So much for the information age?

The Chronicle has an article up (that I rather like but have some major problems with) about a professor's discussion regarding rendition. It's called "So Much for the Information Age."

I teach a seminar called "Secrecy: Forbidden Knowledge." I recently asked my class of 16 freshmen and sophomores, many of whom had graduated in the top 10 percent of their high-school classes and had dazzling SAT scores, how many had heard the word "rendition."

Not one hand went up.

This is after four years of the word appearing on the front pages of the nation's newspapers, on network and cable news, and online. This is after years of highly publicized lawsuits, Congressional inquiries, and international controversy and condemnation. This is after the release of a Hollywood film of that title, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Meryl Streep, and Reese Witherspoon.

I was dumbstruck. Finally one hand went up, and the student sheepishly asked if rendition had anything to do with a version of a movie or a play.

I nodded charitably, then attempted to define the word in its more public context. I described specific accounts of U.S. abductions of foreign citizens, of the likely treatment accorded such prisoners when placed in the hands of countries like Syria and Egypt, of the months and years of detention. I spoke of the lack of formal charges, of some prisoners' eventual release and how their subsequent lawsuits against the U.S. government were stymied in the name of national security and secrecy.

The students were visibly disturbed. They expressed astonishment, then revulsion. They asked how such practices could go on.

I told them to look around the room at one another's faces; they were seated next to the answer. I suggested that they were, in part, the reason that rendition, waterboarding, Guantánamo detention, warrantless searches and intercepts, and a host of other such practices have not been more roundly discredited. I admit it was harsh.

[...]

Still, it is hard to reconcile the students' lack of knowledge with the notion that they are a part of the celebrated information age, creatures of the Internet who arguably have at their disposal more information than all the preceding generations combined. Despite their BlackBerrys, cellphones, and Wi-Fi, they are, in their own way, as isolated as the remote tribes of New Guinea. They disprove the notion that technology fosters engagement, that connectivity and community are synonymous. I despair to think that this is the generation brought up under the banner of "No Child Left Behind." What I see is the specter of an entire generation left behind and left out.

It is not easy to explain how we got into this sad state, or to separate symptoms from causes. Newspaper readership is in steep decline. My students simply do not read newspapers, online or otherwise, and many grew up in households that did not subscribe to a paper. Those who tune in to television "news" are subjected to a barrage of opinions from talking heads like CNN's demagogic Lou Dobbs and MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Fox's Bill O'Reilly and his dizzying "No Spin Zone." In today's journalistic world, opinion trumps fact (the former being cheaper to produce), and rank partisanship and virulent culture wars make the middle ground uninhabitable. Small wonder, then, that my students shrink from it.

Then, too, there is the explosion of citizen journalism. An army of average Joes, equipped with cellphones, laptops, and video cameras, has commandeered our news media. The mantra of "We want to hear from you!" is all the rage, from CNN to NPR; but, although invigorating and democratizing, it has failed to supplant the provision of essential facts, generating more heat than light. Many of my students can report on the latest travails of celebrities or the sexual follies of politicos, and can be forgiven for thinking that such matters dominate the news — they do. Even those students whose home pages open onto news sites have tailored them to parochial interests — sports, entertainment, weather — that are a pale substitute for the scope and sweep of a good front page or the PBS NewsHour With Jim Lehrer (which many students seem ready to pickle in formaldehyde).

I sympathize with professor Gup. As one of the teachers of the Introduction to Global Studies course here at Whittier, I have felt first hand this frustration with students' apparent ignorance of current events, and all too often their apathy. That said, I cannot completely agree. First of all, students today actually seem quite engaged in issues regarding the environment, they are far more anti-war than most students I can remember in the early 80's (or, said another way, they can see first hand some of lies and contradictions of our government), and students sense on some level that things are really changing, for better and/or worse, in the wake of globalization. (Note to self: There are people who study this. I should find out who and see if students are more engaged or less. Maybe those researchers even have a blog!)

Prof Gup's premise seems quite problematic to me as well. He is assuming that reading newspapers and watching CNN is the portal to being informed. I'm not so sure. The last century during which major newspapers and television channels dominated local markets did NOT lead our citizenry to become better citizens. Participation in our system of government was declining and a whole political party (Republicans) sought office for 40 years on the basis that government was in general a bad thing, that they should, to paraphrase Grover Norquist, "starve the beast." (Except for the military, of course). Political blogging and the internet have become a viable and informative way to engage in the political process, and that power is being courted by the big players--key evidence that, in spite of his "uninformed" students, something is afoot.

His premise also assumes that these major news factories are really informing the public. The record here is mixed too. Are people who watch Fox News more or less informed than someone who does not? Some interesting studies have shown that viewers of ol' Rupert's news outlet are somewhat likely to be ill-informed rather than well-informed. And CNN? What do Glenn Beck or Lou Dobbs inspire in their viewers other than fear and loathing? I'm sorry, Dr. Gup, you're letting these news outlets off far too easily and you are not considering the ground-breaking work done by Talking Points Memo or Media Matters (and any other number of groups). Do I need to bring up Judith Miller or the Washington Times (Go Moonies!!!)?

The information age will never be a panacea for the problems of our world until we accept that the media that we do have do not really represent us. Millionaire "reporters" and pundits by definition and constitution will not serve the public's interest well because they are simply too far removed from those concerns. The electoral process, as imperfect as it is, is still less forgiving than the clubby major newspapers and networks. I mean, the average income of the fictive families on television during the 50's was about 35K (adjusted for inflation). The average family in sitcoms now earns approximately 200k per year. I say this just for comparison's sake. Our media has become more elitist and less engaged with the public all while pandering more. I think that our mainstream media--those who bear the biggest responsibility for informing the public over the public airwaves and with their publicly chartered corporations--are much more to blame for the state of things than any other single thing. If we are going to begin casting blame, let's start with news corporations that have been thinking a lot more about their shareholders than about their public responsibilities. Indeed, we have decades of interesting data, so let's look there and let blogging reach its second decade before we start casting stones about technology.

But I will agree with Prof. Gup on this:

The noted American scholar Robert M. Hutchins said, decades ago: "The object of the educational system, taken as a whole, is not to produce hands for industry or to teach the young how to make a living. It is to produce responsible citizens." He warned that "the death of a democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment." I fear he was right.

So do I. It's just that I fear that this apathy will come to us via our media outlets determined to tell us everything about Britney Spears and nothing (or something on A22) about that little thing called rendition.

Firefox: Like Going To College

Downloading Firefox is like going to college according to Seth:

(h/t proactivebusybody)

A quick glimpse at just about any profession shows you that the vast majority of people who succeed professionally also went to college.

This could be because college teaches you a lot.

Or it could be because the kind of person that puts the effort into getting into and completing college is also the kind of person who succeeds at other things.

Firefox is similar.

Example: 25% of the visitors we track at Squidoo use Firefox, which is not surprising. But 50% of the people who actually build pages on the site are Firefox users. Twice as many.

This is true of bloggers, of Twitter users, of Flickr users... everywhere you look, if someone is using Firefox, they're way more likely to be using other power tools online. The reasoning: In order to use Firefox, you need to be confident enough to download and use a browser that wasn't the default when you first turned on your computer.

That's an empowering thing to do. It isolates you as a different kind of web user.

If I ran Firefox, I'd be hard at work promoting extensions and power tools (I love the search add-ons) and all manner of online interactions. Think of all the things colleges do to amplify the original choice of their students and to increase their impact as alumni.

And if I ran your site, I'd treat Firefox visitors as a totally different group of people than everyone else. They're a self-selected group of clickers and sneezers and power users.

In the lingo of Nancy Reagan, Firefox is a gateway drug.

I'm not sure about all the correllations brought up here, but I will say that Firefox, along with Linux, has been the gateway to the most recent open-source revolutions. Sure, one can point to other things, but Firefox in particular has replaced IE and done so paradigmatically.

Expelled: The Lies!!!

Scientific American now has a whole series dedicated to the misrepresentations and pandering of Expelled.

