shocker
dude did you miss the bit
about low income earners, whether they be renters or not, getting tax breaks to cover the rise in electricity costs? I agree in part with what your saying but have a look at the bigger picture.
WA duo rock Apple apps
How along untill
the app is banned and thier interface becomes the new "skin" for the apple one?
NASA's nuclear Mars tank arrives at launch site
The sound is there because
the average Joe's (politicians, funding managers) attention span is way too short to watch 5 minutes of space film without big breasted aliens or light sabres and quick! look over there !1! a flashing animation with a celebrity in it... right .. something... mumbles I think it looks fairly convoluted.
I thought NASA had put up a prize for a rocket that could hover, land then hover and take off again in the last few years? This looks to vastly more complicated than the entrants in that contest. Did they laugh at Carmack and others attempts and throw down this challenge with the bold "watch us do it with a nuclear powered rover on f''ing mars you losers!" statement?
Some of my best plans came after a few beers so cheers to the NASA team.
Australia's NBN too expensive: EIU
Good analysis
the hysteria in the local rags is at fever pitch. I am waiting for Abbot to print out the report and start waving it around in Parliament in a similar fashion to Moses coming down off the mountain with the Ten Commandments. If only Conjob wasn't such a dickhead.
Data centre season down under
yeah but what about the Mad mOnk?
Tony "I see people reading emails on their laptop's at airports using Wifi all the time Therefore: broadband can be delivered to all Australia via wireless" Abbot is still doing everything in his ignorant partisan power to derail the NBN so its not a given - particularly not given how selfish the Australian people are as a mob. If it was up to the mob nothing would be spent on infrastructure other than middle income handouts and fireworks competitions with each others capital city.
New RAF transport plane is 'Euro-w*nking makework project'
Looking back at this sensationalist piece from same author:
I will take this latest article with an ocean of salt.
Ahhh there's my coat - time to leave the soap box hall
Aussie parties trade blows over fast broadband
wow Jerry
How can you be so blind? the only compelling reason is so Murdoch benefits? Amazing thought process there.
I live in the center of the nations capital. ADLS2+ is not an option because the copper cannot support it. ADSL1 will connect unreliably at a max of 300k. Can you tell me when this will be fixed by Telstra?
I know many people living on the Gold Coast who cannot get ADSL - that's the fastest growing region in Australia if you were not aware. When will this be fixed by Telstra? I know people in every captial city who cannot get ADSL anything. When will this be fixed by Telstra?
People want to pay for the service but they cannot get it. Capitalism has failed and will continue to fail in this industry, in this country.
the compelling reason for fiber to the home is to replace the outdated copper network owned by a monopoly that will NEVER be upgraded to be broad band capable. Is it that hard to get the big picture?
The NBN is a more recent effort to provide essential services like the sewers, telephony, roads rail etc
Aussie broadband is slower than a slow thing in a slow town
Ahh the conservatives started it
I believe the conservative party of Australia actually initiated the filter. This whore here: http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/senators/homepages/senators.asp?id=2M6
That's why there appears to be no opposition to it.
At least Gillard is an atheist - so sick to death of religious leaders in this supposedly secular state.
James Bond's autogyro revived by Brit spec-ops pilots
Dunno about that
last year I walked into the crater north of Kagoshima to confirm that Bond's mission had been successful and tasted the water. Heaps of sulphur vents but it wasn't hot. It may have cooled down since then though.
Auto Gyros were also used in Mad Max2 or Road Warrior movie. The guy that built the 2 used in Max2, and I think 3, lived around the block from me. he built them in his garage. I used to cut through his yard as a short cut till his neighbour got a large and very angry dog.
Google Nexus One spends dying days as dev phone
as a "developer' phone the user can do what they want to the phone
Rancid IE6 'more secure' than Chrome and Opera US bank says
thats not so Bad
Last time I looked when functionality didn't work useing the latest public build of Firefox after logging in to a big Australian bank it offered me this advice:
To access Balance Sheet you will need to be using a Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6 browser or above, and a Windows based operating system.
Select proceed if you would like to upgrade your browser.
Oracle kills AMD Opteron on Sun iron
If Oracle bends over does the Sun still shine?
Samsung Omnia Pro
Mines got 6.5
I bought it from Clove and shipped to Oz mid december last year. Had 6.5 pre loaded. I have turned off the Samsung UI. I liked it but it did lag. Now using SPB. Great phone, keyboard is awesome. I have been using so called Smart phones since 2003 and this is the best so far.
