Rebecca D Reeve's Blog

Prince William is single after a rumored intervention by the royal family due to Kate’s ‘common-ness.’

A little research into this curious phenomenon of British class snobbery led to Nancy Mitford’s theory on “U” and “non-U”; that is, upper-class and non-upper-class language. According to a Wikipedia citation (very non-u), Mitford provided a glossary of terms used by the upper-classes which unleashed an anxious national debate about English class-consciousness.

I’ve mentioned before, I heart lists:

It’s predicted many a girl are dusting off their ballgowns now that Will is back on the market, but personally I’ve been over him for ages now. It’s Hot Harry who’s more attention worthy.

Definition of the day: Shibboleth - any language usage indicative of one’s social or regional origin, or more broadly, any practice that identifies members of a group.

Proper usage: “That’s such a shibboleth use of language.” *Deliver comment in an off-hand manner and with a deadpan expression = Guaranteed conversation killer*

Maybe La-la-land isn’t such a souless place.

Steven Spielberg jumped into action after Mia Farrow wrote an open letter to the Wall Street Journal comparing Spielberg’s’s involvement as artistic director of the Beijing games to that of Nazi propaganda filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl. Four days later Spielberg wrote a letter to the president of China and shortly thereafter a top Chinese diplomat was dispatched to Darfur to pressure the Sudanese government to accept UN peace keepers. Previously China had abstained from involving themselves in internal affairs in order to keep open access to Sudanese oil.

Hollywood accomplishes in a week what diplomats have been working on for years.

For the full story click here.

It’s 2am… the reality of my deadlines is finally hitting me (two weeks late). In my deluded state I’m considering the possibility my thesis topic is divinely inspired.

From Marita Sturken’s Technological Visions:

“Spinning technology through the Fall of Man narrative casts us as the ignorant architects of our own undoing. In this narrative, we make our artifacts but they in turn cast us out into world in which we are not suited. The narrative of the Fall reduces the dynamic relations of people and technology to a story in which technology is the cruel, decisive actor. It was a God with ultimate power who expelled humans from the Garden of Eden. The new narratives of the Fall put technology into that position. They rationalize human passivity in the face of anxiety about technology. They give a sense of inevitability to people’s feelings of impotence in the face of our creations” (Struken et al. 2004: 23-24).

“Spin is distracting. Overheated debates about computer addiction and Internet depression keep us from confronting issues raised by contemporary technology that are resistant to the oversimplification of spin…Technology does things for use but also to us, to our ways of perceiving the world, to our relationships and sense of ourselves” (Struken et al. 2004: 23).

“The world-view of most of the industrialized world remains relentlessly modern in its valuing of science, technology, growth, and progress. Yet these modern sensibilities are integrated with an increasingly postmodern sensibility – a sense of cynicism and fatigue with modernity’s hurtling forward into the future, a world increasingly defined by the digital, the computer, and the virtual… Yet this feeling of life speeding out of control is a deeply modern one, one that prevailed throughout the twentieth century. This moment in history is thus defined specifically by the tensions of living with both the heightened qualities of modernity and the shifting worldview of postmodernism” (Struken et al. 2004: 72).

Too late to comment on these strings of writing, but I think I’ve found a conclusion.

— Speaking of ’spin’… Kurt Vonnegut passed away yesterday at 84, amazed at his old age after a life-long smoking habit. After joining the army and working for the Chicago City News Bureau, he did PR for General Electric, “a job he loathed.” He published four books before be able to give up selling Saabs to support himself.

I suppose it’s stories like Dana Vachon’s that keep the hope alive for all those bloggers out there. A 28 yr. old prep-kid-turned-investment-banker-turned-blogger got a $650,000 advance to write about his insights into NYC society. The book has already been optioned to the company who produced Babel. It’s possible he provides an illuminating perspective, but not likely of the slaughterhouse 5 variety. See above for ’shifting worldview of postmodernism.’

The mere suggestion of a defrost - a sunny Saturday and temps rising slightly above zero - brings droves of people to the Plateau to take a leisurely stroll while licking away on ice cream cones! St. Denis is overrun by families of ice cream eaters mixing with shirtless Tam-Tam players practicing up for their summer gig in the park. Funnily enough, the season-inappropriate snackers are balanced out by handfuls of people who stopped into the Caban a Sucre at the Mt. Royal metro stn to get frozen strips of maple syrup wrapped on a stick.

There are always so many decisions when it comes to snacking, but I think the two groups of weekend snackers can be broken down thusly: the maple syrup contingent are the type who embrace winter and the lactose lickers are of the reckless optimist variety. Normally I’d vote for reckless optimism and something chocolate but there’s something oddly appealing about making a mess with maple syrup.

It’s snowing today, AGAIN.

Chpts 1-4 in at the end of the month = reading fun.

This list would have been so useful at the beginning of last year. I heart lists.

Modern Postmodern

• National/international…………………………………………………..global
• Hierarchical social structure………………………………………….network society
• Mechanical…………………………………………………………………….electronic
• Industrial………………………………………………………………………postindustrial
• Urban city…………………………………………….suburban sprawl, megalopolis
• Geographical space replaced by social space………………….nonplace
• Cartesian space……………………………………………………………..virtual space
• Standing in a crowd……………………………………………………….social isolation
• Surrounded by strangers………………………………………………mobile privatization
• Circulation of traffic in city…………………………………………….internet ‘traffic’
• City strolling, the flaneur……………………………………………….web surfing
• Time as measurable………………………………………………………time as global
• Time as linear…………………………………………………………………time shifting
• Analog clock/watch………………………………………………….digital clock/watch
• Railroad………………………………………………………………….rapid speed trains
• Telegraph………………………………………………………………………internet
• Subway…………………………………………………………………………..freeway
• Airplane………………………………………………………………………….space shuttle
• Automobile as transportation…………………………………..automobile as style
• Radio………………………………………………………………………………walkman
• Photograph……………………………………………………………………..digital image
• Typewriter……………………………………………………………………..computer
• Typewriter keyboard………………………………………………..computer mouse
• Television…………………………………………………………………..multimedia/DVD/TiVo
• Cinema……………………………………………………………………………virtual reality
• Telephone……………………………………………………………………….cell phone
• Space travel………………………………….travel inside body through fiberoptics
• The body as circulatory system……………………….the body as a genetic map
• Tuberculosis and antibiotics……………………………………..AIDS and retroviruses
• Representations………………………………………………………………simulacrum
• Autonomous subject……………multiple and fragmented subjectivities
• Wars of guns, bombs, machines…………………………………………virtual/cyberwar
• Wars as conflicts between nations……………………………………terrorism