No one could have been more surprised than I when the producers called, unbidden, offering Scientific American's editors a private screening. Given that our magazine's positions on evolution and intelligent design (ID) creationism reflect those of the scientific mainstream (that is, evolution: good science; ID: not science), you have to wonder why they would bother. It's not as though anything in Expelled would have been likely to change our views. And they can't have been looking for a critique of the science in the movie, because there isn't much to speak of.

Rather, it seems a safe bet that the producers hope a whipping from us would be useful for publicity: further proof that any mention of ID outrages the close-minded establishment. (Picture Ben Stein as Jack Nicholson, shouting, "You can't handle the truth!") Knowing this, we could simply ignore the movie—which might also suit their purposes, come to think of it.

Unfortunately, Expelled is a movie not quite harmless enough to be ignored. Shrugging off most of the film's attacks—all recycled from previous pro-ID works—would be easy, but its heavy-handed linkage of modern biology to the Holocaust demands a response for the sake of simple human decency.

Expelled wears its ambitions to be a creationist Fahrenheit 911 openly, in that it apes many of Michael Moore's comic tricks: emphasizing the narrator's hapless everyman qualities by showing him meandering his way to interviews; riposting interviewees' words with ironic old footage and so on. Director Nathan Frankowski is reasonably adept at the techniques, although he is not half the filmmaker Michael Moore is (and yes, I do mean in both senses of the phrase).

The film begins with the triumphant entry of financial columnist, media figure and former Nixon White House speechwriter Ben Stein to a filled college lecture hall. (If this review were styled after the movie, I'd be intercutting clips of Nixon flashing a victory sign with Stein's scenes from Ferris Bueller's Day Off and his eyedrop commercials, but you get the idea.) Stein explains that he is speaking out because he has "lately noticed a dire trend" that threatens the state of our nation: the ascendance of godless, materialist, evolutionary science and an unwillingness among academics to consider more theistic alternatives. A montage of short clips then shows Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and other scientists scorning religion or ID without context. "Freedom is the essence of America!" Stein insists, and he frets that scientists who like their empiricism with a dash of deus ex machina are oppressed. He and Expelled charge that scientists, in their rejection of religious explanations, have become as intolerant as Nazis. Or maybe Stalinists—the film clips were ambiguous on that point.

(The newsreel footage from the old Soviet days kept confusing me. Stein does know that the Stalinists rejected the theory of evolution as a biological rendition of capitalism, doesn't he? And that they replaced it with their own ideologically driven, disastrous theory of Lysenkoism? Does Stein think that moviegoers won't know this?)

That last paragraph is my favorite! Isn't it funny how every authoritarian political movement wants to change history and science for political expediency (think: GB)?

There's plenty more.

Economics 101: Le Monde Diplomatique

Brought to you by the folks at Le Monde diplomatique:

In theory, the United States is all for free trade and is the leading advocate of the system. But, faced with a recession and a colossal trade deficit, it is reconsidering, as everyone knew it would. The US military contract for 79 refuelling tankers, co-produced by European Aeronautic Defence and Space (EADS) at a cost of $35bn, is no exception. US national interests are well protected. This “European” aircraft will be equipped with General Electric engines, produced in partnership with the US company Northrop Grumman and assembled in Alabama. More than half the added value will be generated in the US. Much of the equipment on offer from the main competitor, Boeing – less readily available, with a more limited refuelling capability and range – would not have been produced in the US.

Editorials in newspapers and the business press assure us that it is wrong to take strong measures to protect national companies and their employees. But history shows that most developed countries owe their prominent positions to trade barriers. Britain, France, Korea, Japan and Prussia did not acquire their industrial power by obeying David Ricardo’s law of comparative advantage. And in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when the US had the highest growth rate in the world, its customs tariffs were around 50% (44% in 1913). President Ronald Reagan inveighed against protectionism but set limits on imports of cars, steel, sugar and textiles. His administration increased duties on cars with big engines (by a factor of 11) and on motorcycles, to rescue Harley-Davidson. And it pressured Japan to revalue its currency, just as President George Bush is asking China to do now (1).

The monetary policy pursued by the Federal Reserve with the tacit approval of the White House, although not openly protectionist, has obvious implications for trade. A weak dollar is good for exports and will reduce the impact of the current recession in the US. The European Union is almost alone in calmly allowing central bank policy on interest rates – high interest rates – to threaten major industries established with considerable injections of public money. Groups like EADS are relocating their activities to the dollar zone to escape the dire effects of revaluing the euro (2).

The deal with the Pentagon also has political and strategic implications. What price did Europe have to pay for the honour of refuelling US aircraft with equipment co-produced in the US because the Federal Reserve keeps interest rates down? When it was announced that the contract had been awarded to EADS, Democratic congressman John Murtha complained that the Europeans were not pulling their weight in Afghanistan. By coincidence, President Nicolas Sarkozy is about to send 1,000 more French troops there. Celebrating his new diplomatic entente with Washington, Sarkozy said: “It would have been unthinkable for EADS to win the contract for refuelling tankers in the previous climate of tension between France and the US” (3). Enough said. The Pentagon decision is a superlative lesson in free trade.

Expelled: The Stupidity!!!

As you may know, a new movie is out about the "flaws" of evolution. It's called Expelled and Ben Stein is in it. It is such a good movie that BIOLA University, that paragon of truth-seeking, gave ol' Ben a prize:

In light of Stein’s contribution to the pursuit of liberty and truth, particularly as it relates to the field of Intelligent Design, he is being honored with the 2008 Johnson Award. The award ceremony will feature premiere clips from the forthcoming movie, the personal appearance of scientists who were expelled from their jobs because they are sympathetic to Intelligent Design, and will include a brief address by Stein.

Clearly there is a lot of money floating around to promote "truth." But let's forget all the dubious "science" of the Intelligent Design movement. Let's look at Ben's decision to be in this film for what is isn't (a search for the truth) and for what it is: a lucrative venture that allows him (and those like him) to further the rightwing movement by portraying the Right as a "reasonable" everyman under attack by an elitist Left.

As D. Niewert recently posted on Jonah Golberg (columnist for the LA Times), the right, as a rule, is more bigoted than the left and much less willing to consider other points of view. What must be understood, though, is that the Right, almost by definition, portrays itself as constantly under attack and as the defender of "truth" and "values." Ironically, ideas themselves are never in combat for their actual truth or value, so we must understand that the battle is not about truth per se, but about the righteousness of those who defend it. Take a look at what Niewert's argument:

Still, it's hard to top the claptrap that Goldberg propagated in his most recent L.A. Times column:

I find Darwin fish offensive. First, there's the smugness. The undeniable message: Those Jesus fish people are less evolved, less sophisticated than we Darwin fishers.

The hypocrisy is even more glaring. Darwin fish are often stuck next to bumper stickers promoting tolerance or admonishing random motorists that "hate is not a family value." But the whole point of the Darwin fish is intolerance; similar mockery of a cherished symbol would rightly be condemned as bigoted if aimed at blacks or women or, yes, Muslims.

It might be helpful to come to grips with the concept in question here: Bigotry is usually defined as "stubborn and complete intolerance of any creed, belief, or opinion that differs from one's own," and a bigot as "a person obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices." Bigotry, as we have known it historically, is not based on rationality or reason -- as the scientific belief in evolution is -- but founded instead on prejudice, inbred beliefs, and supernatural reactionarism.

And what we also know about bigotry historically is that it has largely been a characteristic of the right, particularly the cultural conservatives who enforced the segregation and oppression of nonwhites for much of the 20th century.

You can see in Golberg's and Steins' argumentation two clear elements: the Left are the "elite," they are "smug" and "intolerant" of "our community." They portray this as a battle between people, not ideas. Moreover, they paint themselves as under attack: look we're being eaten up by that giant fish!

Somehow I just can't feel sorry for two relatively rich people who get important space in major newspapers. How are they in the minority? Remember: they are not, they just like to say they are.