The penguin because I wished Android was a little more mature.
Facebook busts ground on first custom data center
$$ title is suckage
Does Facebook make any money to pay for this?
Star Trek to boldly go (again)
Borg only if 7of9 returns
If she's still got it include her if not find someone else (if possible) with the same packaging.
No plot other than 7of 9 controlling a Tron style virtual reality where Shats, playing the original Kirk, is put through unwinnable life or death scenarios but unfortunately for him, luckily for the audience, he is brutally killed often.
How did 7of9 get back to this alternate reality in control of a VR machine containing the original JTK? Who cares as long as it includes jump suits.
Charlize Theron to travel Mad Max's Fury Road
Son of Max
I was hoping Sam Worthington would be son of Mel with Theron his side bitch
See you on the road scag!
Australia's 'answer to the velociraptor' unveiled
"How do they know that these weren't actually British dinosaurs who emigrated there for better weather and prospects, or criminal dinosaurs transported there against their will for stealing iguanadon eggs?"
There's no evidence of excessive dinosaur whining "its not like that TV show Neighbours is it!!!"
Buzz Aldrin weighs into NASA
Obvious to all with a brain
watch the video, read the brief.
NASA needs an acid enema of Saturn V proportions "now with spinning brush".


text:
Below are the first 10 and last 10 pages of uncorrected machine-read text (when available) of this chapter, followed by the top 30 algorithmically extracted key phrases from the chapter as a whole.
Intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text on the opening pages of each chapter. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.
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OCR for page 95
APPENDIX C Testing Results Three speed reduction treatments were tested at 19 intersection approaches to determine the effectiveness of each treatment at reducing speeds on high-speed intersection approaches. The treatments included transverse pavement markings, rumble strips, and dynamic warning signs. Speed data were collected at four locations along each intersection approach before and after treatment installation. The speeds measured at these four locations established a speed profile that could be used to estimate the speed of a vehicle at any point on the intersection approach. Sensors were placed at the same locations before and after a treatment was installed, so that direct comparisons could be made between vehicle speeds on each intersection approach. The following three types of analyses were conducted: � Analysis by location to determine the speed reduction observed at each data collection loca- tion (i.e., at each of the four locations along an intersection approach), � Analysis by intersection approach to determine the overall speed reduction observed along an intersection approach, and � Analysis by treatment type to quantify the effect of each treatment across all intersection approaches at which it was installed. The results of each analysis are summarized below. C.1 Analysis by Location An analysis by location was conducted to determine the speed reduction observed at each data collection location (Locations A, B, C, and D) on an intersection approach as a result of the treat- ment installed on that approach. Before-and-after speed comparisons were made for 51 individual locations. Key findings from this analysis include the following: � At approximately 75% of the locations, reductions in speed of up to 3.2 mph were observed (with one anomaly speed reduction of 8.7 mph). � At approximately 25% of the locations, increases in speed of up to 1.8 mph were observed. � Of the 51 before-and-after speed comparisons, 34 were statistically significant. C.2 Analysis by Intersection Approach An analysis by intersection approach was conducted to determine the overall speed reduction observed along an intersection approach as a result of the treatment installed on that approach. Fourteen intersection approaches (eight with transverse pavement markings, three with rumble 95
OCR for page 95
