Whatever I Want It To Be

A Not-So-Happy Birthday for the Magna Carta

2008-06-12T16:53:00.000-07:00

Not happy at all, given that the Brits just extended the amount of time that the law allows uncharged suspects to be kept in custody. I can't find the audio clip, but this morning the BBC included a snippet of a member of the House of Commons pointing out what should be obvious to Gordon Brown - that the bin Ladens of the world no longer need to work so diligently now that secular democracies are now taking it upon ourselves to curtail our own freedoms.

On this side of the Atlantic the Constitution has been at least as trashed in the last several years, motivated by similar fears and rationalized with those same fears. But Brit pols seem to have more balls than American pols; this Tory is so horrified by the decision that he's resigning his position. Then again, if one house rep resigned for each of the major constitutional crimes committed in the last few years (yes, that's a euphemism for the reign of the Bush administration), DC would be a ghost town in no time and who would finally prosecute the scores of offenders?

More Monbiot

2008-06-02T19:15:00.000-07:00

Now you can read George Monbiot's impressively clear-eyed account of how he came to attempt the Bolton arrest. Monbiot makes an eloquent and convincing case--take that, Michael White--on why Bolton, et al, deserve to have war crimes charges brought against them (note implied right to due process). Don't forget to read the comments. My favorites are from those who stick to the strict legalities: Monbiot's attempt wasn't an actual legal citizen's arrest, they point out. Thus missing the point, which is that so many unconscienable means of effecting all kinds of international policy and events have become so normalized that we now describe torture as "prisoner abuse." Etc. etc.

I know, it seems that I'm just a shill for the Guardian. In my defense, I run down the LA Times, NYT, Wa Po, BBC and the Guardian most days, and time and again it's the Guardian that I read more of more often, with the LA Times coming in a close second (writing for an audience presumed to be as sophisticated as the NYT's, but without the weighty pretense of the NYT's historical "paper of record" burden).

Not that the Guardian is beyond stooping to bits on the hair habits of pols. It's just that rest makes up for it, and more.

The Arresting George Monbiot

2008-05-28T19:39:00.000-07:00

A quick but substantial one I just came across during bedtime reading:

While George Monbiot (pictured here, via the Guardian) failed in his attempt at making a citizen's arrest of John Bolton, there's nothing to do but admire the effort. If the U.S. Congress won't go after war criminals, perhaps it's up to like minded citizens of of the world to do it. Sure, the American constitution suffers when our own don't act, but it might actually do that making-the-world-safer-for-democracy thing. And sure, it might cause a little havoc here, but imagine, all over the world, deserving officials from this administration (and there are of course no lack thereof) being arrested by common men and women of the world.

UPDATE: The Guardian's Micheal White--who wrote aforementioned story--talks about just what a war criminal is and whether or not Bolton fits the bill. Also, you can now find a slideshow of Monbiot's arrest attempt. Bolton received a warm reception, it seems:

"When he picks his nose, which digit does he use?" or: Why I oppose the 24-hour news cycle

2008-04-28T20:00:00.000-07:00

Because such a great portion of my adult life has been spent under the influence of the internet and the 24-hour news cycle it begat, my attention span is too short to read this entire article at the moment (okay, other contributing factors include the fact that I'm also stuffed full of home-cooked Afghan food and baklava and it's past my bedtime).

But I don't need to, really. All I need to know is that Charlie Brooker of The Guardian is writing on the idiocy of 24-hour TV news. The only point on which I beg to differ is the idea that the malady of the 24-hour news cycle is limited to TV. The Guardian itself, while not exercising the heightened levels of gratuitous curiousity of, say, the New York Times, has been to know to engage in its own form of speculation over nose-picking from time to time.

Image of the CNN center a la wikipedia commons, as per usual.

(Another) word on zoos

2008-03-31T19:01:00.000-07:00

The post I wanted to put up tonight isn't working out (yet).

But I've been especially bothered by zoo question - should they even exist? - since a kid and a tiger were killed at the San Francisco zoo last Christmas, so I'll offer this up for now.

I took my own not-quite-right post about that event down. On rare occasions, I'd like someone else to speak for me.
So, I give you a more articulate (and more sensitive) voice. Radio Lab is the master work of one Robert Krulwich and one Jad Abumrad. They make a great radio duo, but when it comes to zoos, as in this episode, I'm with Jad all the way.

