I am back from Brazil and really too exhausted to blog, talk, eat, write, and think especially since my head feels MUCH larger than it should be (like the little bird in the picture) thanks to the “Debian Virus” we were all infected with in Brazil.

But despite the feeling of large and over stuffed headedness, I had a thumbs up time, which apparently is one of the more common gestures of affirmation in Brazil (or at least Porto Alegre).

I have a lot more to say than I feel like a big-headed Biella and I had a Thumbs Up Time but it will have to wait until my head deflates to write anything of more substance….

I have made it to Porto Alegre for the Debconf4 where I gave a talk on ethics and Debian.

Unlike pretty much every academic conference that I have been to, I enjoyed this. First, I was given time to talk. In academic conferences we are given 20 minutes at the most. What can one possibly say in 20 minutes except that one cannot possibly say anything of worth in 20 minutes especially when the people on the panel and in the room don’ necessarily work in your area of expertise.

I was prety stressed over the talk. As an anthropologist, giving a talk to the people you study is something like your biggest fear in the world. I mean there you are telling folks something about them (and often about things they still know a lot more about). The question always is something along the lines of “Are my ideas total fabrications?” and “Will I be able to pull it off?”

Anway, it all worked well, the Q and A period was fascinating and I got a room full of Debian geeks to laugh. Mission accomplished…. And now time for a real vacation!

So today at the MacLab, I ran into a friend, Bernard. Since I study hackers and Free Software I have become the resident computer expert (though if they only knew…) and thus get asked all these fanciful computer questions. I usually can’t answer and send them off to the help desk but today, I was asked about that UNIX function where you can “find out” when/where a person has last logged onto their email.

I was like “ooooooooohhhhhh, YESSSSSSSSS” finger. Of course it brought back a rush of memories from my undergraduate days when I could more or less pinpoint my b-friend’s location through this one command. A highly crude gps. So anyway, when I got home I prompted to run the command on myself and alas I was so amused by some of the terminology and categories

Login name: egcolema In real life: enid gabriella coleman

Well really in Real REAL life, I am Biella Coleman

and then there is this great section

No unread mail
No Plan.

No, No Plan…. Right, I wish I could live my life that way, No plan

Thanks to Andrew Dilts, we receive word of a fantastic Mid-West Happening Lebowskifest in Kentucky in the middle of June. In the parlance of our times, this seems worth the 6 + hr drive….

It has been one of those bottom up and top down organizational and cleaning weeks. My kitchen seems back to normal and my in-box has been halved from 300+ messages to 169. It feels so contained. Yes Less is More.

We all know that in the wonderful, Labyrinthian, a-Scythian world of UNIX,
Less is actually More. And alas this UNIX truism might hold veritable waters elsewhere; in the munch munch chomp chomp gulp gulp of our foodeating habits .

Though fasting of all kinds has been around since time immemorial, a more calculated conscious technique to Elongate Life though a reduction of calories has cropped up in the last decades. Tested on micey mice (or rats), scientists have been tracking the low Low calorie consumers for a couple of years.

And now that this nation has tipped the scales of fatness into the HOLY CAMOLOESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS Obese-Nation-Range, such a study comes at an opportune time.

To enlarge their study they can perhaps enilst graduate students. I know I cut down on food consumption when the bank is not rolling in the dough… Hmmm, maybe that is when I get all my work done

So he started rocking, ain’t never gonna stop
Gotta keep on rocking, someday gonna make it to the top

And be a juke box hero, got stars in his eyes
He’s a juke box hero
He took one guitar
Juke box hero, stars in his eyes
Juke box hero, stars in his eyes
He’ll come alive tonight

Since I have been on a ‘Jack Black’ blog kick, I might as well continue with it because I have more to say. I am basically in love with him. No, no, this is not a confessional blog-moment to let my partner know through oblique (and embarrassing) means that I am no longer satisfied with his lovin’ because he is just not AS ‘rockin’ as the Black. Indeed, he is not as rockin’ in that rock sort of way. But I am really in love with the idea of Jack Black, of what he represents, as opposed to the flesh and blood of the Black, which actually does not do much for me (sorry mr. black, I know this news will disappoint…).

You see, friends think that I am infatuated with him just because I tend to love dorkorific movies and tv shows. And they are so right. At some level, I love him for the inane mindless fun he provides and I am sure I will never ever be able to adequately convey the joy I receive from sub-standard slapstick movies. But in this case, there is more than beholds the eye. You see, Jack Black is on the outside of the institutional milieu of rock and this is where his power, intrigue, and appeal lies.

