Day 1075: Harvard, The Strange Handshake
August 6, 2008 - Filed Under culture-society-history, education
This essay by a Harvard visiting professor of Social Studies shows the dichotomy of being a student (more so an undergraduate) at an institution which hires some of the best professors to run what is effectively an assembly line. The students work and learn, but do they really when they are the physical and intellectual hyperdistillates of once-hippie privilege? This is not to say that the young rich, in their quest for the degree of pedigree, cannot learn; the question is what do they want to learn?
Times Higher Education | All the privileged must have prizes
… Most of the students I encountered had already embraced the perspectives of the rich, the powerful and the unalienated, and they seemed to have done so with appalling ease. In keeping with the tradition of the American rich they worked exceptionally long hours, they were aggressive in exercising their talents, and on the ideological features of market capitalism they were unanimous. Their written work disclosed the core components of the consensus upheld by their liberal parents: the meaning of liberty lies in the personal choice of consumers; free competition in goods and morals regulates value; technological progress is an unmixed good; war is unfortunate.
… the students are the opposite of apathetic and indifferent. The new student rich have retained the radical energy of the 1960s, only to engage it in more lushly monetised competencies. The New Left occupied universities to protest against the bureaucratic hollowness of examination rituals and grading rationales. Now its children complete the attack on the authority of teachers, who are simply annexed to the management of student careers, drawn into a tacit agreement between corporation and client in which failure is not an option. I had to grade the students, and I had to grade them well. Everyone expected a recommendation letter.
… the sedulous banality of the rich degrades teaching into a service-class preoccupation whose chief duty is preparing clients for monied careers. The liberal flattery of the student is both sentimental and irrelevant. If youth is wasted on the young, is teaching wasted on students?
Day 1065: What’s Going On In India?
July 27, 2008 - Filed Under culture-society-history, desi / india, global, government
India is in bunker mode after a series of explosions killing three in Bangalore and 49 in Ahmedabad and Surat in western India. Many think this is the work of the ISI, Pakistan’s premiere intelligence agency, but no evidence to this effect has been unearthed. The Telegraph reports that a group that has stepped forward, which also admitted to the May bombings in Jaipur.
… A little-known group styling itself the “Indian Mujahideen” claimed responsibility for the bombings in an email sent to local television channels minutes before the first explosion at around 6.30pm yesterday. This message declared that the attack was retribution for the killings of Muslims in 2002.
Ahmedabad has a large Muslim population and these bombs were placed out in the open and not in temples and other places that Hindus frequent specifically. These attacks then were aimed at undermining India as a whole and not just at killing Hindus. Ajay Sahni, a terrorism expert at the Institute for Conflict Management in Delhi, agrees and tells the Christian Science Monitor,
“These people want to hurt the country in any way possible … Causing communal tensions is a secondary objective to that. If I wanted to whip up communal riots I would ensure that only Hindus were killed whereas these attacks are occurring in areas with mixed populations.” Indeed, Saturday’s attacks occurred in Ahmedabad’s old city, which houses many Muslims.
Regardless of such logic and a plea for calm, I’ll be surprised if the wheels of vengeance aren’t set in motion. Therefore, I am scared for family and friends all over the country and for people like this blogger who makes our fear and uncertainty pale in comparison to his.
Blasts everywhere; in Bangalore, in Ahmedabad; everyday; Are we the next target? Policemen are still diffusing live bombs … Government is calling confidential security meetings. What has happened to the country? Where are we leading? Is this the way India will lead to a bright future?
This morning, I listened to the first part of East Meets West on Wisconsin Public Radio’s To The Best Of Our Knowledge. Muslim scholar and author, Ziauddin Sardar, was interviewed and asked what he thought of a clash of civilizations between the West and the Islamic East. Sardar responded that, in order for there to be a clash between civilizations, civilization first has to exist; the West cannot occupy an Eastern nation and torture its people, while the response from the Muslim East has been equally irrational and barbaric. Applying this to Hindu-Muslim tensions in India, the current cycle of attacks and revenge on both sides is an unsustainable model. Furthermore, nothing, no amount of land or religious primacy, is enough for some parties and peace is not what they seek. To accede to their demands and, most critically, to turn into them is not the answer. When we respond in their fashion, they have won.
Day 1063: The More We Modernize
July 25, 2008 - Filed Under books, culture-society-history, energy
The more we inherently stay the same.
Re-reading Daniel Yergin’s The Prize, with some added experience and urgency, I’ve come across several gems like this description of energy consumers in the 1850s, before the advent of kerosene and petroleum. Sound reminiscent of people today?
