small links round up

South Africa Isn’t Post-Racial Either
In a thoughtful essay, Robert Jensen writes about his visit to South Africa, the racism he saw there, and what he learned about confronting it.

The White Supremacist in Us
Rinku Sen, Executive Director of Applied Research Center and Publisher of ColorLines, writes about the connection between recent killings and our white supremacist culture.

Inspired Bicycles – Danny MacAskill 2009
In this video, Danny MacAskill does almost unbelievable things with his bike. There’s some question why he’s still alive.

torturing democracy

Torture is wrong. Our nation and our president should say that and act like we believe it.

Sherry Jones and Carey Murphy have created a documentary called Torturing Democracy reporting on the use of torture by the US government since 9/11. truthout.org has a good entry on the film and on what we should do to move on from the strange and very seriously messed up place the US is now in with regard to torture.

Colin Powell has something to say

I’ve always admired Colin Powell. I felt like his part in starting the Iraq war was done out of loyalty, not out of belief in ridiculous charges. Admittedly, just a feeling. Sometimes that’s all you have to go on.

In this video, Powell is thoughtful, considered, and pretty amazing while endorsing Barack Obama. Is he being teleprompted? If not, his ability to hold all this argument in his mind and articulate it so clearly is phenomenal.

accidental american

Rinku Sen, together with Fekkak Mamdouh, created The Accidental American, a blog that includes short video narratives from people describing how they became Americans. The narratives are interesting in their own right and a great example of the way YouTube, and the internet in general, can be a democratizing force.

links round up

A few more links from my friend Scott at Skippy Records. The last link, however, comes from Godfried, who is curiously blogless.

The Stevens Seventy lists the “best” science books of the last 100 years or so. Obviously, put together by someone who likes lists almost as much as me.

Crayon Physics Deluxe is just cool. It took me a minute to understand what was going on; once I did, I was very excited.

Here’s some thoughts about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and why they will never end. It’s depressing and it is upon us—Unleashing the Dogs of War.

Vinyl May Be the Final Nail in CD’s Coffin, or so says this Wired article.

moebius transformations

This video is a brilliant and (aside from the cheesy color scheme) beautiful depiction of moebius transformations and their connection to the Riemann sphere. For those of you that don’t know what I’m talking about, just watch it and enjoy.

Thanks to Fred T. for the heads up.

climbing

I have been a rock climber for 20 years. Climbing has fit me from the beginning in the same way that my favorite books fit. It has all of life inside it—joy, suffering, frustration, satisfaction, risk, reward—and is, like life, a struggle with both the subjective and the objective. The subjective struggle is to know your self, your limitations, and your abilities; to know when to go and when to back off. The objective struggle is to know the rock, the gear, the weather, and your partner. And then the distinction between objective and subjective breaks down and disappears. All of it becomes part of climbing. This completely focused self-consciousness together and simultaneous with the loss of self-consciousness is ultimately why I love climbing. It is a meditation, a mode of being.

I think this sense of climbing is one of the reasons, maybe the most important reason, that I have never enjoyed stories about climbing. I mostly don’t watch climbing movies or read climbing books or look at climbing magazines. Rarely do they touch my experience of climbing and usually they feel like trivializations of something intensely personal and private.

Having said this, I recently found a video that gets it pretty close to right. There is a shameless bit of advertising at the front; get past it. Listen and watch. Let me know if you see there what I’m trying to get at here.

synaesthesia

Check out Synaesthesia (Colored letters and numbers), a new video from silentmiaow. Be a little patient; groove on the tunes from Suerte. It’s worth it.

in my language

“In My Language” is the most beautiful, profound, and educational video I have ever seen on youtube. It takes 8 minutes and 35 seconds. It’s worth a lot more than that.

Thanks to Alisa, youtuber exraordinaire, for the heads up.