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Nine Inch Nails, purveyors of alternative heavy-synth-industrial-electronic-rock, released a track in Apple’s GarageBand format, dubbed “The Hand that Feeds” (Halo 18 for you fanatics). This meant that anybody could remix, mashup or trash the song as they saw fit. The result:

It’s hilarious. After I listened to it again, I realized it’s a decent mashup and kept it in my iTunes library.

ric

Some people don’t have the time to become emotionally scarred and socially ostracized. Not everyone likes to ease into social groups over years. There are those who want to be emo right away. And for those who do, the solution is at hand:

How to be emo

I laughed my ass off when I watched it. It’s hilarious how social groups have come full circle–how an interesting mixture of ostracized nerds and depressed kids have somehow emerged as their own niche, which in our anti-consumer Generation Y has effortlessly become “cool”.

It’s come to the point where emo is (somewhat self-admittedly) mainstream. I feel we’re witnessing the part of the movie where the head of the robot explodes–”Emo is cool because it’s not mainstream. If it’s cool, it’s mainstream and can’t be emo.” When I noticed the existence of something the likes of Hot Topic, which until recently divided its merchandise according to “scene”, I soon waited for the counterrevolutionary forces to rise up and smithe “mainstream emo”.

None have risen so far, and the only analogous movment to emo today is the “Counter-80s Garage Rock” movement, as characterized by bands such as The Bravery, The Killers, The Hives and other bands named á-la-mode-”The Smiths”. It’s interesting to see if emo will survive its own popularity and adopt a low-key “carrying capacity” like the Goth and Punk movements, or if it will indeed, implode and splinter. (Gabi, you want to put your sociology skills to use here?)

I am fascinated by our paradox of wanting to be different while belonging to a group. We want to be different than everyone, but we also want to belong to a group which has just the right size. It’s phenomenal to see how this extends even to business (look into the Timbuk2 bags dilemma over mainstream).

I had thought about this before, in the personal context of what I dubbed “The Indy Factor”, and how that just-so off-the-wall factor drove me absolutely nuts over a girl. One could make a strong case that I had everything going for me to become an “emo” kid. That didn’t happen. In fact, no “scene” group ever really appealed to me. And even though it doesn’t keep me awake at night, I can’t avoid the mental flirt of thinking “what if”.

In the spirit of belonging, I hereby propose the creation of another group, under the working title of “Wireds”. I’ll be working on the manifesto soon. I’m open to suggestions. Preliminary buzzwords include “smart porn”, “creative socialism” and “recovering infoaddict”.

ric

So Dr. Joseph Morone is leaving as Bentley’s president. His tenure will be remembered by the “technolgy revolution” at Bentley, as well as the “education devolution”. Despite his success at increasing our endowment by $100 million (no small feat, I readily admit), Bentley is still plagued by the same blights I’ve previously mentioned.

Apparently he’ll be taking over Albany International, which is a major player in the riveting, fast-paced paper products industry. How excited is Albany that they now have Morone as CEO?

Albany International Corp. – NYSE
Last Trade 4:04 PM ET – May 13, 2005
Price $30.66
Change $0.54

May Bentley live in interesting times.

ric

P.S. Prof. Flynn pleeeeease take the job?

From Boing Boing:

This morning, the DC Circuit of the US Court of Appeals struck down the loathsome Broadcast Flag, ruling that the FCC does not have the jurisdiction to regulate what people do with TV shows after they’ve received them.

My absolute favorite part:

And to the studio execs whom I faced across the table, who shouted at us and excluded us and told us that this was going to happen no matter what: NEENER NEENER NEENER.

I said it before and I’ll say it again–think tanks with a sense of humour are priceless.

ric

Ok, I didn’t coin that term, but it stands nonetheless. From The Guardian:

Brazil yesterday became the first country to take a public stand against the Bush administration’s massive Aids programme which is seen by many as seeking increasingly to press its anti-abortion, pro-abstinence sexual agenda on poorer countries. Campaigners applauded Brazil’s rejection of $40m for its Aids programmes because it refuses to agree to a declaration condemning prostitution.

Ahh, gotta love Brazil: the largest catholic country in the world and we know when to set it aside when we need to.

Oh, and you know who else might not get money because of this? Care and Save the Children.

The BBC also covered this story today

In the best tradition of this site, I’m writing 5 days after the fact.

I ran out of class at 5:20. I had just done a presentation on American Airlines which, in the best tradition, I had pulled out of my ass 15 minutes before.

I ran to the Mini. That Tritec engine did Bentley-Harvard Square in 15 minutes. I almost ran over a woman in a backroad in Cambridge (the rearview mirror blocked her). I parked the car with the friendly Ethiopian of always (you know, the one in front of Fire+Ice), and ran away.

This was my first time at Harvard. I had never as much as crossed onto Harvard property before, let alone go into a lecture hall.