So next time a member of some group (Republicans, Christians, Environmentalists, whatever) tells you that they deserve a hearing just because they consider themselves an oppressed minority, ask yourself a few questions: is group x truly oppressed? is group x really seeking dialogue, or are they looking for a platform? is group x interested in the truth and open, or are they more interested in being a victim? Of course, there are many shades of grey here, which is why the NYT regularly and stupidly inserts references to ID movement ideas into its articles out of a false idea of journalistic fairness. Just remember this: you can respectfully decline to listen to unscientific insanity. It's not bias, it's logic.

Goodbye to Yoo?

B. Delong links to this paragraph re John Yoo's basic (lack of) ability to understand the law:

With this many academics talking about this stuff, if there were enough directly applicable precedents to be 'controlling' here, someone would know the story offhand. I could be wrong, but I'd bet a fair amount that the decision of how to apply the faculty code of conduct is up to Boalt Hall, reasoning from first principles, not from precedent.

And at that point, I have a very easy time saying it's the equivalent of scholarly misconduct. Legal work isn't exactly scholarship, but it has its own ethical obligations. And writing a memo like that [of March 14, 2003] (everyone's harping on Youngstown, but that's something whose absence takes the memo out of the realm of possible good-faith argument) is unethical -- if those arguments were made to a court, they would be an unethical attempt to deceive the court into believing there was no contrary precedent. That failure to meet the standards of practice required by the legal profession appears to me to be close enough to a failure to abide by the standards of the scholarly profession that it can be treated as an equivalent level of scholarly misconduct.

Note that I'm not arguing that he's such a bad man that he should be fired, but that the memo establishes that he is such a bad (either implausibly incompetent or much more likely ethical-standards-violating) lawyer that he should be fired as a professor of law....

I think it's a pretty easy case to make... [O]n some level the reason you can fire a professor for scholarly misconduct is to make it clear that if you, e.g., falsify data, you may not teach -- people learning to be scholars shouldn't learn that such falsification is compatible with scholarship. Writing legal arguments that ignore (not find some way to distinguish, but flatly ignore) controlling precedent is very much the same sort of misconduct, and the argument that people learning to be lawyers must be protected from coming to believe that it's an acceptable part of lawyering is closely parallel...

I don't know where I stand on this. Academic freedom should be absolute--even to make a mistake. However, it would seem that one's ability to do one's job and interpret basic facts is not so much about academic freedom as it is fulfilling the prerequisite duties of one's job--a very different case indeed.

I doubt that anyone will follow through with this. (I wonder: is this cosmic payback for Ward Churchill?) If censure or something does come down the pipe for Yoo, left-oriented law professors should watch their backs. The Right is much, much more ruthless.

Racisme, SOS.

A bloody pigs head, swastikas, a dead (Muslim) soldier. A sad day.

On a trouvé la tête ensanglantée d’un porc sur une tombe. Et sur la stèle de pierre blanche, recouvrant le nom du soldat Younès Ben Mohamed et l’inscription «mort pour la France le 16 janvier 1916», le mot «HALAL» (sic). Quand les journalistes, les anciens combattants et les représentants musulmans sont arrivés sur les lieux, il restait une tache de sang de l’animal sur la stèle. Une croix gammée, pas loin. Entre autres, un profanateur a inscrit une injure à l’islam, qu’il a traduite en chti sur les stèles suivantes.

If you're wondering what chti is, it's the local dialect in Picardy. Read about it on wikipedia.

David Zirin

Every few days I wonder which David Zirin article I should link to. Here's his latest on the new stadium for the Washington Nationals:

While Boswell and Fisher were given prime column real estate to gush [about the Nationals in the Washington Post], columnist Sally Jenkins didn't even get a corner of comics page. It's understandable why Jenkins, the 2002 AP sports columnist of the year, didn't get to play. Four years ago, she refused to gush: "While you're celebrating the deal to bring baseball back to Washington, understand just what it is you're getting: a large publicly financed stadium and potential sinkhole to house a team that's not very good, both of which may cost you more than you bargained for and be of questionable benefit to anybody except the wealthy owners and players. But tell that to baseball romantics, or the mayor and his people, and they act like you just called their baby ugly. It's lovely to have baseball in Washington again. But the deal that brings the Montreal Expos to Washington is an ugly baby."

Jenkins words have come to pass. But this isn't just an "ugly baby", it's Rosemary's baby. It's $611 million of tax payer money in a city that has become a ground zero of economic segregation and gentrification. $611 million over majority opposition of taxpayers and even the city council. $611 million in a city set to close down a staggering twenty-four public schools.

That's $611 million, a mere five months after a mayor commissioned study found that the District's poverty rate was the highest it had been in a decade and African-American unemployment was 51 percent. That's $611 million, in a city where the libraries shut down early and the Metro rusts over. That's a living, throbbing, reminder that the vote-deprived District of Columbia doesn't even rest on the pretense of democracy. This isn't just taxation without representation. It's a monument of avarice that will clear the working poor out of the Southeast corner of the city as surely as if they just dispensed with the baseball and used a bulldozer. This is sports as ethnic and economic cleansing, as Hurricane Katrina, as Shock Doctrine, as Green Zone. Fittingly, Fisher wrote, President George W. Bush came out to throw the first pitch. Fittingly, he was roundly booed. He stood tall on the mound nonetheless, proudly oblivious, taking center stage yet again in what can only be described as occupied territory. (Source)

Indeed. Who else is going to remind us of this? Something tells me all those really "tough" guys on ESPN will forget to mention the booing, the real price tag, the oppression and the repression in our dilapidated capital. It baffles me how the owners could suck some 600 million out of a city that has nothing but problems. Actually, it doesn't baffle me, it just continues to shock me in spite of my repeated exposure to the crimes of the elite.

No, there was nothing organic or natural about this return of baseball, a sport increasingly reliant on fans that are white and immigrant labor that is not. Baseball, a miror image of our politics and racial divides.

A blogger to encourage

I was browsing the internets the other day and stumbled upon a student's blog. (I was searching for something I had written. Mirror, mirror on the blogs...)

Check it out:

I've distracted myself in this two-thirds sleepy, dark room with "news" of the Speedo LZR Racer controversy, American and Delta's decrepit plane technology, Basra Shiite scariness, whatever Private Investment in Public Equity solicitation is, and another Laker "technical difficulty" loss. I really don't see the point in straying from the Lakers blog whenever Jon Abrams feels it necessary to test his wit this early on a Thursday. Phil Jackson diatribes after losses are always refreshing after losing so lamely to freaking Charlotte Bobcats.

The Home section actually reminded me that I live in LA, where credit it given solely to those of whom are overpopulating the bumps and beaches of Malibu. ie The Arnoldi's.

Friends of Gehry's, aluminum fiends, who employ lonely succulents to serve as backyard sculpture, rather than subliminally emphasizing why xeriscaping is key in such flambable lands. People who are speaking of their artistry too loudly in this economy, rather than letting the three pages of photography do the talking.

You've probably already noticed some good writing and sly insights. Go Tyler.

Home at last

I spent a lot of the day in the car. Had a great conversation along the way.

As you've probably noticed looking at my "conference blogging" posts, I felt really energized by the topics and the people. There's a lot of ideas I hope to explore in the coming weeks and I'll try to review them here as I go, "thinking out loud" right here on blogger. I'll save that for later in the week. For now, just a few last words...

As the conference ended, protests were cranking up out in Union Square against China. I snapped a few pictures (which I'll keep small here to protect folks), of course, and I won't pass up the chance to comment.

First of all, I salute all the members of the Chinese and Tibetan community for coming out to show their protest. Given the serious consequences their appearance might have for loved ones back home, their actions are more than just righteous, they are courageous.

I don't have time to dwell on this right now--grading and preparation are calling--but the moment yesterday in Union Square got me thinking about Margaret Thatcher and the Olympics. As I was reminded by a BBC reporter last Monday or Tuesday, Margaret Thatcher's opinion was that athletes could boycott games if they like, but Business should not.* That is a typically chilling statement by the former British PM, the same one who said that "There is no such thing as society," that "There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first" (Source).