96 Guidelines for Selection of Speed Reduction Treatments at High-Speed Intersections strips, and three with dynamic warning signs) were included in this analysis. Key findings include the following: � At 11 of the 14 intersection approaches, the estimated speed difference from before to after treatment installation was negative (i.e., speeds decreased after treatment installation). The estimated speed reductions were statistically significant at the 5% significance level. � At 3 of the 14 intersection approaches, the estimated mean speed difference was positive (i.e., speeds increased); however, only one of these speed differences was statistically significant. � All three intersection approaches on which dynamic warning signs were installed experienced a statistically significant mean speed reduction. � Speed reductions appeared to be greatest where dynamic warning signs were installed. � Changes in 85th percentile speeds were comparable in magnitude to changes in mean speeds at all 14 intersection approaches. C.3 Analysis by Treatment Type An analysis by treatment type was conducted to quantify the effect of a specific speed reduc- tion treatment across all intersection approaches at which it was installed. Nineteen intersection approaches (10 with transverse pavement markings, 5 with rumble strips, and 4 with dynamic warning signs) were included in this analysis. Key findings include the following: � Dynamic warning signs were the only treatment to have a statistically significant overall effect at the 5% significance level in reducing mean speeds from before to after installation, with a mean speed reduction of 1.7 mph. � Transverse pavement markings had a statistically significant overall effect at the 10% signifi- cance level in reducing mean speeds from before to after installation, with a mean speed reduc- tion of 0.6 mph. � Rumble strips did not have a statistically significant overall effect in reducing mean speeds from before to after installation at the 10% significance level. � All three treatment types were effective in reducing mean speeds at Location C (intersection perception/response speed location) with mean speed reduction of 0.9 mph for transverse pavement markings; 1.3 mph for rumble strips; and 2.3 mph for dynamic warning signs. � Dynamic warning signs were effective in reducing mean speeds at Location B (accident avoid- ance speed location) with a mean speed reduction of 2.8 mph. � Dynamic warning signs resulted in the largest speed reduction when compared to all other treatments. � The changes in 85th percentile speeds were comparable in magnitude to those in mean speeds for all three treatment types. The reduction was significant at the 5% level for transverse pave- ment markings (0.9 mph) and for dynamic warning signs (1.4 mph). The reduction of 0.7 mph due to rumble strips was not significant at the 10% level. It should be noted that a com- parison of 85th percentile speeds is not as statistically rigorous as a comparison of mean speeds. C.4 Key Findings Key findings from the testing results include the following: � All three treatment types may reduce speeds on high-speed intersection approaches; however, that speed reduction is likely to be minimal (i.e., less than 3 mph). � The three treatment types appear to be most effective at reducing speeds at Location C (intersection perception/response speed location), which is the point where the intersec-
OCR for page 95
Testing Results 97 tion would first become visible to the driver or where the driver might first react to the intersection. � Of the three treatment types, dynamic warning signs may be the most effective at reducing speeds. However, this conclusion is based on only three intersection approaches. � Transverse pavement marking also appears to be potentially effective at reducing speeds. � Based on a limited number of sites, rumble strips do not appear to be as effective at reducing speeds as dynamic warning signs or transverse pavement markings.


text:
Pickled vegetables are a tasty addition to appetizer platters and main dish salads. Prepare a large batch when asparagus is in season and enjoy it all year long.
Southern Living JULY 2004
Cook first 6 ingredients in a medium saucepan over medium-high heat about 4 to 6 minutes or until sugar is dissolved. Remove saucepan from stove, and cool mixture completely.
Snap off tough ends of asparagus.
Pack 1 bunch asparagus, 2 dill sprigs, and 1 garlic clove into 1 (1-quart) canning jar; repeat process with 2 remaining jars, asparagus, dill sprigs, and garlic cloves.
Pour vinegar mixture evenly into jars; seal jars. Chill at least 8 hours; store in refrigerator up to 1 week.
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The awesome & incredible staff of LA's Top Gift Shop, Handmade Galleries LA. Keeping you up-to-date on the in-store happenings, hot products and new artists.


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Hoax Museum Blog Posts From
June 2004
Terror Email Hoax
Posted by The Curator on Thu Jun 10, 2004
A lot of people in New York have been getting an email warning them not to ride the subways this Friday because terrorists may be planning a big attack. It's your typical I-heard-it-from-a-friend-of-a-friend nonsense, laced with a liberal helping of numerology (Friday being 6/11, WTC attack 9/11, Madrid bombing 3/11), plus bogus information (the city hasn't ordered a couple thousand extra body bags). You can read the full email over at Gawker. The New York City Police insist that they have no knowledge of an impending attack.