FP Passport is Open for Business - I mean, Comments

2008-02-25T19:55:00.000-08:00

And it's about damn time. One of the best fopo blogs around--smart without taking itself too seriously, entertaining without dumbing anything down, fair without bending over to ridiculous lengths to get "both" sides--is now open for comments.

For years I just thought I was too techno-mojo-retarded to figure that part out, even after I subscribed to the mag, which I thought would get me special privileges. But, not TMR. Just kinda slow to figure out there was no comment function. Many a time I wanted to say something, only to hit a dead end. It was kind of funny to call that a blog when it didn't have one of the basic functions, but FP Passport is so close to making being a wonk fun that it could get away with no comments all that time, I guess.

I hope they don't mind my pulling the logo from the site. I am cheerleading for them, after all...

Rx for U.S. on Cuba: Chill Out

2008-02-20T19:07:00.000-08:00

As Fidel officially relinquinshes the reigns of absolute power to Raul, I want first to say: told you so.

In some ways, Fidel's fade out proves American hysteria was only that. No major upheavals, no mass exodus from Miami back to Cuba, just a quiet--and quite expected--passing of the torch to Raul.

Second, because this guy somehow channels all of my innermost thoughts on foriegn policy even though we've never met (I sadly admit that our eyes having met that day last spring while crossing paths at Columbus Circle doesn't mean much to him), I must plagiarize and paraphrase my own blog work here to remind you that: Fareed Zakaria is so f&#%ing smart, not to mention reasonable, especially on Cuba.

So I reiterate, 3 words: Secretary of State. You listening, Senator Obama? Senator Clinton? Especially HRC, as Zakaria's critiquing that failed U.S. policy towards Cuba while he's critiquing the problematic aspects of HRC's experience, and along the way he's indicting the Democratic establishment for allowing the neocons to define the terms of almost all policy debates over the last decade.

Pictured is the Capitolio, in Havana.

Four years late

2008-01-08T19:30:00.000-08:00

The Times is live blogging the New Hampshire primaries. Which is like, 4 years too late, but whatever. I can't really talk since I only got a cell phone 3 years ago and I'm about to give it up.

SO. I think it's hard to get live-blogging wrong, and I'm not going to pick on the Times for that. But here's yet another thing about what is wrong with journalism: take a tiny grain of partial truth or a stereotype, and plant the seeds that will turn it into narrative that gets rehashed from here to the first Tuesday in November. And this particular narrative will just be bad for everyone, but mostly for seriously reinforcing some gender mythology:

9:10 p.m. | It’s Just Emotion That’s Taking Me Over We’re hearing from one of our reporters at Clinton headquarters that the
women have turned out for Mrs. Clinton because of her display of emotion yesterday. That was the galvanizing factor. More to
you as soon as we have it.

In any case, it's looking like the primaries might actually be a competition after all. If HRC wins tonight, wouldn't it put all the political commentators' knickers in a twist if Edwards takes the next one?

UPDATE: Competition for both teams, with HRC and McCain taking NH, bonus that Romney came out ahead of Huckabee here to make things really interesting. That's more like it.

Out of the Dynasty Loop

2008-01-03T19:56:00.000-08:00

If Obama and Edwards can keep outdoing Hillary Clinton I could actually stomach voting for a Democratic presidential ticket once again (for the record, I've only ever written in 3rd party candidates, except when I made the mistake of voting for Bill Clinton in 92, and he promptly disregarded my advice on lifting the embargo on Cuba).

I'd prefer an Edwards/Obama ticket, but I'll take it either way and the pragmatist in me says it will be Obama/Edwards. You got your northern big city liberal and your southern democrat self-made man--that combo can carry the whole country--and both are way more likeable than HRC. And likability is what it's all about in November. Clinton/Obama would not be viable. Especially versus - it's early, I know - Mr. Congeniality Mike Huckabee. HRC is highly competent, but she is not electable (winning over New York state is one thing; winning over the country is another). Obama and Edwards: highly competent and highly electable.

But is an 8% lead really that shocking (as the LA Times characterized Obama's win)? Didn't we all know Obama was a strong contender against HRC? If anything, Edwards' showing is the shock, real coverage of his campaign having been forsaken for hoo-ha over an expensive haircut -- who knew he'd tie HRC?