Spreading the idea that the individual acts out of mere selfishness has long been a part of the project of folks like Thatcher, Reagan, Ayn Rand, Milton Friedman and their ilk. Yet here we see folks risking their lives for others, for places where they no longer have a home. Right here (on the internet) we see a commons maintained and thriving thanks to a spirit of community. Yes, individualism, entrepreneurship, profit are part of almost all our identities, but so are community, belonging and selflessness. What's more: these folks are protesting some of the neoliberal policy put into action by Deng Xiao Ping concurrent with Thatcher and Reagan (See David Harvey). Just one look at China and it is readily apparent that a free market does not need political freedom to operate. Of course, Chileans know this first hand, and, I suppose, so do many folks right here in the U.S.

Ok, I'm too tired and too busy to blog more or to be more succint. I just wanted to share that.

*I may be thinking of her views on South Africa. Sorry for my tired brain.

NITLE Summit Conference Blogging Cont...

I've finally gotten 30 minutes to myself and, as promised(!), a few more notes from the meeting.

Starting backwards, last night's keynote from Michael Wesch was entrhalling. If you don't read Wired or have a clue to who he is, check out his blog, or, better yet, check out what his students have done:

Exciting stuff...

I've been playing ayiti: the cost of life. Lot's o' fun. I'm not--or rather my family is not--doing very well, but, then again, I just started.

I think I'll give this to my students in a couple of weeks and see where it leads us, and adding in a discussion question with moodle for tips, tricks and lessons learned... Should be interesting.

That's it for now. I've got to get ready for more conferencing.

NITLE Conference blogging

It's been a good summit so far and I plan on updating this a little later to flesh out the information. I would have been doing that as I went if wireless had been working. Of course, it wasn't.

Here are some themes I will blog on more extensively : ayiti (a game based on life in haiti), twitter, email outsourcing, jaiku, shadow IT, accessceramics.org, nanogong...

For now, I'm off to the poster sessions where I really want to hear about a new wiki-style book tool.

Ciao, for now.

The Politics of Language Learning

To be sure, in our lower-level language courses there is lots of communication and interaction going on, but how good are we, at these levels, at providing students with rich and multimodal contexts of language use? How good are we at creating communities of practice, the kinds of "temporarily shared social worlds" that create mutuality as well as provide affordances for learning? How good are we at engaging students' ongoing negotiations of their social identities? (Walther, Ingebord. "Ecological Perspectives on Language Learning." ADFL Bulletin, Vol 38.3 and Vol. 39.1, Spring-Fall 2007.)

I've been struggling with this a lot and wondering, as does Walther, about our textbooks, our language curricula, and, more generally, the notion of global education in the liberal arts. I highly recommend the article for its consideration of communities of practice in language classrooms and within the larger social context, including the politics (academic and national) that shape perceptions of languages.

I believe wholeheartedly that the skills one acquires while learning a language must go beyond communication, a fairly a-political notion of human interaction, and quickly introduce students to higher-level processes for organizing their experiences and the world. Certainly the communicative model allows for the introduction of individual experiences and multiple perspectives, but his alone is not enough. Textbooks and our general methods of teaching should allow space for addressing the larger questions raised by linguistic and social diversity. Class, race, gender and power rarely make it into our 100-level or 200-level courses, and this is a shame, for it contributes to the notion that language is a secondary tool and that language courses are merely grammar and multi-cultural tourism. (Of course, we are imperfect, and some of what we do fits this superficial stereotype.)

In a primarily mono-lingual culture such as we have in the U.S., students already realize, however faintly, that the very act of learning another (an Other's) language is political. Such an act, especially when it comes from personal agency rather than as a curricular requirement to be fulfilled, questions monolithic constructions of identity, family and nation. By acknowledging the inherent politics of our profession we can begin to construct a more solid framework of theories to share with out students, and by doing this we can capture the energy of inquiry and participation embedded in socially constructed knowledge. It dawns on me, though, that many of my colleagues would resist such a politics of language learning even as they would acknowledge its presence. The reason for this, I think, is such paradigm changes bring risk to departments institutionally as language departments begin to function more like a social science or as an engaged member of the humanities. Also, such paradigms will no doubt bring teachers to question their own assumptions about themselves, about their social class and the meaning of what they do.

We should do better, and we should start by asking more of our textbooks and ourselves.

[more to come]

Tag Cloud Poetry: Fed Reserve Helps Bear Stearns Buyout

motherf****** elite billionaires theft bailout crony capitalism
a**holes bear stearns class billionaires fed buyout collusion
jerks bear stearns profit federal reserve mutual help
employees bear stearns federal reserve collaboration
media public reponsibility fraud
corporatocracy

Quote du jour...

Ok, Students. Here's your thought-provoking quote of the day.

[Neoliberal racism] is a racism that works hard to remove issues of power and equity from broader social concerns. Ultimately, it imagines human agency as simply a matter of individualized choices, the only obstacle to effective citizenship and agency being the lack of principled self-help and moral responsibility. [Henry Giroux, The Terror of Neoliberalism 58]

Now, go forth and look for this phenomenon, digging up phrases like "Say 'no' to drugs!" and "Abstinence works!" and "Ownership society" like the weeds they are.

In the not-unrelated category but as a total non-sequitur, here's what I'm thinking:

As the economy worsens and the niceties brought by prosperity disappear, it is likely we will see straight-up power structures gaining ground. That is, as commercial exchange lessens in this environment of willful government non-intervention, as our "ownership" society reverts to bankrupt society without a fiscal or social safety net, relationships of pure power will take over. In the poorest neighborhoods these will be gangs; in the slightly better-to-do, more crime and generally less security will bring more policing.

When the Financial Times doesn't like a republican...

You know s/he must be bad. Yes, contrary to the writer, I think Bush is a worse president and has been allowed to be a worse president in part because he seems so dull. Where do you begin to engage a person like him, who repeats so many lies and does so with such a dumbfounded look on his face?

But McCain has characteristics that make him an extremely dangerous candidate as well...

Financial Times:

It may seem incredible to say this, given past experience, but a few years from now Europe and the world could be looking back at the Bush administration with nostalgia. This possibility will arise if the US elects Senator John McCain as president in November.

Over the years the US has inserted itself into potential flashpoints in different parts of the world. The Republican party is now about to put forward a natural incendiary as the man to deal with those flashpoints.

The problem that Mr McCain poses stems from his ideology, his policies and above all his personality. His ideology, like that of his chief advisers, is neo-conservative. In the past, Mr McCain was considered to be an old-style conservative realist. Today, the role of the realists on his team is merely decorative.

Driven in part by his intense commitment to the Iraq war, Mr McCain has relied more on neo-conservatives such as his close friend William Kristol, the Weekly Standard editor. His chief foreign policy advisor is Randy Scheunemann, another leading neo-conservative and a founder of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq. Mr McCain shares their belief in what Mr Kristol has called “national greatness conservatism”. In 1999, Mr McCain declared: “The US is the indispensable nation because we have proven to be the greatest force for good in human history . . . We have every intention of continuing to use our primacy in world affairs for humanity’s benefit.”

Mr McCain’s promises, during last week’s visit to London, to listen more to America’s European allies, need to be taken with a giant pinch of salt. There is, in fact, no evidence that he would be prepared to alter any important US policy at Europe’s request.

Reflecting the neo-conservative programme of spreading democracy by force, Mr McCain declared in 2000: “I’d institute a policy that I call ‘rogue state rollback’. I would arm, train, equip, both from without and from within, forces that would eventually overthrow the governments and install free and democratically elected governments.” Mr McCain advocates attacking Iran if necessary in order to prevent it developing nuclear weapons, and last year was filmed singing “Bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”.