|Categories: Email Hoaxes, Hate Crimes/Terror
|Comments (0)
Really Unfortunate Last Names
Posted by The Curator on Thu Jun 10, 2004
A couple of weeks ago I posted an entry about a Brazilian professor of Geology who has a rather unfortunate last name. That inspired quite a few people to chime in with other unfortunate last names they've encountered. But I think I've found a contest winner (not that there is any contest). Meet Miss Chew Shit Fun, a professor of Natural Sciences at the National Institute of Education in Singapore. As far as I can tell, that really is her name. (via The Peking Duck)
|Categories: Identity/Imposters
|Comments (7)
Rogue Art at the Met
Posted by The Curator on Wed Jun 09, 2004
The Met has been displaying the work of a major new artist. Hanging on the wall of its modern art gallery has been a cartoon-style painting of President Bush against a background of shredded dollar bills. A label next to the painting describes it as made out of "acrylic, legal tender and the artist's semen." Charming. Of course, the Met didn't realize it was displaying this work (someone surreptitiously stuck it up on the wall with double-sided tape), but it took them a few days to notice that the rogue painting was hanging there. Three other museums were also unwilling hosts of work by this unknown artist. What I find amusing is the idea of museum visitors standing…
A Cat Named Killer
Posted by The Curator on Wed Jun 09, 2004
Digging through my harddrive, I came across this news item I saved at some time in the past and then forgot about. So here it is: A classified ad was placed in a New Zealand newspaper in July 2001. It read, "Where is Killer? We are missing our fat, furry, friendly cat. Killer is a marmalade-coloured tabby cat with a heart of gold and a hearty appetite. He's probably gone to your house to eat your food! If you've seen Killer please let us know. He has a missing right eye, a ripped ear, a limp, a scar down his spine. Please call Jim or June, or John or Joe." …
Ass-Kicking Sheriff
Posted by The Curator on Wed Jun 09, 2004
Kristen sent in this picture of a Kern County police car bearing a decal with the motto, "We'll Kick Your Ass... And take your doughnuts too." The picture is doing the email rounds (it's been doing them for about a year) accompanied by a caption that explains: Kern County California police drove this car for 1 week before an officer noticed what the graphics company employee did on the passenger side of the car. The employee did this on his last day working for the graphics company before he retired. The picture is actually real (i.e. it's not photoshopped), but the caption explaining…
|Categories: Law/Police/Crime, Photos/Videos
|Comments (4)
Airplane in Troy
Posted by The Curator on Wed Jun 09, 2004
From the Hoax Forum: Gutza has submitted this suspicious goof from the movie Troy, which shows an airplane flying behind Brad Pitt (Achilles) as he stands in front of the Temple of Apollo. I saw this movie just a week ago, and I don't remember seeing a plane in that scene. You'd think it would have been pretty obvious. More significantly, the movie sleuths over at moviemistakes.com don't seem to have noted this either, even though I'm sure they'd be falling all over themselves to point it out if it actually was there. The picture, of course, could be a…
|Categories: Entertainment, Photos/Videos
|Comments (4)
Senior Prank Time
Posted by The Curator on Wed Jun 09, 2004
It's senior prank time. Students at North Penn High School observed the tradition by sticking 35,000 plastic forks into the school lawn. Over at Niles North High School, they put their school up for sale on eBay, though most of the bids seemed to come from teachers in on the joke. I searched for the auction itself, but unfortunately it looks like eBay has removed it from the site.
Fluids for Christ
Posted by The Curator on Tue Jun 08, 2004
Just last night I added a new feature to the site: a discussion forum (I'm calling it the Hoax Forum) where people can post questions or info about new hoaxes they've found. I figure this will be better than having everyone email me stuff like this directly, since the email just sits unanswered in my inbox for ages. And already, on the first day of the forum's existence, someone has posted something good. Rachel Hurley found Fluids for Christ, which claims to be a blood bank for Christian fluid donations. After all, what good Christian would want to receive heathen blood? The site is almost believable (there are Christian Credit Agencies and…
|Categories: Body Manipulation, Religion
|Comments (1)
More Weird Clouds
Posted by The Curator on Tue Jun 08, 2004
Here's a picture of some more weird clouds, sent in by Darren McEwen. I've got absolutely no information about where or when this picture was taken, or if it's real or not. I'm guessing that it's real because it looks to me like some of the scenes we saw during the forest fires here in Southern California last year. But the time stamp on the picture says it's from 2002, so it can't be from the 2003 fires.
|Categories: Photos/Videos
|Comments (10)
Bizarre Clouds
Posted by The Curator on Tue Jun 08, 2004
If I just saw this picture randomly out of context, I'd swear it was fake. After all, I've never in my life seen clouds that look like that. But according to the Astronomy Picture of the Day site (which I trust), the picture is real. They're Mammatus Clouds that appeared over Monclova, Mexico. Apparently such clouds sometimes form in turbulent air near thunderstorms.
