Cute. :)

You might like: http://www.yorku.ca/aweiss/publications/knight.html

Oh, that's funny. Thanks for the link.

Hi Heather,

There is a beautiful place of rest and wonder between "wallowing" and "taking action." I want to applaud you for blogging it (I think people deserve lots of applauding when they admit to being uncertain about life). These macho neoliberal times of ours scream "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and "if at first you don't succeed; try, try again" at us from every direction: media, education, government, culture.

Jack Halberstam did a lovely presentation on "the Queer art of failure" in my town this year. I think Halberstam's got a book coming out on it and was advertising it to us... The premise was that a culture of "failing" at capitalist and heteronormative prescriptions to keep up with the rest of the world had been quite successful, and had created an anti-assimilationist space (for Queer folks in this case, but I think it's widely transferrable) of uncertainty, wonder, rest, pleasure, redefinition of "good" and "normal." And it didn't involve the exhausting requirement to be positive about everything ever. ; )

Self-pity sounds like no fun, but I hope you won't beat yourself up too much either.. And that you'll get the rest and time you need to "take responsibility." :D s

Hi Sarah,

Thanks for that - you're right, I was overlooking the "place" in between of reflection, and that's not a bad place to be. I'll have to look Halberstam up, he sounds interesting...

As for failing and keeping up with the rest of the world, I could rant for quite some time about the capitalist myths that are constantly perpetuated - my least favorite being the highly cherished myth that anyone can succeed at anything in our society, as long as they work hard enough. Which means then, that if they don't succeed, it's their own d**n fault...That probably needs its own blog post...

I think it does. It'd be lovely to read. :)

Yes - join JIS! Join us!

Hey Heather--I AM an MAIS student, and I HAVE heard of JIS and I did write a month or more ago to ask if JIS still was looking for volunteers but never heard back...do you recommend a particular person to send a message to?? (yikes maybe no answer = harsh rejection, I don't know, but maybe not and who knows, maybe I could sweep the hallways or something useful like that?)

Way to cheer-lead the home journal--it's a good thing.

Christine

Hi Christine - I'd suggest directly contacting Heather von Stackelberg, who posted this announcement: heathervs@anethum-corp.com

I like this distinction you make between privacy and secrecy. From one angle it seems like privacy is the legitimate and legal counterpart of secrecy, which connotes more taboo and transgression.

As far as "security" goes, I sometimes find it more useful to talk about "securitization": the institutionalization and normalization of "bunker-mentality" values that establish a kind of "all against all" worldview. (Two references come to mind: University of Toronto Quarterly 78.2 (2009) is a special issue about "security discourse" in Canada; and the current issue of Topia is about "cultures of militarization".)

Which is also a long-winded way to say I'm glad to see more attention paid to Doctorow's Little Brother: it's what happens when science fiction is so plugged into the present day you can't tell what science is fictional. (I also posted some work here on Little Brother and privacy, in relation to other good reads in Canadian SF; see "The copyfight, science fiction, and social media," esp. part 3.)

Hi Mark,

Thanks for your comments. I've only recently discovered Doctorow's works (which is a little odd, considering that I'm a lifelong, voracious sf fan, but that's the way it goes sometimes) and I'm quite enjoying it. If you're familiar with the blog Doctorow writes with a number of other very interesting commentators at boingboing.net, he has quite a bit to say about security and copyright issues.

Oh...never mind. You mention boingboing in the article of yours you cited above. I guess you do know about it...<blush>