Mr McCain suffers from more than the usual degree of US establishment hatred of Russia, coupled with a particular degree of sympathy for Georgia and the restoration of Georgian rule over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. He advocates the expulsion of Russia from the Group of Eight leading industrialised nations and, like Mr Scheunemann, is a strong supporter of early Nato membership for Georgia and Ukraine. Mr Scheunemann has accused even Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, of “appeasement” of Russia. Nato expansion exemplifies the potential of a McCain presidency. Apart from the threat of Russian reprisals, if the Georgians thought that in a war they could rely on US support, they might be tempted to start one. A McCain presidency would give them good reason to have faith in US support.

Mr McCain’s policies would not be so worrying were it not for his notorious quickness to fury in the face of perceived insults to himself or his country. Even Thad Cochran, a fellow Republican senator, has said: “I certainly know no other president since I’ve been here who’s had a temperament like that.”

For all his bellicosity, President George W. Bush has known how to deal cautiously and diplomatically with China and even Russia. Could we rely on Mr McCain to do the same?

Mr McCain exemplifies “Jacksonian nationalism” – after Andrew Jackson, the 19th-century Indian-fighter and president – and the Scots-Irish military tradition from which both men sprung. As Mr McCain’s superb courage in North Vietnamese captivity and his honourable opposition to torture by US forces demonstrate, he also possesses the virtues of that tradition. Then again, some of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century were caused by brave, honourable men with a passionate sense of national mission.

Not just US voters, but European governments, should use the next nine months to ponder the consequences if Mr McCain is elected and how they could either prevent a McCain administration from pursuing pyromaniac policies or, if necessary, protect Europe from the ensuing conflagrations.

Vigi-pirate, vigilance, fear

Is any context necessary to explain the following?

The introduction of Plan Vigipirate (1) in France imprinted the equation “vigilance = security” on the national consciousness and made it everybody’s business. The government information service says that “Vigipirate calls upon all French men and women, whatever their occupation or level of responsibility, to participate in this state of vigilance that allows us to make an effective collective response to the threat of terrorist acts” (2).

Since a terrorist threat can come from anywhere – from where it is least expected – vigilance is a state of mind with no specific object. It bears upon everything. Whereas surveillance requires a specific object (a prisoner, a student, a warehouse, a rogue state) at a specific place and time, vigilance is a state of continual attention diluted through space. Vigilance only persists while the threat remains indeterminate, vague and abstract. We must remain vigilant, all the time, day and night.

“Plan Vigipirate allows all us to remain vigilant without unnecessary disruption to administrative and economic activity, or social norms” (3). While surveillance is an activity, with a beginning and an end, vigilance is a permanent state that creates a new relationship between the individual and the world. Even if the exact nature of the threat is unknown, its existence is certain and it is, at any moment, imminent. Every object, every person, every micro-event could be part of or a precursor to this vague threat. (Link)

Vigilant societies are distrustful and suspicious, and their members are simultaneously on the look-out and terrorists. Obsessed by a threat that never actually materialises, people will settle for the nearest suspect if they can’t find a plausible one.

Mike Davis

ZONES, a French publisher, has a good interview with Mike Davis on car bombs, hacking and asymmetry. Don't worry if you don't speak French, the interview is in Enlgish.

10 Ways Our Government Does Business that You Shouldn't

10. Secrecy. Somebody once said that secrets “are government's excuse to lie.” All of you in web 2.0 have seen the success of platforms that are open to scrutiny. That's democracy in action, and we know it works. From the arcane and hidden accounting fiascsos of Enron, WorldCom and now Bear Stears, from Dick Cheney's secrecy fetish and his energy roundtables, secrecy's hidden cost is everywhere these last few years. Private citizens deserve privacy; public entities deserve and, I would say, flourish from scrutiny. Put your stuff out there. Did anyone say Diebold?

9. Unclear Mission Statement. “I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace.” (George W. Bush). Anything as big as our government will have some inherent contradictions, but, as a business leader, you should be careful to have a single goal and communicate it effectively.

8. Phoney Services. A good example of this is the Walter Reed Scandal. Our government touts its patriotism as awe-inspiring and our president never misses a chance to be photographed with a boy in uniform. Yet, when it comes to taking care of our veteran amputees, our president leaves the room faster than you can say “cut and run.” Lesson: don't advertise big love for your customers when all you are really doing is giving them peanuts. Don't say you are a green company when you invest .005% of your budget in that area...

7. Know your customer. Somewhere near 100% of the U.S. senators are millionaires, and nearly all of them get even richer when they leave government. This leads to a situation known as “being out of touch.” As economists have shown, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, and that real wages compared to inflation have been in decline, especially since 1980. This is not a good way to do business and, eventually, it will catch up with you, as it did for congress in 1994 and 2006. Your customers are busy and, because of you, working harder every day, but, eventually they realize that “trickle down” means “piss on.”

6. Use your own product. This is not unrelated to number 7. Once you become a top government official in the house or senate, you will get healthcare—and good healthcare it is—for life. If you are in charge of producing a product (or refusing to produce a product) or regulating such a product's availability, you should live by those laws too. If the version of Windows you run at MS headquarters has magic features that allow it not to crash and bring on the blue screen of death, you should at least give your customers the same version, right? (See number 8)

5. Watch out for hostile takeovers. When a new boss comes in and starts replacing all the key staff members with people you know you shouldn't trust, look out. For example, when Bush puts the lawyer for mine companies in charge of mine safety, or when complete hacks with false resumes get put in charge of FEMA, watch your rear. Before you know it mass displacement (layoffs, firings, forced migration, etc.) will come. Sure, some forseeable "natural" event (a hurricane, a recession, foreign competition) will be the excuse, but--and you knew it all along--this group of bosses actually likes the hurricanes and has lots of friends running that foreign factory...

4. Don't kill your customers (too quickly or at all). This is an interesting one because the government actually does better here than in other areas. Philip Morris has shown that killing your customers slowly can still be a viable business model. The government's food pyramid, drug-approval system and its lack of universal health-care tend to emulate this model. If people die slowly and in ways that are hard to correlate with your product, then you might do quite well. If, however, your product kills quickly, make sure that the public is willing to make the sacrifice. Developing a strong mystique of manliness that is deeply interwined with the national identity is good way to do this. Marlboro man almost worked, but the government actually wins this battle with the second amendment and the military.*

3, 2 and 1. Get rid of unecessary paperwork and bureaucratic nightmares and focus on what you are good at. Now I know this is going to be controversial, but I'm not talking about taxes here, though I think there is a lot of room for improvement there too. I'm talking about cutting the size of the world's largest military. I'm talking about getting out of wars that are not doing us or the world any good. When the need arises, you can still create a large military—that's what happened in all the wars we won—so focus on your strengths. I'm talking about getting rid of health insurance companies that spend 25% of their budget on paperwork and management compared to medicare, which spends less than 10. (That is right, the government is more efficient at delivering healthcare than insurance companies.) So, lesson numbers 3-2-1: Cut out the middlemen and focus on what you are good at and on delivering it efficiently to your customers. The same goes for school vouchers. Why would the government give tax dollars to citizens to then send those dollars to private schools which have the right to refuse those students. Public education works—when you do it right and fund it. Focus on your strengths, such as not doing top 10 lists when you are really good at top 7 or top 8 lists. So, when I say focus on what you are good at, I really mean focus on being good.


*If you do happen to kill customers or if happen to some homicidal costs on your balance sheet, it helps if they are poor and brown and live in places like New Orleans, Baltimore, Iraq and Bhopal. This is immoral and not recommended, but the national media will probably let you get away with it as long as it does not adversely affect their shareholders or put "the system" into question.

Le rat des champs

It's been one of those days...



Here's more of her work:
http://www.elratondecampo.com

Crashing the System

Students in Global and Cultural Studies beware. The real world might be on your test. What do these things have in common?