|Categories: Photos/Videos, Science
|Comments (12)
Jesus Christ Online Pharmacy
Posted by The Curator on Mon Jun 07, 2004
Karl Marx did say that religion is the opium of the masses. Well, now it's also a direct supplier of Prozac, Wellbutrin, and Zoloft. Yes, you can get all this and more over at JesusChristRx.com. You can even order up a whole bunch of cheap Viagra from the Son of God himself, if that's your thing. I really don't know what to make of the site. It appears to be a genuine online pharmacy. The Presurfer (whose site I found the link at) notes that it's some kind of knock-off of ChicagoRx.biz. If you click on the About Us link, it even describes itself as Chicago…
|Categories: Health/Medicine, Religion
|Comments (2)
Citizens for a Murder-Free America
Posted by The Curator on Mon Jun 07, 2004
This is an old site, but I hadn't seen it before. It pretends to be the homepage of a lobbying group called 'Citizens for a Murder-Free America' who are campaigning for passage of 'Precrime' legislation that will help stop murders before they happen. In reality, the site is part of the publicity campaign for Steven Spielberg's movie Minority Report, which was about a future society where the police use psychics to see into the future and tell them about murders before they happen (based on a Philip K. Dick short story). It was a pretty good movie.
|Categories: Entertainment, Law/Police/Crime, Websites
|Comments (0)
Impact in June
Posted by The Curator on Mon Jun 07, 2004
Head for the hills. The end of the world is near. For the past month conspiracy-theory sites have been all abuzz with the latest scare story: that a comet surrounded by a cloud of dust is going to hit the Earth this month and trigger an end-of-the-human-race scenario. Word of the approaching comet was first leaked on the internet by someone using the screen name 'Aussie Bloke,' who claimed to be an Australian astronomer. You can look at some of his posts over at Bushcountry.org (thanks to Marco Langbroek for sending the link). They make pretty dramatic reading. For instance, here's where he…
|Categories: Conspiracy Theories, Science
|Comments (8)
Fake Cop with Guard Sheep
Posted by The Curator on Mon Jun 07, 2004
I've heard of plenty of cases of people pretending to be cops, but this one takes the cake. It's the line about how "the bogus policeman used to patrol at night in company of a sheep that looks like a dog" that really boggles my mind. I'm trying to visualize a sheep that could pass for a dog, but my imagination just isn't good enough.
|Categories: Law/Police/Crime
|Comments (2)
Woman Performs C-Section, on herself
Posted by The Curator on Mon Jun 07, 2004
This story just seems wrong on so many levels... Four years ago a 40-year old Mexican woman, alone in the middle of Nowhere, is giving birth to a baby. Her husband is getting drunk at the local cantina. She's been in labor twelve hours, and the baby isn't coming out. So she reaches over, grabs a butcher knife, slices open her stomach, reaches inside her uterus and pulls out her baby boy. Miraculously both her and the baby survive. When I read this story, it triggered all kinds of hoax alarm bells in my mind. How could anyone possibly do that, I thought. Wouldn't she have passed out from the pain? What about infection? Isn't it a little…
|Categories: Birth/Babies
|Comments (7)
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Interesting statistic and a friend of mine gave me a link to this info-graphic earlier this week. Do you believe the first point (51% of those reached by a company on Twitter are more likely to do business with you)?
Interesting statistic and a friend of mine gave me a link to this info-graphic earlier this week. Do you believe the first point (51% of those reached by a company on Twitter are more likely to do business with you)?
First, the basic stuff – a report that small businesses are collapsing like wild fire around the Gulf of Mexico due to the Gulf Oil Spill that was largely caused by British Petroleum – while this is not unexpected – it's also grimly illuminating. Then another story we probably already forgot but was big news early this week that the Pentagon 'Discovers' Huge Lithium Deposit in Afghanistan.
When I heard that I immediately wondered how long we really knew this and why we were getting this information just now – draw your own conclusions – mine are that we are building the case for a long and protracted war in Afghanistan, and now the West has a reason for that war – though, to be honest with you – if the world economy continues to be depressed, as it is, we'll have little use for those Lithium under those mountains (unless we're all manic/depressive). And if we are all collectively end up building up the world economy by making Afghanistan into a giant slice of Swiss Cheese as the Taliban and Warlords are taking sniper shots at miners – welcome to the 21st century!
Then again, maybe what we really need is Personal Fuel Cells thaOffer Pocket-Sized Power from Water (Video) while digging all those holes – or powering our mobile devices.
Then again – we still need to carry water or be nearby it – but that's usually not a problem if your in New York or some other place where there is plenty of water but not a power outlet you can get to – Ha!
But if we're going to chop of Afghanistan in some future war – or an expansion of this one – as the data above might suggest – we'll need plenty of charities to clean up the damage – and one platform is evolving that looks quite promising – Nadanu's Fundraising Platform Streamlines E-Giving.
Think I could really get into dropping virtual pennies into the pot!
