I’m still in DC, waiting for the time to depart to the airport. Sitting down now at Starbuck, I feel like I am a winner. I finally found a way to sit here, enjoying the free Internet connection without being burnt by the sun, without buying anything, not even a single cup of coffee!! Yayyy!! I could sit down somewhere else, at other cafes, but there I have to buy something. Not that I don’t have money, the problem is I had enough breakfast and really cannot drink/eat anything anymore.

It’s antithetical, in a place of the biggest coffee capitalist I could actually manipulate the game. I just have to look confident as if I had bought something, and then sitting there forever!!

Anyway, enough about Starbuck…. today, one day after the Independence Day, I guess it’s just right to post a rant about nationalism. (more…)

Can we talk about non-ness without nonsense?
Can you be nonscientific and yet be rational?
Can you be rational and non-utilitarian?
Is there intellectual space for non-evidential knowledge?
Can technology close intellectual space for alternatives to technology?
Can we open a self-sustaining space for interactions of systems of knowledge?
Can story-tellers capture reality better than scientists? (more…)

I never wrote about Oscar or any other Hollywoody type of events. But I caught the Oscar Night as I turned on my TV this evening and decided to stay in the channel while working on my MacBook. It’s quite interesting to see that the list of nominations is filled with dark and pessimistic movies. It’s quite a change.

In the last 5 years or so we have seen a shift in the film industries. From usual type of Hollywood movies to the more ‘realistic’ ones, ones that try to portray the complexity of social realities of our societies. This year’s Oscar, though, is the first that really witnesses the dominance of this kind of movies. The emergence of independent film makers of course supports this tendency. But it’s more than that. The world has changed. United States has changed. And movies are embedded in the changes. After all, movies always reflect the realities of the context — the world — the when and where they are created. As the world becomes darker, the movies, too, offer darker pictures.
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My very good buddy, Yanuar Nugroho, wrote a very good reflection on anti pornographic/pornoaction bylaws (RUU APP) here.* Yes, this is an old issue that re-emerges these days, this time is more disconcerting since the draft has climbed up and reached the last stage and if no big thing happened in the way, then the President would issue the bill very soon.

Inline with this discourse, here I am re-publishing my old essay. It was written in the light of Minister of Law and Justice’s proposals for a revamp of the Indonesian civil code in September 2003. It didn’t necessarily talk about RUU APP but I think it’s still relevant.

*the draft of the bylaws (in Indonesian) can also be read there
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For some of you who have been following my travel or Corat-Coret entries, if you think I have included all weird-silly stories from my trips, you’re wrong. There are too many stories, more than what I can reflect!

Sometimes stories emerge from my being absent-minded, my own silliness, and/or my idiosyncratic mind. But many stories come out of my doing nothing. The combination of my being, subjects/object that encounter my being, and the context seem to be enough to create unexpected (or expected?) stories. (more…)

– from http://www.cameraontheroad.com/

This evening I watched a program on TV narrating the story about David Tool, an American living in Beijing, who has been voluntarily correcting misleading English signs throughout the Chinese capital. Tool took the TV reporter around showing some “corrected” signs as well as hilarious “uncorrected” ones. (more…)

A compilation of various videos of PowWow dances performed at the ASU’s 21st Annual Spring Competition of PowWow, recorded and edited by M Lim, Tempe, 2007.

It was one lovely Saturday evening in April when I had my first visit to a Plains Indian powwow. As I entered the arena, I could hear drums’ beating merged with men’s singing a unique tune. (more…)

It could be you. It could be me. Ten minutes away from home, one night something goes wrong and we end up at the emergency room of the nearest hospital. Crowd. Cries. Blood. In pain, we enter the world of misery. Doctors, nurses, suicide attempts, broken legs, overdosis, heart attacks, gunbanging victims, drug addicts, and someone like me :p.

Perhaps almost all of us have seen the hit TV show "ER". The show that has

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Commemorating Henri Maclaine Pont (born 121 years ago this month), a Dutch architect known for his hybrid architecture combining traditional elements—decorations and constructions—with colonial (Dutch/European) wood and brick architecture, draws us to enter a discourse on the colonial presence as being manifested in one of major corporeal dimensions of society, architecture, especially that of hybrid, hybridity, and hybridization.

What is hybridization?(more…)

….after bahasa problem…. here is another grouchy posting about a chronic abuse of certain words…

Some words still maintain similar/same meaning when they are shortened. Some don’t. (more…)