He is a fringe figure who is not connected to the glam, to the lifestyle, to the pressures, and privileges of what is social membership in the Halls of Rock and Roll. And he is aware of his outsider status, always sort of trying to get in, but also continuing to rock with total passion, gusto, and bravado, even when he so clearly is running in place; he is gets no where, he gets little prestige, yet he rocks ON. Who knew when Foreigner wrote
Juke Box Hero that THAT HERO would be Jack Black?

This outsider status puts him in a position of a peculiar type pf reflexivity, which leads him to do whatever the hell he wants, so that in fact, he lives true to the spirit of Rock in Roll in a way that those in the inside, can never really fully or at least always do (I mean there are some exceptions like Black Sabbath, the Who and Journey (Journey??!!!!!!!!!! Yes, I am sorry, I like cheese rock)). He is not bound to the II, the Institutional Imperative, whether it is reputation, profit, you know the bull that comes with being part of any discrete social world that defines the permissible and impermissible, the aesthetically pleasing and displeasing, and the morally right and wrong. He does as he pleases, taking the essential form of Rock and Roll, of what it is supposed to represent and do, and belts with freedom as there is NO consequence in doing so. At times you are not sure if he is tauting it or actually loving it but you know he wants to go further than any Rock and Roller has ever gone even though really he never goes makes it ahead.

It is the ambiguity of play and performance, of his desire and taunting, of his creation and degradation, that I find so appealing about the Black. He can do things, that you know, would not necessarily fly if he were part of the establishment. Perhaps I am so obsessing over him and what he represents at the point when I inch a little closer to a professional life as an academic (though I have serious doubts right now if this will actually happen or if I want it to happen for that matter). Being a student, though it is surely still part of the ‘blishment, is still not totally quite there. There is more license to move, to be daring, to slack, to follow your inner paths and interests, you know do what the Black GOOF OFF and just ‘be’ in your learning and exploration and have fun in a way that I am afraid I will have to give up (it seems so to me, I can be totally wrong as I have never been on the other side of the moon).

And yes, I know savvy readers, what I think the Black represents, is just a mass-media construction feeding off the American myth of individual independence and freedom from [X] contraint. I mean I know the DUDE has actually MADE IT! He is

So I got this nessage from TaxSlayer:

Your return was accepted by the IRS

California State Acknowledgement for Return

Your state return has been accepted for electronic filing by California.

Now I am just waiting to hear from IL and I am sure they are planning my tax-demise….

But what a relief for now. Next time, though, I might not pick a tax company just because it sounds and evokes Jack Black and TenaciousD NO Matter HOW much I like them. …

I am now nearly finished the Dispossessed by Ursua Le Guin, which I wrote about a week or so ago. Now I can say I have taken quite a fancy for the book for it combines two of my all time favorite methods of looking at the world, a taoist and anthropological one. I have never come across a novel that so captures a taoist sense of morality, time, and being via an anthropological method of “exposing” norms (and flaws) through the contrast of two vastly different societites, each of whom treat each other as a ghastly moral aberration. Like the Tao, true understanding comes through a cyclical (never ending) contrast, and as anthropological knowledge goes shows, meaning is culturally contingent yet often experienced as viscerally natural. One effective way by which to disturb that often rigid commonsense is through contrast, so that neither the “naturalness” of Yin (this) or Yang (that) dominates, but are balanced in and through their interface, rendering them always partial and contingent, never controlling, whole, and absolute.

And morality, to enact freedom through responsibility, must also let go off rigid adherance to dogma and ideas to give way to a certain type of fluid dynamism and relativity in which the true, the good, the ugly, are not necessarily found as absolute things in laws, but in an openness to engage responsibly with the processes of life, ones actions, and especially other selves, without which our lives would be truly barren.

Reaching a sense of the right is often an act of striking a balance and openly interfacing with other selves but this can only be achieved, if one openly and thoughtfully takes the full momement into account up and above seeking any rigid understanding of the moment in relation to already posited law. It requires not obedience but an thoughtful, ever-shifting participation in the ethical, transforming mere law into something which is harder, but ultimately much more effective and fulfilling, active continous practice.

Wowzzzers. This is just one example of a wider Japanese youth culture phenomena of Cosplay!

Evan (known in some circles as Mr. Bad) and Maj are bringing us Wiki Travel, and aside from being inhrently bad ass kool, it is badder because it is full on Copyleft.

Looks great, and looks like they need all sorts of help! Check it out