My preferences aside, Obama/Edwards is a better choice than Obama/Clinton (maybe winnable) or Clinton/Obama for one very important reason: that administration would get U.S. out of the dangerous political dynasty loop.

Also. I gave up on CNN as a serious news organization a good long while ago. But nothing says trivialization of the presidential race like a news org creating an online video game called....Presidential Pong. No, I'm not going to link.

POST SCRIPT/UPDATE:
NYT one-ups LAT's hyperbole by describing the Iowa winners as insurgents. A senator and a governor, insurgents? Perhaps if Ralph Nader won a Democratic primary (in some alternate reality where that's legal as well as no pipe dream), you could stretch the word and describe him that way. But every definition and synonym I've just spent the last 5 minutes looking up all relates "insurgent" to some violent, radical element. I know I nitpick, but I feel entitled - it's the Times and they are reporting on the presidential election.

And there's more. David Brooks describes Obama as leading a juggernaut. In my crappy Webster's New World Paperback Dictionary (Third College Edition): "a terrible, irresistable force." In my much better Oxford Concise Dictionary (Seventh Edition): "institution or notion to which persons blindly sacrifice themselves or others; large overpowering force or object."

Brooks also calls Obama and Huckabee the 2 earthquakes. I know journalism runs on drama, but earthquakes? I guess the metaphor is more tone appropriate, but Iowa held a primary yesterday; it didn't foment a revolution, and neither have any of the candidates. This is what a presidential race is supposed to be like - a competition. It's not an articulate way to put it, but WTF?

BTW, Brooks does make some great points about why Huckabee's win should not strike fear into the hearts of anyone, including those who aren't so hep with the whole creationism thing.

Not actually so paranoid after all

2007-11-19T19:38:00.001-08:00

I've often wondered about the U.S. role in Pakistan's nuclear program, given the rather special relationship we've maintained with Pervez Musharraf, and then wondered if that wasn't a touch paranoid on my part. Sadly, not at all paranoid.

A friend told me about the new book, Deception, by the investigative journalists Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, published last month. It's late for me and I'm feeling a little lazy, so I'll just quote from the publisher: "The shocking, three-decade story of A. Q. Khan and Pakistan’s nuclear program, and the complicity of the United States in the spread of nuclear weaponry."

From the synopsis:

On December 15, 1975, A. Q. Khan—a young Pakistani scientist working in Holland—stole top-secret blueprints for a revolutionary new process to arm a nuclear bomb. His original intention, and that of his government, was purely patriotic—to provide Pakistan a counter to India’s recently unveiled nuclear device. However, as Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark chillingly relate in their masterful investigation of Khan’s career over the past thirty years, over time that limited ambition mushroomed into the world’s largest clandestine network engaged in selling nuclear secrets—a mercenary and illicit program managed by the Pakistani military and made possible, in large part, by aid money from the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Libya, and by indiscriminate assistance from China.

Most unnerving, the authors reveal that the sales of nuclear weapons technology to Iran, North Korea, and Libya, so much in the news today, were made with the clear knowledge of the American government, for whom Pakistan has been a crucial buffer state and ally—first against the Soviet Union, now in the “war against terror.”

Everything news is old

2007-11-15T19:23:00.000-08:00

And Jeremy Olshan proves it on his new blog, Unchanging Times, where he gently takes the Times to task, comparing Times stories of old with today's so-called news.

It's not clear that he has it out for the Times per se, but since I kind of do, I'm extra pleased.

Must-see doc TV

2007-10-30T17:49:00.000-07:00

Wanna see even-handed? I'll show you even-handed. Richard Armitage and Mohammad Jafari, among others, share more or less equal time on the same Frontline program, Showdown with Iran.

I agree with many of the comments-- never does the American press give the background on the CIA-orchestrated overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953 (it's called history, which actually goes go back farther than 1979), which, 50-plus years on, still looms in the memories of many Iranians and does much to explain the current regime's preoccupation with asserting its sovereignity. Nor do I care for the title, which reflects the standard narrow and flawed narrative of the U.S.-Iran relations story. But overall, far and away better than most. One hopes it's enough to give pause to all but the looniest of those beating war drums in the direction of Iran. (Disclaimer: a good friend worked on this program, but given our shared tendency to critique press coverage of Iran at any opportunity I don't think the relationship has done much to cloud my perspective here.)