ITEM:
Saner voices within the capitalist class, having listened carefully to the warnings of the likes of Paul Volcker that there is a high probability of a serious financial crisis in the next five years, may prevail. But this will mean rolling back some of the privileges and power that have over the last thirty years been accumulating in the upper echelons of the capitalist class. Previous phases of capitalist history-one thinks of 1873 or the 1920s-when a similarly stark choice arose, do not augur well. The upper classes, insisting on the sacrosanct nature of their property rights, preferred to crash the system rather than surrender any of their privileges and power. In so doing they were not oblivious of their own interest, for if they position themselves aright they can, like good bankruptcy lawyers, profit from a collapse while the rest of us are caught most horribly in the deluge. (Harvey, Introduction to Neoliberalism, 152-53)

ITEM:
There are two ways to read last night's sale of Bear Stearns to JPMorganChase for $2 a share:

1. There were no other bidders. Bear Stearns only other option was to file for bankruptcy this morning. And Bear Stearns's executive were convinced that that was not an option--that not playing along meant that everybody everywhere would look with glee on the filing of every criminal fraud charge against them anyone could think of.
2. Even with the Federal Reserve offering a put on the worst $30 billion of Bear Stearns assets, there is so much garbage in the closet that $2 a share is a fair price.

The market this morning believes in (2). I tend to believe in (1)--especially as JPMorgan is said to have set aside up to $6 billion to deal with litigation when Bear Stearns's shareholders and others claim they got a raw deal... (Brad Delong)

ITEM:
The nation’s fifth largest investment bank Bear Stearns nearly collapsed last week. It was saved only after the Federal Reserve took extraordinary measures to help JPMorgan purchase the eighty-five-year-old firm. The Fed has become the lender of last resort for other investment banks in a move that marks one of the broadest expansions of the Fed’s lending authority since the 1930s. We speak with Nomi Prins, an author and former investment banker at Bear Stearns, and Max Fraad Wolff, an economist and writer.

[Transcript of interview with Max Brad Wolff]
Well, I mean, I think it’s always tough to know exactly what’s going to happen. The way I like to do this in other lectures or my classes is to make the following point: there’s an epidemiology to this. And the discussion so far reminds me of the AIDS as “GAIDS” discussion, where we pathologize early victims as deviants who get some just punishment and pretend that it’s not a sort of pathogen entering a population where the sickest and most vulnerable fall first.

The sickest and most vulnerable people in the US money game are highly indebted, low-income consumers who tend to get subprime loans. In the journal—the mainstream journalist discussion, it sounds like there’s subprime people, like they’re born subprime in a special incubator with some kind of deformity. In fact, that’s a FICO credit score. And the poorest people get hit first and hardest by every economic disruption, because poverty means vulnerability in a market economy. So what we’ve seen in the beginning of a turndown of a long boom, a boom that really began in the early ’80s, is the weakest and most vulnerable with the most debt and the least income, the subprime crowd, hit—got slammed first, and then it sort of moves to the population, as “GAIDS” becomes AIDS becomes recognized.

And so, we’re—I think we’re in the early innings of this, maybe a third of the way through—half, if we’re lucky. Now, that doesn’t mean that the pain will continue to be so localized in finance. It’s already spilling out into the US macroeconomy. It is already an international phenomenon. And it’s heavily falling into retail. I expect severe difficulties in retail soon, and I expect greater difficulties in housing markets, because, actually, although it gets less press than I think it deserves, already 40-plus percent of delinquencies and default issue notices are moving out of the strict subprime market into what’s called Alt-A, Alt-B, and then prime—so, in other words, people between subprime and prime, and then cascading over into prime. We know this is a problem, because ten percent of all US homeowners are what we call “underwater”—they owe more than their house is worth. That’s a pretty serious amount.

And so, I see increasing bailouts with willy-nilly rewriting of federal legislation, which was done in those meetings. The JPMorgan-Federal Reserve meetings with Bear Stearns, in effect, redid American financial regulatory law, bumping an inactive Cox-led SEC out of the way, asserting Federal Reserve control in places and ways that had not been asserted before, and therefore front-running Congress and the presidency, which has been sitting on its hands, which is a little bit like the Glass-Steagall situation.

But now we have the Federal Reserve coming in to basically take out, not bail out, one firm to support all the other firms, immediately making available to them all kinds of access to cash and support they never got before, which, by the way, would have saved Bear Stearns, and in so doing—blasé, private meeting, no transparency—rewriting American financial legislation, while the President tells crazy fictional stories about Iraq and the Congress does fundraising for its next election, and is a byproduct that will be told later, what legislation to pass. I mean, it’s kind of surreal at this point.(Democracy Now)

Obama's Speech

h/t Obeygiant

It is rare that I link to the speeches of politicians in a positive way, but I think the rare occasion has arisen with Obama's discourse yesterday on race. Of course the media think he did not distance himself enough from Wright, and, of course, the media are wrong on at least two counts: 1) They cannot acknowledge the existence and need for resistance within poor and oppressed communities (because the media is blind to institutional oppression); and 2) because they do not hold other candidates to the same standard. Think: McCain and Haggee, Bush and any number of racist kooks. Anyway, read the words:

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina - or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend
Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time. (Link)

We all know something

I want to go to a conference like this.

"In his 2004 book The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowieki captured the spirit of the collaborative trends in media and society. The combined individual activities of many can provide an accurate understanding of even the most complex issues. “We all know something” is the underlying theme driving much technological and societal change. Although the well-crafted reasoning of experts will continue to play an important role in conferences, the more informal discussions and presentations at “unconferences” offer valuable exposure to—and, more important, the opportunity to contextualize—cutting-edge ideas.

The real emphasis should be less on technology and more on the affordance of the open dialogue that now defines the primary value of conferences. Whether a small-table discussion, a chat at the bar, or a contribution to the conference wiki, blog session, or Twitter-fest, the common defining theme centers on control. Instead of listening passively, conference attendees in each of these scenarios experience a high level of engagement and ownership. Web technology, to date, has best symbolized this important shift, since its decentralized structure does not reflect as strong a central position for the speaker or teacher."

It is surprising that those of us who preach about the open classroom so often subject others or let ourselves be subjected (some may say abjected) to such structure.

Like many, I believe that knowledge is social and that institutions that push toward proprietary or even secretive ends are so anathema to democracy that they should be avoided at all cost. Indeed, the costs of insular "knowledge" is high. Look at what the class of experts known as Wall Street has recently wrought. Look at the "experts" who got us into the war now entering its fifth year.

So it goes that we do not need to comprehend every detail of a topic to be informed about it. Understanding physics is necessary to understand how to build a missile. It does not take physics to understand that bombs are bad. Of course, we cannot be experts or even well informed about everything, but, on the other hand, we cannot abdicate our responsibility to inquire and to inform ourselves about the world around us.

My point is that if we are truly believers in democracy and building knowledge from within the social realm, we must learn to live in it, teach in it, and to demand it from others, whether in politics or academic conferences.

Large conferences, like large classrooms, are built on a flawed model. While they are efficient at delivering specific types of information, they are inefficient at creating new knowledge. The opportunities for networking and Q&A are simply too limited, and, as everyone knows, networking and social connections are why everyone goes to conferences. That probably why I've always felt more at home at, say, SE17 rather than the MLA. It's probably why I am happy at Whittier College too.

Here's a quote from John Dewey that alway lingers in the forefront of my thoughts: "A class of experts is inevitably so removed from common interests as to become a class with private interests and private knowledge, which in social matters is not knowledge at all."

While expertise is a real and valuable thing--would I want a neophyte building a bridge or a plane I was about to use?--it is all too easy for experts to forget that their power and "value" is socially determined and not intrinsically tied to their so-called knowledge. This is as true for the teacher as it is for the economist or the carpenter. While it may sound like knowledge represents one more market in which ideas are traded, that only remains true to a point. Dewey's phrase means more, because, implicit in the idea of an expert class lies the idea of class power. Once a group of, say, economists gain political favor (in academia or in Washington or Moscow), it becomes easier for that group to wield more power, to use political and social influence to skew the marketplace for ideas. The market, thus skewed, becomes less a bazaar and more a cathedral (to use the famous computing metaphor).