… For those who had money, oil from the sperm whale had for hundreds of years set the standard for high-quality illumination; but even as demand was growing, the whale schools of the Atlantic had been decimated … For the whalers, it was the golden age, as prices were rising, but it was not the golden age for their consumers, who did not want to pay $2.50 a gallon - a price that seemed sure to go even higher. Cheaper lighting fluids had been developed. Alas, all of them were inferior.
Did Yergin mean $2.50 in 1850s money or the money of 1993, when the book was published? In any case, what cost $2.50 in 1850 would have cost $43.44 in 1993 and around $65 today.
Day 1054: Charlie Rose Interview With RMI’s Amory Lovins
July 16, 2008 - Filed Under culture-society-history, energy, government, science & technology
Charlie Rose talks with co-founder and chief scientist of the Rocky Mountain Institute, Amory Lovins, about renewable energy and energy policy. I don’t completely buy Lovins’s arguments against nuclear energy (topic for a separate post after more thought), but urge you to pay attention to Rose’s on-point questions and Lovins’s eloquent and far-sighted answers. We cannot afford to be under-informed on this critical aspect of our future.
In my opinion, neither presidential candidate or leading political party really appreciates what a sound American energy policy entails. Therefore, among other great insights, this is the single most important exchange in the interview:
Charlie Rose: “What would you like to see the next president say in his inaugural address and what would you like to see him do in his first 100 days?”
Amory Lovins: “… I would like to see the president do something very trans-ideological, cutting across party lines and perceptions in both political camps of what ought to be done. I don’t think very many progressive politicians understand that what we most need in energy policy is a dose of conservative economic principles, that is we ought to let always to save or produce energy, compete fairly at honest prices regardless of which kind they are - savings or supply, what technology they use, where they are, how big they are or who owns them. Let’s see who’s not in favor of that. Who’s not in favor of that will be all the free marketeers in outward appearance, but actually they are corporate socialists in free-marketeers’ clothing. It is very curious to me that many who profess to be political conservatives are the biggest subsidizers of their favorite technologies and the most opposed to real competition. Conversely, many liberals try to subsidize their favorite technologies as much as the other technologies are getting subsidized. Why are we paying so much of our energy bill through our tax bill? Let’s pay it at the pump or at the meter so we know how much it costs. Then we’ll know how much is enough.”
Day 1052: Eagles May Soar
July 14, 2008 - Filed Under culture-society-history, government, media
But weasels don’t get sucked into jet engines.
In 100 years I’d like to think that Tony Snow would be nothing more than a footnote to a dark chapter in our country’s history and that Bill Moyers would be remembered as a true patriot and hero. History, however, is written by those who win and to those tyrants who have won this country, parrots are much more noble than eagles.
Day 1049: Crackdown
July 11, 2008 - Filed Under crime, culture-society-history, government
On the exposure of elastic, boxers and briefs and, as my niece puts it, “the crack of daaaawn.”
Apparently, NOPD is not the only outfit that creates inane crimes and exorbitant punishment to go with them. When there is much else to be fought in the nation’s third most violent city, the Flint, MI police department spends vital time and resources on visual aids such as this one (via Reason):
Feel free to wander the streets if you put a cap in someone else’s crack, but by no means will you show your own.
This is nothing new to us Louisianans. When the reputation of the state is constantly at stake and federal corruption charges against him were in the balance, Louisiana State Senator Derrick Shepherd shepherded a bill through state legislature that would criminalize saggy pants. Thankfully, this bill was recently put to rest but not before taxpayer money was used to debate it.
Law enforcement does not understand that baggy/saggy pants often works to their advantage and gives us thirty- and forty-somethings a chance to laugh at Kids These Days. Besides, shouldn’t this law be applied to plumbers and the exposure of their proverbial butts as well?
Update: Is the graphic above also Flint PD’s way of expressing their dislike of Blue Man Group?
Day 1044: Small Freedom
July 6, 2008 - Filed Under culture-society-history, new orleans, the game of life
D and I spent the Independence Day weekend in Ohio celebrating my father’s 75th birthday. We ate, drank, dressed in fancy Indian clothes, entertained and ate some more. All we missed was a local fireworks display, but D experienced bits and pieces of a Bollywood flick in a language he doesn’t understand along with snarky, MST3K-style editorializing from the peanut gallery, a.k.a. my brother, cousins, nieces and me, so that made up for the lack of Flash Go Boom in the sky. I think.