The well-designed and very user-friendly Frontline website is a treasure trove of extras, from full transcripts of interviews to behind-the-scenes with the crew to the comments (which the producers respond to, at times). Does anyone else think that public broadcasters make some of the best use of the web for multimedia? (Therefore I will chalk up my inability to find the correct Watch Online link last week when the program premiered to my own crappy tech mojo.)

Jafari is slightly better looking than Armitage, which is the only reason he gets the pix, above.

Best. Lawsuit. Ever.

2007-09-17T18:36:00.000-07:00

God (!) knows what the hell I've been up to.

But State Rep. Ernie Chambers could tell you exactly what he's been up to: making a case against the powers that be. The Power, that is.

Chambers, a state rep in Nebraska, is suing God for terrorist activity (floods, famines, wreaking general havoc).

Check out the great alliteration in the list of charges. And props once more to the FP blog (that crew doesn't seem to miss much).

I'm just wondering where you find a dozen peers to serve on a jury panel in a case against God.

It's been one trashy year

2007-08-26T16:48:00.000-07:00

One everydaytrash-y year, to be exact.

In that short time, everydaytrash has brought us the Weekly Compactor, Trashtastic Tuesdays, Literary Trash Week, Artistic Trash Week, introducted me to trashion, been named the world's foremost garblog, and much, much more. Almost makes you glad there's so much trash in the world for the blogging.

So, props and ovations, my friend.

Loyalties old and new

2007-08-17T19:30:00.000-07:00

Yes, that's Thierry Henry in home colors.

Not Arsenal home colors, but Barca home colors.

While Gio and Guily, my old favorites, are gone.

This is the thing that always got me as a kid, when I'd follow the Padres and the Chargers (almost religously). I couldn't comprehend how a player could be "sold" to another team. Because....it was a Team. A Home Team. I stopped following the Padres when Steve Garvey came to play first base. How could they let a Dodger on the team? It was all blasphemous to me.

I understand economics of sports marginally better now, but the logic of markets doesn't apply to the irrational logic of loyalty, and doesn't assuage the idealist in me much more than it did when I was 9 or 10. It will take while to get used to this very new team.

A small decline in the double standard

2007-05-30T04:06:00.001-07:00

Sort of, according to the Guardian: FIFA says female futbolers should wear tighter shorts, while German World Cup officials wanted all those boys to go topless.

No great conspiracy

2007-05-28T07:08:00.000-07:00

This is one of the most poignant and concise indictments of the war in Iraq that I've come across.

I Love Loren

2007-04-19T17:49:00.000-07:00

Because she's so smart and because she has eloquently and respectfully taken the sometimes annoyingly bleeding heart Nicholas Kristoff to task.

Give and Take

2007-04-19T17:41:00.000-07:00

Nightgrapefruit may not remember pronouncing me genius(!) for ripping out individual New Yorker articles to read on the longish F-train ride to meet up for our weekend runs in Prospect Park (I'm entertained but don't have to sacrifice the entire mag at the end of my journey for the sake of a run), but for the record, I agree on the assessment. I also take single pieces on shorter rides when I don't want to carry a lot of stuff around and need insurance against boredom (even an inveterate people-watcher sometimes gets bored watching other trainriders).

Anyway, this is how I only recently found myself reading Margaret Talbot's profile on the journalist Orianna Fallaci, written last year, several months before Fallici's death last September.

I was momentarily fascinated, then quickly appalled, by Fallaci. I have an intuitive bias against journalists who become - and mostly it's because they allow themselves to become - celebrities. And, bigots like Fallaci are unappealing on their face. While a curious creature - her anti-Islamic vehemence is startling and therefore a cause for wonder - in the end she comes off blindly angry and single-minded (if not exactly simple-minded), and therefore is inherently boring. Fallaci reserved an acute vitriol for Muslims in Europe and the most recent wave of Islamic cultural presence there, particularly in her native Italy:

“They live at our expense, because they’ve got schools, hospitals, everything,” she said at one point, beginning to shout. “And they want to build damn mosques everywhere.” She spoke of a new mosque and Islamic center planned for Colle di Val d’Elsa, near Siena. She vowed that it would not remain standing. “If I’m alive, I will go to my friends in Carrara—you know, where there is the marble. They are all anarchists. With them, I take the explosives. I make you juuump in the air. I blow it up! With the anarchists of Carrara. I do not want to see this mosque—it’s very near my house in Tuscany. I do not want to see a twenty-four-metre minaret in the landscape of Giotto. When I cannot even wear a cross or carry a Bible in their country! So I BLOW IT UP! ”

To be fair, I have read none of Fallaci's work, but as this woman who concerned herself, ostensibly, with broadening human freedom (and whose parents were anti-fascists during WWII in Italy and suffered for it), I was sad to read that outburst (the likes of which she was apparently very well known for).

I perked up a little later, though, when I happened to visit the Arabist (their site has been down a lot the past few days), where I found
this bit about an exhibit on Islam in Italy now on at the Met, and learned that Venice holds the distinction of being the city where the first Koran was printed, and that denizens of the same town learned how to blow glass from Syrian Arabs. (Arab not always equating to Muslim, of course, but you get the point).

Perhaps it is better that Fallaci is no longer in the neighborhood to endure the presence of this exhibit (she lived for years on the Upper East Side before returning to Italy shortly before her death). Imagine the damage her shouts of denial at the quiet but thunderous facts of cultural contribution and adoption might do to the delicate objets d'art in the Met.

Wear It Out

2007-04-19T16:58:00.000-07:00

Seems that the UK shares the view that global warming is our true collective enemy, and went to the trouble of telling the UN security council so.

Use It Up (everyday trash in absentia)

2007-03-15T11:19:00.000-07:00

NOTE: Since I'm have used up all my blogger techmentality mojo and can't seem to figure out basics of posting via wordpress, I'm temporarily posting items for everydaytrash here. We'll move 'em over when Leila returns.

Apologies to everydaytrash faithful who thought they need not fear trash withdrawal while Leila ventured to other continents. I will spare you any excuses and just get down to it.

So many efforts are made to look to the future to solve our trash-related challenges that I wanted to take a brief look to the past. Before "Reduce/Reuse/Recycle" became a household mantra (if not yet a real habit), there was World War II and a slew of resource conservation propaganda. Back in the day, there were extensive efforts to encourage individuals to cut back or do without in almost every aspect of everyday life - do you really need to go on that trip? Are you preparing your home for winter so that you use the smallest amount of fuel needed? Suburbanites, have you planted a victory garden on your property so that industrial farmers can sell more of their food to support soldiers overseas?

I can't resist asking the obvious rhetorical question about why no similarly widespread federal initiative exists today. For those who don't want to call what's happening in Iraq a war, (or, reasonably, would prefer not to think of Iraqis as the enemy), there's always the real and universal enemy of global warming to rally against.

In any case, for your historical reading pleasure, here's a great short from Straight Dope at the Chicago Reader, reviewing which WWII efforts were beneficial (most) and which were mostly propaganda designed to boost morale (one or two). The Decatur Daily talks to folks who lived with rationing as everyday practice. More pix from wartime poster propaganda like the above (don't you love how innocently racy the Use It Up poster is?) can be found here (fair warning that plenty of these are far from PC). And, back to the present, San Francisco revitalizes the victory garden for 2007.

Dry and Droll

2007-03-11T20:07:00.000-07:00

But you need not be Brit to find the BBC's program (programme) Recorded for Training Purposes funny, all sketch and satire. I love the fake ad for pc fruit products, whose claims include that "We make the Body Shop look like a Japanese whaling vessel."

Then, there's homegrown smart radio humor, too.

When Winning Is Losing

2007-03-06T18:20:00.000-08:00

I won't resort to the s-word epithetics of my Man Utd-supporting coterie of friends, but Beatles orginators notwithstanding, Liverpool is not among my favorite locales these days, its futbolers having lost to Barca yet somehow still having managed to knock 'em out of the champions running.

I'm not about to shift allegiances from club or sport, but this whole "you can win the game but lose the championship spot" is probably part of the reason this game still has a bit of a difficult time in the U.S.

Deco, above right, in away colors.

Verdict

2007-03-06T14:41:00.000-08:00

One down, four score and 7 (give or take) to go.