I was told this was at the Austin Hall (instant smirk) in the Law School. When I walked in, I immediately turned right. There was a feeling I was at Cornell, in Risley. The heavy wooden doors, jittery brass doorhandles, the floor which creaked historic as opposed to rotten. There was a small reception with some food in the usual buffet warming thingies as well as refreshments. Next to the table, there was an open door to a lecture hall (no. 2 if I remember correctly). When I peeked in, I took an involuntary mental snapshot: It looked like the classrooms in Lindsay! Complete with Senheiser microphones at each seat! The atmosphere never permitted the feeling of belonging, however.

I asked someone who looked responsible where the bathroom was. I was buying time. I needed a couple of minutes to reconnoiter the locale, try not to look lost and determine the exit points in case someone asked me if I was a student here. When I was given a password to the bathroom, I was puzzled.

Down the stairs and to the left, I saw the Simplex lock on the door to the clearly-marked men’s bathroom. “532″ gave me access to the linoleum tiles and never-clog urinals which reminded me of Jennison Hall. An older Asian gentleman perched onto the urinal next to me, and engaged in the timeless act of conversing over a urinal.

“Password on the bathroom, that’s Harvard for ya”
At this point I couldn’t hold back my urge to let loose of the timeless nudge:
“It’s always the little things which are the most telling.”

To the left and up the stairs (Don’t worry, I washed my hands) I searched for the movie’s venue. Two flights of stairs later, I entered the courtroom, a magnificent room seating about 300, with a tall, curved ceiling held together by two exposed oak trusses. The closest seat I could find were mid-way and to the left, next to three bow-tied figures which surprised me in not talking about anything of substance during the preamble to the movie.

For the next 20 minutes I watched people. I watched students walk in and out. They looked different. They weren’t like Bentley students. Girls weren’t particularly attractive, but not ugly either. There were no Red Sox caps or Abercrombie & Fitch shirts on any guy. There were no international kids wearing Prada and Diesel whom I could picture smoking outside the Lower Cafe. At the same time, there were no 20-year olds in bowties or dress shirts either. Even the air I breathed felt intangibly different. I gasped at not being able to shake that feeling that I was sitting in Graded’s auditorium once again, about to watch assembly.

When Michael Ignatieff gave the call-to-order I dropped back to reality and realized where I really was. While he introduced the movie we were about to watch and read the roll call of thank-yous, I noticed a man in a dark suit with a thick grey moustache and a hardened look. Oddly, I recognized the tie before the face, as the same one he had worn in his Carr Center profile picture. Dallaire was much shorter than I thought he was. When I recognized his face I felt the same thing as when I saw the Dalai-Lama drive by me in Harvard Square–a light-headedness which was the exactly opposite of when one stands up too quickly. I felt lighter.

It surprised me during the screening of the movie how different the atmosphere was. (“The little things…”) People didn’t laugh. People moaned and gasped. When the movie discussed how PTSD made Dallaire end up passed out under a park bench, I imagined people laughing, as they would have at Bentley. They didn’t. When a Belgian senator attacked Dallaire with the clear purpose of grabbing the media’s attention, people moaned. In all honesty I doubt anyone would disagree with the Senator’s point-of-view at Bentley, let alone pick up on the underhandedness.

The post-film discussion was remarkably tepid. The expected questions on Darfur came up, but none too surprising. Then again, I thought, would I have asked better questions? What questions do you ask of the man who waded through hell and (arguably) came back to tell the tale? What do you ask the man who drove a jeep at 60MPH through a minefield without regard for the outcome? What do you ask of the man who saved 20,000 people but is still haunted by the ghosts of those he couldn’t save?

After the post-film discussion was over, I walked down from the audience, passed three feet from Dallaire and left out the front door. I blew past the guy whom, when asked, I had identified as one of my heroes.

I was in shock. I knew Dallaire’s story, and was not at all shocked by it. I was in shock, however, over the students at the lecture. I was in shock over Ignatieff’s arrogant-yet-brainy jokes. I was in shock over casually passing by Mangabeira Unger on my way over and thinking nothing of it.

Driving back, I realized I wasn’t in shock over Harvard–I was in shock over Bentley. I was shocked to realize how empty and devoid of meaningful thought we are, how we could give a shit about Rwanda even if we did learn where to point to it on a map. I was shocked at how bad professors are given tenure, mediocre professors glorified and good professors just don’t give a shit. At the same time, I was shocked at how I wasn’t shocked by Austin’s experience at the MFA.

Above all, I was shocked at how a month after coming back from the most intellectually rewarding experience I’ve ever had, I realized how I could have had that experience every day of the week had I gone anywhere else of substance.

When I came home that night, I picked up a bookmark from the Istanbul Modern Art Museum that was sitting on my desk. After I came back from Turkey I wrote a phrase on the back of that bookmark:

Fortis cadere, cedere non potest.

I have a wall full of books, two years to kill and a mother who will support me in any academic endeavour. I intend to make full use of them.