Driving to the airport on Thursday afternoon, I mentally complained about the rising prices of gasoline, plane tickets, hotel rooms, gifts, you name it. How am I going to save as much as I want to at the rate at which I have to pay for all of the nonsense of life? My thoughts were interrupted by the sight of a man walking into stopped traffic at the corner of Poydras and the highway. With a deformed left leg, a resultant limp and the left side of his face distorted into a permanent smirk, this man in his fifties walked from car to car in the hot sun requesting money. The only accessible cash in my car was an old artichoke jar full of coins I keep handy for parking meters and the Crescent City Connection toll.
Thinking the man would think me a cheap skate for giving him nothing but a chunk of change, I hesitated momentarily. An inner voice told me such analysis itself is luxury. Give him the whole jar if you have to, you jerk. Lowering the window as the man walked up to me, I grabbed all the coins I could and placed it in his chafed hands saying, “Sir, I hope all of this change is alright with you. This is all I have right now.” He smiled at me and said it was fine. The light turned green and I was off to the state that’s almost a palindrome.
What is my handful of change or the dollars from the drivers from the surrounding cars going to attain? One small meal, a cold drink and a cigarette, perhaps? “Teach a man to fish instead,” they say. Go right ahead. Yet, I didn’t see anyone handing him a card for free fishing lessons. Meaning that it is so easy for some folks not to give a damn or a dollar and rationalize this decision with what ought to be done instead. I’d agree with their take on the matter if they help create and support legislation for the education and employment of the homeless, mental and physical recovery/coping programs for our disabled poor and a society which would never accept a handicapped, old American begging for money in the unforgiving heat of a southern July noon. But without such activism on the part of the able citizenry and some money, this man is screwed.
I’m okay. If you’re reading this, you’re probably okay, too. The rising price of living is an itch to some, a real bother to others, a huge life crunch for many Americans, but is murder on the homeless and those losing homes during this tough time for the nation. This weekend, my heart is with those who don’t have a car and a home, the rising energy prices for which they can then complain about.
What is my handful of change or the dollars from the drivers from the surrounding cars going to attain? Goodwill. Interaction. A reality check. The smile on a warped old face. Some aid. A small freedom.
Day 1040: WALL-E
July 2, 2008 - Filed Under culture-society-history, environment, movies/tv
What did you think the right would say about Pixar’s WALL-E?
I’ll never understand why resource parsimony cannot be a tenet of conservatism. It’s ok to mine the earth, create waste and expend energy as long as we do it in moderation. If we want ourselves and our children to live long, healthy lives with a respect for the fact that the earth is limited in what it can make and handle and that the waste has to go somewhere on this planet, why is this then an evil, liberal agenda and not a human agenda? Waste bothers me (even and especially when I create it) because I measure capitalism in efficiency and waste is not efficient. If the point is to make money now, irreducible excess and the future be damned, it will come to bite you in the butt in this lifetime, in the form of increasing pollution, crime and disease and decreasing health and quality of life. What’s the roadblock to comprehension here?
It all became clear to me on reading this post at the Culture War Blog. You see, eco-friendly movies will cause mindless drones like us to put environment over humanity which will then lead to “the devaluing of human life and the worship of creation rather than the Creator.” Yeah, ok then. Let’s just ignore that crucial fact that the environment includes humans and ruining ourselves makes us a sad lot of worshippers of the Creator. “I’ll go further and bet you a hundred bucks” that logic wasn’t the aim here.
Moving along. Despite that he dislikes the movie for its eco-friendly theme and will not purchase WALL-E products specifically and not Disney junk in its entirety, Greg Pollowitz over at National Review makes a good point.
All this from mega-company Disney, who wants us to buy WALL-E kitsch for our kids that are manufactured in China at environment-destroying factories and packed in plastic that will take hundreds of year to biodegrade in our landfills.
And so it goes.
* SPOILERS AHEAD *
The movie had me at Hello, Dolly! As dear, departed friend, computer artist and the best professor ever, George Cramer, always said, “Animation without a compelling story is a waste of pixels.” All the way from the rendering of grit and Soderbergh-esque lighting of WALL-E’s earth to the robot’s expressions, from the boundless wonder that WALL-E was allowed to express by his creators to his dance in the ether with Eva, the film was joyous and full of awe, reflecting WALL-E’s innocence and kind nature. I admit doubts. The kitschy, anthropomorphic love affair between two robots troubled me through a large part of the film until I realized that, 700 years in the future, artificial intelligence can be as intelligent and expressive as it wants to be. If HAL is a murderous paranoiac in a projected 2001, why not a robot who dances with a hubcap as a hat and who seeks true love in 2708?
Go watch WALL-E. The film succeeded in making me uncomfortable about how much junk we collect and dump out over the course of a lifetime, but also did not force me to disavow all plastic, shun my car and not get Chinese food in to-go containers after the final credits rolled. Just go watch the film for what it is.
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