Category: Digital Culture

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Digital Culture

What????

So who here is surprised that the officer from the UCLA student tasering has been in trouble for excessive force before?

Duren said Monday that he joined the UCLA police force after being fired from the Long Beach Police Department in the late 1980s. He said he was a probationary officer at the time and was let go because of poor report-writing skills and geographical knowledge.

In May 1990, he was accused of using his nightstick to choke someone who was hanging out on a Saturday in front of a UCLA fraternity. Kente S. Scott alleged that Duren confronted him while he was walking on the street outside the Theta Xi fraternity house.

…

In October 2003, Duren shot and wounded a homeless man he encountered in Kerckhoff Hall. Duren chased the man into a bathroom, where they struggled and he fired two shots.

The homeless man, Willie Davis Frazier, was later convicted of assaulting an officer. Duren said Frasier had tried to grab his gun during the struggle. But Frazier’s attorney, John Raphling, said his client was mentally ill and didn’t do anything to provoke the shooting.

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Digital Culture

Security strikes again

I just helped a student at the desk with a problem that is, after analysis, laughable. But the student was frustrated beyond words at it…here’s the situation.

The student bought a Lexar Secure Jumpdrive (not this specific model, but a similar one), and used it to save a bunch of papers off of their desktop to bring in to the library and print. Except that the software that the Secure Jumpdrive uses requires Administrative rights on the computer system to run…which means that none of the computers on campus could read her files.

I walked her through how to save the files to her desktop, put them on her university webspace, and then format the drive to get rid off the offending software. I get the thought behind the security on a thumbdrive…but trying to explain that to a student who only sees that she can’t use the tool she bought is like explaining DRM to someone for the first time. Yes, you bought it. Yes, you should be able to do that. No, you can’t actually do that. Such fun!

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Digital Culture

UCLA Student Tasered in Library

Police tasered a student at UCLA yesterday after he was unable to produce his Student ID card. The video above is raw but powerful, especially the reactions of the other students. Throughout the recording the audio is the most jarring part, with a female in the background screaming in fear while the police repeatedly ask the male student to “stand up” after they tased him. At 6:35 in the video, a student in a white tshirt is asking the police for an explanation while other officers are removing the tasered student from the building, and a police officer tells him to “Move over there.” After the student challenges him to explain why, the cops response is “Move back over there or you’re going to get tased too…”.

Wow.

From The Daily Bruin:

At around 11:30 p.m., CSOs asked a male student using a computer in the back of the room to leave when he was unable to produce a BruinCard during a random check. The student did not exit the building immediately.

The CSOs left, returning minutes later, and police officers arrived to escort the student out. By this time the student had begun to walk toward the door with his backpack when an officer approached him and grabbed his arm, at which point the student told the officer to let him go. A second officer then approached the student as well.

The student began to yell “get off me,” repeating himself several times.

It was at this point that the officers shot the student with a Taser for the first time, causing him to fall to the floor and cry out in pain. The student also told the officers he had a medical condition.

What I’m interested in, though, is…where are the librarians? All of the reaction shots and voices appear to be students…where is the librarian asking WTF the police are doing to their patron? That’s what I’d like to know. Anyone at UCLA have an answer?

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Digital Culture

Pan’s Labyrinth

Wow. I’m not sure how I hadn’t heard of this film until today, but it looks like a Terry Gilliam film, and that’s a huge compliment from me. Guillermo does great stuff as well (Hellboy was great fun) and this looks like it could put him over the top for fantasy fanboys like myself. Add in that it’s set during Franco’s Spain, and this could be a favorite film of 2006. We’ll see in December.

Again: High Def trailer at Apple.

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Digital Culture

Spiderman 3

Oh hell yeah. Sandman, Goblin 2, Space Parasite suit, Venom, Gwen Stacy, AND a rumored cameo from Mysterio. I’m not sure which of the Marvel properties I think is better overall, but Spiderman 3 looks like it will be amazing.

High-def trailers at Apple.