What a Mess

2007-03-02T18:15:00.000-08:00

I’ll be guest blogging over at everydaytrash while co-conspirator nightgrapefruit is on the other side of the world for a couple of weeks.

If you haven’t found everydaytrash yet, we're not talking parishiltonnicolerichie trash. We mean dirty, smelly, nasty trash, the kind that you probably just drop down the garbage chute or set out on the curb and don’t think about again, even though you should. In Leila's absence I will deliver the second-finest in trashy news and commentary from all corners of the world.

For the moment I'm figuring out how to post on Wordpress, but will be spewing forth soon enough.

Grits

2007-01-25T20:06:00.000-08:00

I found the note below in my e-mail queue this morning:

Dear Kimberly,

Beginning in April 2006, we collected online data from you and over 600 other participants. The study you completed helped us learn more about grit, defined as passion and perseverance for long term goals. Gritty individuals have consistent interests over time and pursue goals even in the face of failure. Individuals who score lower on the grit scale are less persistent and more likely to move frequently from interest to interest. Though individual questionnaire scores will not be reported, these results, obtained from the entire sample, may be of interest to you as a participant.

As expected, gritty individuals were more conscientious. Grit was also associated with an agreeable disposition and extraversion. Grittier people were more satisfied with their lives. Grit was highest among participants aged 65 and older and lowest among participants aged 25-34. Ratings of grit by self-report closely matched those of friends and family members. That is, our conception of our own level of grit seems largely aligned with the conceptions of our intimates.

Unfortunately, we are not able to answer individual queries about this study at this time. However, we do appreciate your participation-thank you!

Angela Lee Duckworth, PhD
Positive Psychology Center
3701 Market St. Suite 209
Philadelphia, PA 19104

215/898-1339 (office)
215/573-2188 (fax)
duckwort@psych.upenn.edu (email)
http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~duckwort/

***

I have a vague recollection of reading some pop-psych article on happiness a while ago, online, and clicking through to some survey. I'm slightly disappointed that the researchers won't provide my own personal score on their scale of grittiness. But mostly I'm curious about a couple of things. If grit was highest among older participants, isn't that likely because older folks have had more time to be persistent over time, or have learned that it takes time to achieve long term goals, or that people in general grow more concerned with what they make of their lives as they grow older and therefore may work harder as they age to guarantee acheivement? And nothing in the summary about correlations of gender with grit?

Stay tuned. I may just work up enough grit to look into these and other grit-related questions.

Public Libraries: Good for Brains, Good for Business

2007-01-24T06:21:00.000-08:00

That’s what a new study by the Urban Institute says.

I needed no convincing, but I can always use an excuse to post a pix of my favorite public library: Seattle’s Central Library, here.

From the Philanthropy News Digest summary:

“The study relates specific ways local governments, agencies, and libraries are working together to benefit individuals, agencies, and the community at large in four areas: early literacy services, employment and career resources, small business resources and programs, and a physical presence that contributes to stability, safety, and quality of life, while attracting foot traffic, providing long-term tenancy, and complementing neighboring retail and cultural destinations. Capitalizing on these strengths, libraries can fuel not only current but also emerging economic activity.”

Chronicles of Coups

2007-01-23T20:30:00.000-08:00

Ryszard Kapuscinski, Polish chronicler of coups and revolutions, has died.

The BBC photo makes him look like a toiler, which I don't doubt - he wrote about dozens of upheavals. But I much prefer the photo in the facing page of my Vintage International paperback copy of Shah of Shahs. It makes him look like the Prince of Darkness, a mischievous and malevolent glint to his eye, an effect heightened by his big arched eyebrows, and completed by the crooked grin that just bares his teeth. I suspect it might be a more honest photo - someone so exposed to so much violence and turmoil often propelled by evil must take some kind of satisfaction from seeking it out again and again. Or perhaps it was just escaping a death sentence not once, but four times, that gave him a gallows humor. Then again, this one, pulled from the Wikipedia commons, has a touch of the charming, erudite intellectual about it and seems genuine enough.

The only work of his I've read is Shah of Shahs, assigned last year for school. I think he underestimated the role that memory of Mossadegh and the 1953 coup played in the consciousness of Iran in 1979 - Kapuscinski dismissed Mossadegh as ineffectual and inconsequential. But he seemed masterful at illuminating the mass psychology of living under two back-to-back interpretations of brutality, first the Shah and his Savak, and then the Ayatollahs and their Komitehs. It's usually so easy to think of behaving as a unfree person impossible from where I sit, but not after reading Kapuscinski. It's time to pick up more of his work.