OutSpoken Media came up with 52 Questions To Ask When Hiring A Social Media Company many I thought were quite good and could in fact be used to create a working doc, offering or case study if they were answered – of course they'd be your answers. And then, last week Trackur Launches White-Labeled Social Media Tracking for just $297! - but this week – we already forgot that and don't care anymore. Fact of the matter – a lot of companies might want to offer Social Media Monitoring but don't want to go with Radian6 or Sysomos – they want something a bit "cheaper" and I guess Andy Beal figured he'd go after those people – and maybe he's right. We'll see. BTW, some news that Jive Software just bought access to the entire Twitter Firehose – ha!
Gary Angel's post on Further Thoughts on Data Warehousing was one of the best he's written and told me why Public Relations might want to invest in a Data Warehouse approach instead of ad-hoc reports. Many of the questions that are asked of me, at the end of the day, can't be answered by Web Analytics or Social Monitoring, or Internal Customer Data – by themselves – and Gary makes a good argument that if you need to answer issues revolving around velocity and interest, and even sentiment – you may want to build you own warehouse – except the amount of money and resources spent will be gigantic – but then – I think this may well be the investment everyone is "resisting" but really needs to make – at least, those who win in the long run – they need to make that investment – I will say no more abut this subject. Read Gary Angel's post and see if you agree with me.
The big news this week was Coremetrics, a leading Web Analytics (and Social Media monitoring?) firm was bought by IBM. I haven't really worked with Coremetrics since I left IBM.com in late 2007 and I don't know what they added since – but …. I know that Coremetrics bought IBM Surfaid 4 or 5 years ago and now IBM has bought Coremetrics to bring it all back home. Also, most analytics platforms have added some Social Monitoring – if only as an after thoguht – but I haven't heard of anything interesting there that Coremetrics is doing – but as far as IBM goes, the acquisition makes a lot of sense since their whole company is now wired up to Coremetrics – might as well own them!
Also, the news that Twitter is allowing us to tag our tweets by location is interesting - though I haven't tried it yet – I can imagine that this information will be collected by Social Media Monitoring platforms soon enough. But for those people who want to justify Social Media as an investment for marketing purposes – look no further than a study that came out this week saying more than 20% of our collective online time is spent on Social Media – and I think that is a conservative number. Also – Sysomos came out with a study that I find extremely interesting and I will attempt to build off of, around conferences – here's the study.
The full report can be found here.
Meanwhile, a post by Paddy Moogan that appeared in JatiN's blog was one of the best for link building I have ever read – and really tells you why you have to dig in and build relationships – and if your not willing to do that – then just go out and buy links – because it's really down to either a combination of relationship building which is time consuming – with some paid links possibly, or just go out and buy links if you can't spend time building relationships – or just forget about SEO – that is what it's really become. I suggest reading the entire post which is very long and very detailed and covers a lot of categories.
Thought a post on How Facebook EdgeRank Affects Your Visibility would be intresting to read in detail as well. Here's what the factors are:
As Jason Kincaid explains in EdgeRank: The Secret Sauce That Makes Facebook's News Feed Tick on Tech Crunch, three factors influence the EdgeRank of your content:
- Relationship, i.e., your relationship with your potential audience as perceived by Facebook. The more you interact with Facebook users, the higher the EdgeRank of your posts, and the higher your posts appear on their walls. Facebook rewards you for building personal relationships. Invest time reading, commenting on and sharing other people's content.
- Engagement, the extent to which people engage with your post. A strong interaction will drive up your Facebook Edge Rank. Of course, someone has to see your post and react to it in the first place. This can lead to a Catch-22 situation. If necessary, send a message to some of your good friends in order to get the ball rolling. By the way, the most engaging posts are status updates that ask questions.
- Time Elapsed – Over time your post loses EdgeRank, which makes room for newer posts to appear. No one post gets to hog the news, so keep your creative juices flowing.
Getting to the "Lizard Brain" – Seth Godin had a good post on it and in fact I wanted to end my post on this. Earlier this week I spoke at the Corporate Social Media Summit and moderated a panel on Social Media Analytics (#csm10). I threw out a statement that decisions are not made on metrics, logic or numbers overall, but inspired by something entirely different – base emotions – for the most part – that's the disconnect I see between the metrics we supply – and the fact no one really makes a decision on metrics.
