Four New Tracks from the Kleptones. They have an upcoming CD release I guess. Good for them.

Season two of Battlestar Galactica concludes. Well, that's certainly a lot of plot advancement in one episode. And with some paraphrasing from Mario Savio too:

"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies on the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!"

That's right in there. That's part of what makes this show so enjoyable to me.

The artist in me likes that the new format of the serial drama gives creators the liberty to make big narrative moves. It's like soap operas, but less slapdash, and maybe eventually about something. Of course, there's always the pitfall of just becoming a series of climactic plot reversals -- really just becoming a high-budget soap opera -- to such an extent that the whole point is lost. But there's an opportunity there too, a potential reward for the risk; keeping the drama fresh and exploring themes that are grander in scope. We'll see how this turns out.

As if it weren't enough that she has a tatoo and I don't, my mom out-Geeks me. This weekend she helped host and organize a 24-hour gaming LAN party at the UO student union.

Cramazing.

Breaking away from Market Fundimentalism, embracing the concept of a Moral Economy:

With the construction of a moral economy as the frame, Reich's other stories fall into place. The "rot at the top" has never smelled so putrid; the decay comes from the obscenely wealthy who have abandoned real enterprise for paper manipulations that generate outlandish returns. The "mob at the gates" continues to be those committed to jihad against the West. But the Bush Administration's response to this threat has been completely self-defeating. We need, instead, greater international cooperation to combat terrorism and concerted efforts to build a moral economy at the global level. Creating a world in which children born in the slums of Cairo, Islamabad and Lagos have real opportunities for meaningful employment and political participation is the only way to isolate the jihadists.

The triumphant individuals in this narrative are people of different ethnicities, immigrants and native born, both women and men, gay and straight, rural, suburban and urban, for whom the doors of opportunity would be reopened by the project of building a moral economy. With such an economy, our nation would become a "benevolent community" in which each individual is able to reach his or her full potential.

To be sure, stories are not enough. We also need bold policy ideas that would implement the principles of a moral economy. But the stories have to come first, and those stories must connect us to our nation's richest traditions. The great popular movements of our nation's history--against the slave trade, for the abolition of slavery, for women's suffrage, for trade union rights, for restraints on the power of big business in the Progressive Era, and extending to the civil rights movement, the New Left and the environmental movement--can all be understood as efforts to align our economic and political institutions with our deepest moral commitments. We will be honoring their legacy when we present a vision of a moral economy as an alternative to the failed claims of Market Fundamentalism.

There are plenty of linguistic games to play around with -- like "Free Trade" vs. "Fair Trade" -- but the wind up is that progressives have a chance to rightfully take a position as the champions of real enterprise against corrupt croneys who seek to perpetuate an inequitable status quo.

Politically, this is what we're talking about when we say "It's the economy, stupid." It's not enough that people are having hard times (as they are outside the upper class). There has to be a narrative of why this is happening, and how things can be different.