Futbol Facts

2007-01-18T19:40:00.000-08:00

I e-mailed my first draft of my master's project off on Tuesday, and had enough time in the afternoon to stop in to catch what I thought would be an easy Barca victory over a less accomplished team. After Barca was up 2-0 early on, the boys clearly thought it would be easy, too, and started to play that way. Until they found themselves facing a little guy named Wellington and a 2-2 tie shortly thereafter. What I thought would have been a boring game in an almost-deserted bar turned into quite a thrilling 3-2 win and made up for my having missed too many matches lately. Victory is always sweeter when it's hard-earned.

First half drink: bloody mary
Optional: meat pie
Second half drink: guinness (usually only when needing reinforcement during a close match, like Tuesday's against Alaves)
51% of reason for supporting Barca: mas que un club
49% of reason: There's not a bully or grandstander in the bunch. Plus Ronaldinho has the grace to never forget to say thanks to God for helping him look good. And then, as I have previously observed, Frank Rykaard always looks gorgeous in a suit.
Hero of the day: Saviola
Possibly edging out Gio as my fave: Guily.

May Cooler (and Smarter and More Courageous) Heads Prevail

2007-01-18T19:04:00.000-08:00

Days after the U.S. dispatched a second set of battle ships to the Middle East, the BBC reports on efforts underway in Congress to force President Bush to seek its approval should he pursue an attack on Iran. If the resolution did manage to pass both the House and Senate it would hardly guarantee a more clear-eyed policy. Remembering my favorite bogus Power Point presentation a la Colin Powell in early 2003, I would never underestimate the ability of something of far less substance to effect events of great material impact. But I find the possibility of a resolution a little heartening in any case.

Elsewhere, FP's blog notes the obvious potential parallel of current U.S. rumblings in the direction of Iran with the Gulf of Tonkin farce that got the U.S. mired in Vietnam. The only thing I really take issue with in the FP bit is Mike Boyer's suggestion that a Tonkin-esque instigation to justify an attack against Iran seems far-fetched. If the original trumped up Gulf of Tonkin incident and the aforementioned Power Point tell us anything, it's that all those seemingly far-fetched wacko notions are disproportionately effective at starting these sorts of things.

Finally, I was surprised back in October that the American press did not make more noise about Daniel Ellsberg's (pictured with Mrs. E, above) call in Harpers for insider Bush admin wonks to do earlier for Iran what he tried to do for Vietnam by leaking the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg encouraged wonks like himself to reveal the administration's secret plans (perhaps now less and less secret on a day-by-day basis) to attack Iran. You'd think the Times and the Wa. Post, the financial beneficiaries of Ellsberg's risk (not to mention beneficiaries of that little old Supreme Court case involving prior restraint) would love to get their hands on such documents. It would at least sell papers, if not protect the national interests that might be served by preventing another nasty and immoral war.

P.S. Meanwhile, as the U.S. bemoans Iran’s nuclear ambitions, likely years from fruition, bigger and brawnier China surprises the world by getting its ballistic satellite-destroying missles off in space right now.

East - West

2006-12-26T18:40:00.000-08:00

Laugh at the clever Aljazeera headline for this story about Wal-Mart in China ("Walmart Hosts Communist Party"), cry at the sad irony that none of the chain's U.S. stores are unionized.

Aljazeera's English-language cable TV channel launched a short time ago, with all the media junkies and critics keeping a close eye. Never mind that they've had an English-language website for a while - one would think in the age of bloggers and ubiquity of the net, that would've garnered more and earlier attention. The website relaunched when the TV channel went live; the colors are less jarring now, but the page is too busy, like too many of its contemporaries; I liked how the old version stuck to basics (including linking to their Code of Ethics on the frontpage, unlike others, which are buried half a dozen clicks into to obscure pages, if they exist at all). One thing that the website is still doing, though, along with the TV channel, is not always starting with the same predictable slew of top international stories that CNN and other competitors run. Aljazeera is covering news as if the world doesn't start and end in the West.

