The Crimes of Courtney Love: America’s Sweetheart

Music

COURNTEYLOVE

Courtney Love flashes the masses

All of this continuous nattering about Courtney Love and what a disturbed personality she is, and what a terrible mother, and how dreadful that her life – from time to time, and certainly at the moment – revolves around drugs.
Who says that Courtney Love has to live like the rest of us? You? Me? Nope, I don’t think so. And, even if we thought so, when was the last time that either one of us composed music as raw and energetic as that which Love consistently produces, even if it is potty-mouthed and substance-fuelled?
Gritty, chaotic, unorthodox, ragged and raw, the life and ‘flash the masses’ times of Courtney Love is to be celebrated.
Turns out that the Executive Editor of the Village Voice finds himself in accord with the sentiments published above, and much much more it would seem. Comparing Love to Janis Joplin, Richard Goldstein writes …

“When I watch Courtney, I see the same failure to distinguish between persona and self, the same refusal to draw a boundary between expressiveness and excess, the same insistence on showing pain that made rock music in the ’60s so intense.”


Celebrating breast baring as an act of power, discussing Love’s ‘signature of civic strength’, and writing about the artist who has chosen “to grin and bare it at an hour when all good children are asleep, having whacked off in their beds”, Goldstein’s very readable cover essay may be found here.

No sex – we’re movie goers

Cinema

SEXINCINEMA

From today’s London Daily Telegraph, a story by Elizabeth Day: Films containing explicit sex or nudity do much worse at the box office, earning nearly 40 per cent less on average than more wholesome movies.
An analysis of 1120 cinematic releases over the past four years has shown that films without sex scenes, such as Disney’s Finding Nemo or Toy Story 2, earned an average of $41.1 million (all figures in U.S. currency), while films with sex have grossed 38 per cent less with an average of $16.7 million.

Continue reading No sex – we’re movie goers →

Ten Years On, Rwanda Seeks Lessons From Genocide

Politics

RWANDA

an item posted below on the upcoming 10th anniversary remembrance of the death of Nirvana lead singer Kurt Cobain — Michael wonders why it is that the almost exclusive media focus on the history of a decade ago centres on the death of a rock musician, to the exclusion of a remembrance and reflection on the mass genocide which took place in the tiny Central African country of Rwanda, around the same time of Cobain’s passing.


RWANDA800

800,000 people were killed
in the Rwandan holocaust

In 1994, one of the most appallingly intensive killing campaigns in human history — possibly the most intensive — took place in 100 days of genocide that the outside world did little to prevent. Many of the majority Hutu (about 85% of the population) turned on the Tutsi (about 12% of the population) and moderate Hutu, killing an estimated 800,000 people.
Gendercide provides this case study on the Rwandan holocaust, while BBC News publishes this report on the more than 100,000 genocide suspects who remain in Rwandan jails awaiting trial.
Update: Sent in by reader Alison Fitch, this story from the Globe and Mail, a feature on how the Hutus tortured Athanasie Mukarwego’s husband to death and then told her: “You, we will kill with rape.” For the three horrific months that followed, literally hundreds of them tried to do just that. As Rwanda prepares to mark the genocide’s 10th anniversary, she can’t forget but “I have to forgive, so things are different for my children.”
Also, in production, The Guardian reports that filmmaker Raoul Peck’s Sometimes in April has set out to “recreate the killing zones to reach beyond cliche of ‘never again’.”

The Tech Week in Review, Part 2

Web & Tech

LONGHORN

For those of you who consider yourself to be early adopters, Microsoft has just released a public beta version of Windows Service Pack 2.
Fred Langa warns “beta means an ‘unfinished prototype’. All betas carry risks, and can be hard to undo if or when they cause problems. But operating system betas are even riskier because they change the very foundation of your system software. Unless you have a safe test environment such as a second PC; and/or unless you have a complete image-based backup of your entire system and are prepared to use it; don’t fool around with OS betas.”
Meanwhile, Fred offers 10 Ways to Make Windows XP Run Better and 10 More Ways to Make Windows XP Run Better.
C|NET responds to a member question …

QUESTIONMARK

Is there an easy way for Windows to always maximize a window size when I launch an application? Windows has forgotten my settings.
—Submitted by Karen C. of Birmingham, AL

ANSWERGIF

The simple way is to:
1. Open an application (such as Excel).
2. Maximize the window using the Maximize button in the top-right corner.
3. Hold either Shift or Ctrl on your keyboard and close the application window by pressing X or File > Close/Exit.
ZDNet’s David Berlind writes, “Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) promises to help us cut telephone costs and pave the way for converged data and voice networks that can deliver advanced communications applications to users, anytime, anywhere. However, the promises of VoIP may not be enough to meet the business requirements of enterprises. In our Webcast, we evaluate the benefits of VoIP versus the risks, looking at quality of service, security, infrastructure requirements and other key criteria”.
Meanwhile, ZDNet’s Mike Ricciuti writes that Microsoft’s long-promised beta version release of Longhorn — the next iteration of Microsoft’s OS — will most likely have to wait until next year as Microsoft set out to bolster Windows XP security, in light of the plethora of Trojan, worm, malware, spyware and other attack of its current OS.
Plus, happy days are here again: there’s a new version of WinAmp available.