Reading Paul Krugman today – it's obvious to me why he's been 99% right on everything since I have been reading his column since 2001 – yet over and over – decision are made that are just dumb and stupid – read That '30's feeling – and then consider this -
The way I look at this – Posturing by governments world wide – inspired partly by Germany to be "Strong" and austere by slashing aid to unemployed and aging populations – is essentially an emotional response by those groups to a global slump they don't truly understand or want to deal with.
As i said in my panel at #csm10 this week – no matter how many numbers you throw in front of people – just about every decision made by humans including strategy, campain and budgetary matters is based on emotion. Numbers are mainly for justification or confirmation of a decision already made or about to be.
People generally don't make deciosions on basis of metrics or the actual situation, and in this case – German Officials and US Republicians and Democratic moderates are not interested in the actual facts – metrics will not move them and Truth will not change their mind – because their minds were already made up based on their emotional response to a situation the world has no idea what to do.
By the way – here's a video of me taken right at the end of #CSM10 this week.
Read a post on How Google's Time Dimension Will Disrupt Your SEO showing a new feature of Google Search that allows the searcher (you) to chose any period of time and see the most relevant search results for a query. But the post brings up another point, the results being shown are based on the real time data that Google collected at any point in time, and, erase much of the advantage big brands have/had with SEO due to backlinks that big brands find it easy to collect.
According to the Search Engine Land post:
….. Brands that focus on dynamic site content with fresh social media output stand to gain searchers, at the expense of those brands who stay stagnant, one query at a time. The speed at which the gains and losses occur will be magnified by the availability (or lack) of content within each time filter. Now the "recency" of social media will begin to matter in search.
The post then suggests you can measure your on recency of search results from Google and I tried it with Webmetricsguru.com using Google Analytics and Google Webmaster tools – no luck getting the data. I tried getting the server log files off Dreamhost where my blog is hosted but could not find the data.
- Latest: "&tbs=rltm:1"
- Past 24 hours: "&tbs=qdr:d"
- Past week: "&tbs=qdr:w"
- Past month: "&tbs=qdr:m"
- Past year: "&tbs=qdr:y"
- Custom range: "&tbs=cdr"
So I can't tell you how much of my traffic is real time – but if you have access to raw server logs, you should be able to accomplish that.
Also, noticed a new search tool for Social Media called SearchTrix which I found out about care of KillerStartups.com.
There are two ways in which you can launch a search: "Simple" and "Advanced". The first will let you look up two words (like two verbs) plus two other words (say, two nouns) in three different sites: Facebook, Twitter a Topsy.
On the other hand, an advanced search lets you specify the words that go between the two sets – you can specify 0 to 8 preceding words. Other than that, you are scouring the same three services as before: Facebook, Twitter and Topsy.
The reason I was attracted to this new tool was it's focus on the Search Query – it's really hard to write good search queries that get the information you want from Social Media Monitoring and if this tool can help, it's worth looking at, so I thought.
While SearchTwix didn't exactly do what I hoped, it looks like an interesting approach that might yield different content than you'd find otherwise.
Getting to the other theme of this post – I have been thinking about how one finds the "next big thing" or future trend using Social Media. In this case, finding the next musical or dance start – the next recording artist legend – could social media monitoring cull data from all of YouTube and other video/music sites and find a way to identify new artists who might be commercially successful?
Talking with some talent scouts this weekend – finding new talent (for reality shows) is usually something that happens spontaneously – you have no idea what your looking for but when you see something unusual and the scout realizes this person "has it" – you then push that person to audition for a spot in an upcoming show or event.
Herein lies the problem of finding new talent using Social Media or Search – you can't write a query to capture the "IT" factor when you don't know what having "IT" is or really means. The sheer volume of new content appearing every hour on YouTube alone is beyond any single human's ability keep up with.
Solutions like Crimson Hexagon, Apple iGenius and My6Sense are applications of machine learning that could potentially solve the problem of finding breakout talent but they were not designed with for it. Potentially, a talent scout could train My6Sence to crawl all of YouTube and Twitter and only look for a certain type of talent that is as yet undiscovered. But here we get into another problem – guess what it is?
The problem is musical and video content are too complex for today's programs or processors to handle – and the same problems that exist in detecting copyright violations that also penalize artists who "remix" work laced with irony or satire – which is not easy to distinguish – a human being can easily, but a machine can't (yet).
Of course, by crowdsourcing talent scout via Mechanical Turk or a Facebook game (be the next celebrity judge) using 1000's of people it becomes possible to tackle enormous amounts of traffic and even qualify the quality of your team members – but no one has done it yet successfully.