Expertise leads to more specialization and, often, self-aggrandization: I understand x and am therefore valuable to you; you should pay me more. I write complicated arguments based on math, philosophy and Science(!); you should pay me more. Our society tends to believe the experts even when the evidence should easily convince us of the contrary. How many CEO's leave companies in ruins while they grow richer? How long will it take to see that Greenspan's long reign and his bubble(s) are not the work of a good economist but that of a good politician? How many profs from Harvard or Yale supported the war in Iraq?

Don't believe me that specialists think they are really special? Look at this article by Harvard prof G. Mankiw:

NO issue divides economists and mere Muggles more than the debate over globalization and international trade. Where the high priests of the dismal science see opportunity through the magic of the market’s invisible hand, Joe Sixpack sees a threat to his livelihood. This gap in perspective grows especially wide whenever the economy experiences short-run difficulties, as it is now. By all indications, the issue could come to dominate the presidential campaign.

See? Economists are magicians, priests, scientists! Everyone else is a muggle-minded "Joe Sixpack." Again, let me ask how long will it take to see that Greenspan's long reign and his bubble(s) are not the work of a good economist but that of a good politician? How many profs from Harvard or Yale supported the war in Iraq (or go about blindfolded yelling "free trade!")?

Those are simple questions, and some would say naïve, but that is my point. Power, beliefs, news, hierarchical structures can make us blind to our own power and to the powers that be. Power makes us forget to be like children and to ask the simple questions, the ones that matter. Simple questions, like the simple needs of shelter, food and community, are the foundation for democracy and democratic economies, and, while simple answers are rare and should generally be avoided, simple questions are often the most revealing.

Sorry to be so long-winded, but I think this is important. I will be attending some unconferences this summer to hopefully learn something from some experts and to ask them some simple questions. Just think: what if Colin Powell had presented his "proof" that Iraq had WMDs at an unconference rather than the U.N.? What if the NYT's W. Kristol actually had to answer to some of the lies he gets from Newsmax? (I'll refrain from linking to that trash.)

Now I'm not saying that organizations and institutions have no place, for I think they do, but permit me to believe that if our world contained a little more democracy, a little more Web 2.0, it just might be a better place.

Gmail: Or the Importance of Interface

I'm not going to say anything new here, but I was just checking my email (I get from 40-150 messages a day) and I realized how much simpler and easier life is now that all my email gets forwarded to gmail.

Until recently I was using our college's outlook server to for 90% of my email. I was constantly missing emails, dealing with junkmail and spending time looking for old email.

Why was I having so many problems? Let me explain. At our campus, if you're not on your office computer, you need to use the outlook web interface. Since I am constantly all over campus teaching, working, meeting, or I'm at home, I almost always need to connect over the internet. Naturally, I just want to check email "quick and dirty like," as they say.

So the problem is that the Outlook interface is highly browser dependent. If you don't use IE (Internet Explorer), you're out of luck for quick browsing, using ctrl-select for multiple deletes and other "advanced" features brought to you by Microsoft. The worst part is that if you use Firefox (or if you can't use IE because you use a Mac), THERE IS NO SEARCH OPTION. (See the blurry picture)




That's right, you can't search your old emails.

That seems like a real hassle, and it is, but to tell you the truth, the search one gets using Outlook (through the web or off a brand new computer) is so crappy that it's pretty worthless anyway.

So no easy interface, limited usability, junk mail problems, no search, browser dependency...did I forget to mention that if you forget to log in as a "safe" user/computer, your connection times out after 10 minutes. How many long emails have I lost because my connection automatically timed out? Countless.

Luckily a free solution existed....Gmail.

Gmail is excellent for organizing, searching, tagging, reading, compiling conversations. It solves all the problems mentioned above. On top of that, I can download messages to any email program I want, use really effective filters, keep all my email, avoid almost all spam, search incredibly quickly. My gmail even spoofs my campus address when I reply to people at work so that they think I'm sending the mail from work.


What's more, I get a great calendar, on-line docs, pictures, etc.

Really, if you don't use gmail for ALL your email addresses, you should.

Thanks gmail.

Finally, no, I was not paid by Google or anyone affiliated with Google. If I'm waxing eloquent it is simply because a great wave of relief washed over me once my life was simplified. How often does life get simpler, huh?

Puzzling Evidence

Mike Wallace wants my body.
Elvis meets Nixon.
Tri-lateral commision.
Suburban soul-sucking.

The greatest movie ever made:

The End is NIE

Iran,Neocon,Bush,Politics

Well, the new NIE is certainly a revelation.  Now the neocons have to figure out another strategy for bombing Iran.

Creationists : Dinosaurs : Flagellation

I was thinking about Saint Mary Francis of the Five Wounds earlier today. Then I read about a mummified dinosaur currently being scanned in a giant CT scanner at Boeing here in Los Angeles. Art and life have a way of juxtaposing the strangest of phenomenons.

So now I'm trying to find the connection between these two disparate things: a self-flagellating lunatic and an immaculately preserved dinosaur (or immaculate deception and immaculate preservation). The only link I could find is that humans will now have even more DNA to prove yet again how insane the idea of creationism, of gods, of demons and the whole fundamentalist religion movement is.

Fragrant Monkey Tail

AtomFilms.com: Funny Videos | Funny Cartoons | Comedy Central

Elaboration on a comment...

I was over at "Election Central" this morning pre-coffee time and wrote

I guess I see this in a different light. The apparent contradiction between Larry C's lifestyle, voting record and party affiliation seems merely to be a surface phenomenon. In truth, the modern republican party gains its strength from men like Craig and others who have something to hide and the party has capitalized on these "dirty" secrets to make arm twisting a much more efficient mechanism. If a party thrives more on internal authority than coalition building, then that party can take advantage of secrets, lies and dirty laundry to ensure that business gets done. Starting with the president himself and going down, the power can be AND IS exerted through the skeletons in the closet. That is not to say that there is some central file cabinet with all the dirt (though, hey, that would be interesting!); rather, diffuse knowledge and constant surveillance of everyone by each other leads to internal social promotion the discipline of the republican village. Promote larry craig, he'll do what we say because...

Of course, there are plenty of people who get off from the very repression we see in the external tropes of republican behavior and those people are naturally attracted to an authoritarian party that makes their secrets all the more titillating. There are also plenty of men who will say they are not gay but who are quite happy with occasional man-on-man action. The latter are quite simply hypocrites. But let's not confuse hypocrisy and what has become a structural device for control, punishment and promotion within the "party of values."

I would add that the evidence for this is what I would call correlative but compelling: how do you explain the significant numbers of Larry Craigs or just gays in the party that hates gays? How do you explain the attraction of Bill O'Reilly's and Scooter Libby (both of whom having written quite explicit and sexually disturbing passages in their novels)*? How do you explain the fascination with authority? How do you explain the multiple porn stars who have met the president?

There is a connection, I think, between this behavior and the workings of the party and how power gets distributed. Ah, authority, uniforms, fascism! I think they think it's cute--really cute!

Coffeeeeeeee.

*I can't seem to find Bill's book. My loofah filter must be blocking it.

Peace

Peace would be good.

 

Just a thought.

In the Entertainment Section

You have to love de.licio.us. This is a screenshot of a recent page. Check out the entertainment section.

Overheard

It is always interesting to read the comments in these stories. I sympathize with those who believe that Whites fled "danger" and disorganization cities back in the 50's, 60's and 70's. That is what we are told, but, of course, it is only a half-truth.

Let's start with that "truth." Yes, starting in the 50's, then especially for the next couple of decades, a massive de-industrialization of cities were taking place. Cities like New York, which had significant social safety nets thanks to the revenues of large industries, found themselves feeling and looking poorer and poorer as industry declined and people began moving (with the help of "suburban planning" and policy incentives) to the suburbs. So, yes, it is "true" that cities were in fairly bad shape, but this was not intrinsic to cities as a concept; this was a global economic process where jobs were shifted overseas. (This has been going on for a long time). Cities thus seemed to become the locales of joblessness rather than jobs. Meanwhile, new income, building and overall growth created an illusion that suburbs were a more viable economy, while they are actually much harder to sustain in terms of energy and social networking.

