The Odd Thing About Dissent Is the Illusion of Its Virginity
There are people in jail right now, others in early graves over this whole dissent business.
Norman Ball
NORMAN BALL's poems and essays have appeared in Light Quarterly, Asia Times, Counterpunch, The Berkeley Poetry Review, Rattle, Liberty, Foreign Policy Journal, Global Research and elsewhere. He has a new poetry collection Serpentrope from White Violet Press and his book on TV Culture, Between River & Rock: How I Resolved Television in Six Easy Payments is available from Giant Steps Press with a viewable excerpt at the Museum of American Poetics. Prior essay collections, How Can We Make Your Power More Comfortable? (2010) and The Frantic Force (2011), both widely available on the web, are published by Del Sol Press and Petroglyph Books, respectively. His recent play SIDES: A Civil War Musical (Inspired by The Red Badge of Courage) is currently being produced for TV by Last Tango Productions, LLC. His recent book on TV culture
‘This Idea Must Die’ Puts Speculative Self-correction Back in the Driver’s Seat
This collection from 175 scientific luminaries is something between a Faustian romp and a dilettante’s bedside companion.
The Unending Saga of Internet Cops, Robbers, and the Rest of Us
Creative chaos may be the mother of Internet invention. But inventiveness is a threat to the Powers-that-be. Is crime-fighting just another handy euphemism for Orwellian consolidation?
Scott Walker and Sunn O))): If You Don’t Beat Me, the Stasi Will
Soused’s trapped, bleating circus elephants are harbingers of the prison-planet drones and transhuman monstrosities yet to come. Prepare for heightened beatings, motherfuckers.