Well, that's enough for one post.


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The Great Cake Mystery
The Great Cake Mystery
Precious Ramotswe Series, Book 1
THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY - Young Readers Fans around the world adore the bestselling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, the basis of the HBO TV show, and its proprietor Precious Ramotswe,...More
THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY - Young Readers Fans around the world adore the bestselling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, the basis of the HBO TV show, and its proprietor Precious Ramotswe,...More
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Reading Level:3
THE NO. 1 LADIES' DETECTIVE AGENCY - Young Readers
Fans around the world adore the bestselling No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, the basis of the HBO TV show, and its proprietor Precious Ramotswe, Botswana's premier lady detective. In this charming series, Mma Ramotswe navigates her cases and her personal life with wisdom, and good humor--not to mention help from her loyal assistant, Grace Makutsi, and the occasional cup of tea.
Have you ever said to yourself, Wouldn't it be nice to be a detective?
This is the story of an African girl who says just that. Her name is Precious.
When a piece of cake goes missing from her classroom, a traditionally built young boy is tagged as the culprit. Precious, however, is not convinced. She sets out to find the real thief. Along the way she learns that your first guess isn't always right. She also learns how to be a detective.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Chapter One
Have you ever said to yourself, Wouldn't it be nice to be a detective? Most of us will never have the chance to make that dream come true. Detectives, you see, are born that way. Right from the beginning they just know that this is what they want to be. And right from the beginning they show that solving mysteries is something they can do rather well.
This is the story about a girl who becomes a detective. Her name is Precious.
Precious smiled a lot. She often smiled even when she was not thinking about anything in particular. Nice people smile a lot, and Precious Ramotswe was one of the nicest girls in Botswana. Everyone said so.
Botswana was the country she lived in. It was down toward the bottom of Africa. She lived in a wide dry land, which had a lot of amazing things to see.
There was the Kalahari Desert, a great stretch of dry grass and thorn trees that went on and on into the distance, farther than any eye can see. Then there was the great river in the north, which flowed the wrong way. It did not flow into the ocean, as rivers usually do, but back into the heart of Africa. When it reached the sands of the Kalahari, it drained away, just like water disappears down the drain of a bath.
But most interesting, of course, were the wild animals. There were many of these in Botswana: lions, elephants, leopards, monkeys--the list goes on. Precious had not seen all of these animals, but she had heard about most of them. Her father, a kind man whose name was Obed, often spoke about them, and she loved the tales he told.
"Tell me about the time you were nearly eaten by a lion," she would ask. And Obed, who had told her that story perhaps a hundred times before, would tell her again. And it was every bit as exciting each time he told it.
"I was a young man then," he began.
"How young?" asked Precious.
"About eighteen, I think," he said. "I went up north to see my uncle, who lived way out in the country, or the bush as we call it in Africa, very far from everywhere."
"Did anybody else live there?" asked Precious. She was always asking questions, which was a sign that she might become a good detective. Do you like to ask questions? Many people who ask lots of questions become detectives, because that is what detectives do. They ask a lot of questions.
"It was a very small village," Obed said. "It was just a few huts, really, and a fenced place where they kept the cattle. They had this fence, you see, which protected the cattle from the lions at night."
This fence had to be quite strong. A few strands of wire cannot keep lions out. That is hopeless when it comes to lions--they would just knock down such a fence with a single blow of their paw. A proper lion fence has to be made of strong poles, from the trunks of trees.
"So there I was," Obed said. "I had gone to spend a few days with my uncle and his family. They were good to me and I liked my cousins. There were six of them--four boys and two girls. We had many adventures together.
"I slept in one of the huts with three of the boys. We did not have beds in those days--we had sleeping mats made out of reeds, which we laid out on the floor of the hut. They were nice to sleep on. They were much cooler than a bed and blankets in the hot weather, and easier to store too."
Precious was quiet now. This was the part of the story that she liked the best.
"And then," her father said, "and then one night I woke up to a strange sound. It was like the sound a large pig will make when it's sniffing about for food, only a little bit quieter."
"Did you know what it was?" she asked, holding her breath as she waited...
About the Author-
- Alexander McCall Smith is the author of the No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, the Isabel Dalhousie series, the Portuguese Irregular Verbs series, the 44 Scotland Street series, and the Corduroy Mansions series. He was born in what is now known as Zimbabwe and lives in Scotland, where in his spare time he is a bassoonist in the RTO (Really Terrible Orchestra).
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