Yet while cities did suffer because of global and national economic policy shifts (think of G. Ford's comment "Ford to NY: Drop Dead"), it was rather quickly realized that suburbs were not all they were cracked up to be. The news industry, which ideologically springs from and targets both the wealthy elites (who never abandoned the city) and the various classes of suburban Whites, portrayed and continues to portray the suburbs as a sort of paradise even though just a little investigation shows this not to be true. Poll after poll shows that people who live in dense urban environments feel safer and HAPPIER than those who live in the suburbs. Anecdotally, we also know that almost all serial killers come from suburbs, not cities. Make Davis takes the example of the infamous Night Stalker in L.A. He seemed unstoppable and made his terrible reputation in rich gated communities. When he actually tried to kill someone in the poor, densely packed neighborhoods of East L.A., he was caught.

But let's also talk about rural vs. urban. The murder rate is much, much higher per capita in rural areas than it is in urban ones. It only seems the opposite because the concentration of media attention makes urban centers look less dangerous. Why is this? Well, there are a lot of reasons, but one of the main ones is that rural life ceased being rural. Sure, it takes place out in the country and in fields, but its reason for being is no longer rural. What do I mean? I mean that rural communities exist mostly to feed urban ones. Factory farms and giant shipping infrastructures are part of the rural landscape, but they are urban inventions. This is why farmers, on the whole, are far, far more stressed than their urban counterparts. They are at the bottom of the production cycle, and believe me, everyone I know who has a chicken business, for example, says they are not working for themselves but for Goldkist. Any wonder then that rural poverty and insecurity are plaguing our country and our countrysides? Of course, you won't find that in the media. Our rural areas have been taken over by CEO's. They are beginning to fight back, but it may be too late. Regardless, let's not hide the fact that much of what is taking place in the countryside now is actually an extension of urban markets and urban market ideologies into the farm belt. Changing cities (inner and suburban) for the better can only happen in concert with agricultural reforms.

We've got to overcome racism (white-black AND sub/urban-rural) to move ahead. This is both a raising of political and geographical consciousness.

Capitalist Tool

Rich,Power,Capitalism,Solidarity,Class,War,Exploitation

"Forbes, Capitalist Tool."

Who thinks these things up? It's hard to read, but on the bottom right of the advertisement (which I found some airline's magazine), you can see "Forbes, Capitalist Tool."  I've alway thought of the Forbes family as tools too, so I'm glad they agree.

 

Anyhow, comments on the ad?  Here the neoliberal capitalists exploit the tropes of early socialism, suggesting that the capitalist class is in need of solidarity.  I assume this is so that they can pursue a war on the poor.

Ah, yes, those poor, poor rich people.  They need help! They need to come together!  Poor people ahve too many lobbyists in Washington!

Actually, exploiting the culture of victimization, it's the rich and powerful way. Between monarchy, eugenics, country clubs, private schools, slavery, tax policy and just flat out cultural capital, I'm wondering how the rich could have any more solidarity.

Mythmaking

Every time I complain about the lack of honest political discourse in the U.S., I need to remind myself that our "news" is 95% propaganda:

From Time:

The four most famous words of Ronald Reagan's Presidency almost were never uttered...

Honestly, is everyone in the the mainstream press a Republican? Do people think that the Soviet Union was not already imploding? Give me a break. I'm sick of mythmaking.

Disturbing News From Wall Street

Disturbing to me anyway. What Happens on Wall Street stays on Wall Street? (Unless you are one of the poor folks harmed by non-transparent financial systems and don't know where to trace it back to...)

From the WSJ:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. ranks as the most profitable securities firm on Wall Street -- reflecting its mastery of trading on the world's public markets.

Now Goldman is turning that franchise on its head, creating its own private system to trade the stocks of companies that don't want the scrutiny and regulatory burdens of going public.

The new system, GS TRuE -- short for Goldman Sachs Tradable Unregistered Equity -- was announced two weeks ago and made its debut on Monday with an $880 million sale of a 15% stake in Oaktree Capital Management LLC, an alternative-investment manager.

Prisons or schools

With California poised to spend more on prisons than on schools for the first time in state history, I thought it a good time to debunk that old left-wing talking point about choosing between prisons or schools.

As the San Quentin website tells us, you can have prison and school. Indeed, here are just a few of the possible opportunities you will have once you enroll in its exciting combination of practical training with liberal arts (Religion, Languages) education:

• PIA: Furniture manufacturing, mattress manufacturing.

• Vocational: Dry cleaning, electrical, graphic arts and printing, landscaping, machine shop, plumbing, sheet metal.

• Academic: Adult Basic Education, High School/GED, Pre-Release, English as a Second Language, Literacy Program.

• Other: Community Service Crews, Youth Diversion, Religious, Arts in Corrections, Victim Awareness, Drug Treatment/Diversion, Joint Venture, Computers for Schools, Eyeglass recycling, Bicycle repair.

San Quentin has some 5000 "students," each on an individually costumized track, and with some 2000 staff and adminstrators, you know that you will not be neglected.

I also see that Arnold is bringing out a new license plate with the DMV: "California: The Prison and Education State."

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with this state? (Answer: Republicans, Lobbyists, Media, Democrats--in that order.)

Let it be known:

Let it be known that there is no nation so poor, so desperate, so direly in need of help that the United States cannot hinder its development.

Still more correlations...

The NBER, of whom I can be suspicious at times, has an interesting paper out:

http://papers.nber.org/papers/w13097

Environmental Policy as Social Policy? The Impact of Childhood Lead Exposure on Crime
Jessica Wolpaw Reyes NBER Working Paper No. 13097
Issued in May 2007

Abstract : Childhood lead exposure can lead to psychological deficits that are strongly associated with aggressive and criminal behavior. In the late 1970s in the United States, lead was removed from gasoline under the Clean Air Act. Using the sharp state-specific reductions in lead exposure resulting from this removal, this article finds that the reduction in childhood lead exposure in the late 1970s and early 1980s is responsible for significant declines in violent crime in the 1990s, and may cause further declines into the future. The elasticity of violent crime with respect to lead is estimated to be approximately 0.8.

If it is true, even partially, let's put one more nail in the coffin of "tough" law enforcement and high-incarceration rates of non-violent criminals as the cause for dropping crime rates. Like so many things, crime is a complex system with phyical and social environmental factors. Three-strike laws are easy sells, but they are hard to prove effective.

Lou Dobbs and Cancer

Since spurious correlations have been on my mind this week, I thought I would bring up another one.

Lou Dobbs has made himself more popular these last two or three years by consistently bashing immigrants and telling people (while quoting only part of the statistical evidence) how much they are hurting the American worker. While most people don't see the wool being pulled over their eyes as this neo-liberal journalist diverts our eyes from real global trade issues, there can be no doubt that he is putting on a populist show that in the end always promotes an increased security apparatus for poor folk and increased liberty for the flow of goods and capital.

Anyway, right now he is quoting a completely debunked study about how Mexicans are bringing leprosy to the U.S. Just add it to the list of items he uses to manipulate the public into thinking he is a man of the people.

My own spurious but funny correlation, you ask. Well, last year my mother died of a brain tumor. She was a wonderful, generous person, generous to a fault, almost, and to say that she had more than a few friends would be an understatement. The number of people that she helped in her life cannot be counted, really. What's more, she was a Democrat and proud of it. That said, as she grew sicker and the cancer spread, she also gained an intense, cult-like interest in Lou Dobbs. His word became gold. For a while, I would quote statistics and argue with her. Eventually, I realized I was being silly: she was sick. I decided to just let her be and enjoy the last part of her life as she struggled to survive.

Now I would like to go on to say that maybe brain tumors cause you to put undue belief in jingoistic, unsubstantiated and hate-mongering punditry. Statistics would not bear me out here, though, as that would mean that nearly every Republican in America has a brain tumor. What I will say, metaphorically, is that we all suffer from the cancer that is 90% of CNN and 99.9% of Fox.