The problem with understanding international Islam today is to understand that the Arab world is still, largely, few centuries backwards in its way of thinking, yet this same Arab world clings to the leadership role of explaining and guiding Islam around the world. In the Arab world of today, Human life is still easy to waste for the silliest reasons, from a girl losing her virginity then murdered by her brothers all the way up to what just saw unfold in France, they stem from the same deadly formula; a skewed understanding of a tribal honor system and a religion which makes it easier to say "fuck it all."
On a tangential subject, after an email conversation with Dermot I suddenly realized something that might be obvious to most of you: being offended is all about status. It's one thing if someone insults you and you feel bad, and another thing to stand up and say "I am offended." That's a card people play on a social-political level. Typically it's someone with medium to low status temporarily getting the drop on someone with higher status who has disrespected them in a way that society has declared inappropriate. You have to have some status to play the card, which is why homeless people are never offended, and you have to feel the need for higher status to want to play it, which is why billionaires are never offended. It's a middle class thing, and the people who get offended the most are the ones who feel most insecure about their status and have to keep proving it. Now that I understand this, I can see the hidden context of all these arguments about double standards for offensive cartoons.
At last, some fun for the weekend. As I get older my interests are shifting from politics to sports, because if I'm going to follow a spectacle, then sports are less scripted than politics, more transparent, and honest about the fact that I have no power. Anyway, here's a fascinating post about Peyton Manning's injury, arguing that he changed his throwing mechanics after shoulder surgery to draw power from his thigh muscles, which are now totally shot from overuse, and his playing career is probably over.
And a Mind-Blowing Six Song Country Mashup, which manages to make fun of the extreme similarity of recent country hits, while still being good music through the skill of the mashup artist. And here's an example of what country music had and lost, Willie Nelson - Can I Sleep In Your Arms.
If ability is now cast as an unfair advantage, then what is the qualification for academic and professional employment beyond a background of wealth and privilege? When rewarding students on the basis of "ability" is reconceived as a form of oppression, then the only mechanism that prevents the academy from being purely an instrument of class reproduction is made taboo.
By the way, I avoid the word "privilege" because there's usually a hidden meaning that doesn't make any sense: "You should be grateful for this thing that has made you stupid." The deeper problem with the word is that it blurs together two things that are nearly opposite. One is something that is good for you, something that everyone should have but not everyone does, like world travel or a healthy diet or not being harassed by cops. The other is something that no one should have because it's bad for everyone, like being able to command others without their consent, or being protected from the consequences of your own selfishness.
Of course, in a society with entrenched social class, higher class people have no idea that they're being selfish and being protected from the consequences. The way to fix this is not to make them feel guilty for an advantage that's never clearly explained, but to change the system so that lower class people (including nonhumans) are permitted to push back.
Cryptoforests are sideways glances at post-crash landscapes, diagrammatic enclaves through which future forest cities reveal their first shadows, laboratories for dada-do-nothingness, wild-type vegetable free states, enigma machines of uncivilized imagination, psychogeographical camera obscuras of primal fear and wanton desire, relay stations of lost ecological and psychological states. Cryptoforests are wild weed-systems, but wildness is equated not with chaos but with productiveness at a non-human level of organization.
Related: a reader and some friends have a new online magazine called the FC journal, with stuff about deep ecology and critiques of modernity.
Also related (thanks Alex): Is depression a kind of allergic reaction? Evidence suggests that depression is more physical than psychological, and that it could be caused by inflammation -- and inflammation can be caused by many things including some features of modern life: trans fats, sugar, stress, and social isolation.