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Digital Culture

Alan Turing

In all the excitement about the Democratic wins of yesterday, there’s been little coverage about my least-favorite happening here in TN: the passage of the Marriage Amendment. Evidently, 80% of the people who voted in the state of Tennessee are…to put it not-so-politely…bigoted idiots.

So in honor of that 80%, I thought I’d play a game called: My Favorite Homosexual! This is a simple game, anyone can play (and I’d like to suggest those with blogs play along) where I talk a bit about my favorite gay or lesbian from history.

My Favorite Homosexual is Alan Turing.

Alan Turing, arguably, was the key figure that led to the Allied victory in WWII. He was instrumental in breaking the German Enigma machine, the code that the German army used to relay messages. This allowed Allied commanders to know their enemies movements, plans, and goals…it doesn’t take Sun Tzu to know how important that is in war. Turing also developed the Bombe, an electro-mechanical device for analyzing Enigma keys…one of the first computers. He is most famous in geek circles for the Turing Test, a rubric for deciding if an Artificial Intelligence is actually intelligent. He is also the name behind the Turing Machine a thought experiment famous for its impact on computer science. By any measure, Turing was a genius, and was one of Britain’s national treasures…one of the brightest minds in the world, using his brilliance to serve his country and (without much hyperbole) save the world.

In the early 1950’s, Turing’s relationship with a younger man came to light, and he was arrested and prosecuted in England for “gross indecency.” He was given a choice between jail and probation that would include hormone treatment…a form of chemical castration. In 1954, after a year of the treatments mandated by the courts, he was found dead, with a half-eaten apple laced with cyanide beside him, an apparent suicide.

He wasn’t yet 42 years old.

What did the world lose when he took his life? The sad truth is, of course, we’ll never know. And we won’t know because short-sighted, bigoted, stupid people had a law that punished someone for a private, consensual, non-harmful act. So I say to the people of Tennessee: Shame on you. Shame on you for continuing the denigration and persecution of members of your society for nothing more than the way they were born. Shame on you for treating members of your society truly as second-class citizens. And shame on you for for not learning the lessons of the Civil Rights movement, the Feminist movement, and the very words that frame the foundation of this nation; that all men are created equal. Future generations will look back at this time and wonder at our ignorance.

I already do.

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Digital Culture

Libraries sorely missing

I realize that my posting habits have been more than a little irregular, and not particularly content filled even when they happen, lately. Much of this is real-life intruding on things, and much of it is that a number of things that I’m terrifically excited about are juuuuuuuust about to come through, and I can’t really talk about them until they do.

But I can’t wait until they do! Excitement from MPOW, as well as other professional coolness.

But alas, I have to wait.

*sigh*

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Digital Culture

Remember, remember

…the 5th of November…

Or, in the case of the US, the 7th of November. Go and vote, please…and if it helps to think of the man who, 400 years ago, used a terroristic act to get the attention of his government, instead of the current man who uses terroristic threats to remove the rights of US citizens, so be it.

It’s time for a change.

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Digital Culture

So remarkably busy

I’m falling so behind on blogging! Right now, I feel guilty writing here, knowing that it’s Nanowrimo and I’m not working on the novel. Add to that I now have 2, count’em, TWO possible publication opportunities that hit me this week. One involves blogs and blogging, and the other is a write-up of some podcasting work that I’m in the preliminary stages in setting up. More on that later as well…I don’t want to talk too much about any of this stuff before contracts are signed and such, but it wouldn’t be far off to say I’ve got many irons in the fire.

So right now, in order to not be terribly overwhelmed, I’m concentrating on nanowrimo. Once there’s a bit more clarity on the other issues, I’ll share as I can. Especially about the podcasting…an exciting opportunity might be around the bend on that front.

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Digital Culture

Clearly, I’m insane

nanowrimo

Because I’ve let a friend talk me into trying National Novel Writing Month. What’s that, you say? In the month of November, a few thousand people will agree to attempt to write an entire novel solely between Nov 1 and Nov 30. For those keeping score, that’s 50,000 words in 30 days.

It’s focused insanity. I clearly don’t have time.

I’m going to try it anyway. Want to join me?