The Evangelist

2006-11-29T19:40:00.000-08:00

I read last month that there is talk of making Ayn Rand's tome Atlas Shrugged into a film. And I remembered that, despite my bona fide teenage obsession with Rand's work (I'm pretty sure I read it all, and went to Objectivist meetings too boot for a while), I had never seen The Fountainhead on film. Netflix rectified that over the Thanksgiving weekend. I also recently picked up a (mericifully) cheap copy of the book.

I can see why The Fountainhead appealed to my teenage self: all the iconoclasm, all the idealism, all the homage to human creativity and freedom (I managed to overlook the ideological and economic implications of Rand's work at the time). I'm here to report that the film (for which Rand wrote the screenplay) is oh-so-very true to the book, but not for the qualities that attracted me to the story as an adolescent: it's overwrought, histrionic, and lacking all subtley. My adult self cringed and giggled all the way through the film, and cringed and giggled all over again when I opened up the book. It's not that I don't still find aspects of Rand's basic take on what makes people tick useful or accurate to some degree. It's the evangelical hypercapitalism that gets me - along with all the drama.

P.S. Ha - one of the external links on the Rand wiki page takes you to The Atlasphere, a dating and networking site "Connecting the admirers of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged" ! - I'm just not sure why Anthem didn't make the cut?

If you would like to comment on my choice of image, just note this was the only commons image I could find....

Inventory

2006-11-16T19:23:00.000-08:00

I just noticed how long a lapse I've had here. Rest assured I've been thinking about writing, but potential posts are in various stages of edits. Too many things seemed interesting to me in the last month, which is a good thing. But now I have to get around to finishing up my thoughts in some semi-tidy packaging for posting here. Until then, here's a summary of topics of works in progress:

The passage of what would have been the 100th birthday of Hannah Arendt, and what she really meant - not what most of us think she meant - when she coined the phrase The Banality of Evil - and all kinds of heavy stuff about the nature of human freedom.

The announcement that Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged will be made into a film ( I've got the old Patricia Neal * Gary Cooper Fountainhead on the way to me via Netflix), and my adolescent foray into the inner sanctums of the Objectivists. Also included: how I somehow squared this with my burgeoning socialistic views.

George Orwell: we all must read his nonfiction, as well as fiction, from a very early age. If his undiluted moral sense didn't permeate our collective consciousness and make the world a far better place, most of the English-speaking parts of the world would at least write much better.

An inventory of a recent visit to San Francisco, including wondering just why cars appear parked in the middle of the street there, ostensibly for church. Double parking in NYC is nothing compared to this. Plus a comparison the Public Libaries of Portland, OR, Seattle, WA, NYC, and SF. And maybe something about how New Yorkers are spoiled by having so many Great Public Spaces.

Polar Bears are shrinking, along with the polar ice caps.

When We Were Kings (the film) and how Muhammad Ali is, unlike most of the people we so easily bestow the title upon, an actual hero, and why. And how I coincidentally ended up watching Street Fight, about Corey Booker's first mayoral campaign in Newark, right after Kings, and therefore must compare one old school black american hero with one new school black american hero-in-the-making.

My cab ride coming home late from work tonight, during which the young Turkish driver showed me it is possible to be both supremely cynical and idealistic at the same time, and with grace.

The Useful and the Beautiful - Meet Here

2006-10-11T14:58:00.000-07:00

Once more, Art, meet Wonk...Wonk, meet Art.

See?! HERE’s what I mean about The Municipal Art Society (MAS).

MAS, in conjunction with Brooklyn Speaks , has just reminded us about their June call for Forest City Ratner to revamp its plans for the Atlantic Yards Project (16 skyscrapers, 18,000 seat arena), citing 5 design and planning principles:

1. Respect the character of existing nabes (i.e. reduce the density of the project and don’t build megaskyscrapers).
2. Public streets should not be eliminated (keep 5th Ave open)
3. Create a real public park (don’t pretend that strip of green behind the skycrapers is going to be geographically inviting for locals who don’t have access to proposed skyscrapers)
4. Promote lively streets ( by promoting the small businesses that characterized the area, and not overshadowing them with skyscrapers)
5. Deal with the traffic increase that will be created (by actually coming up with a plan for it, including improving public transit).

Check out the featured Brooklyn Speaks slideshow contrasting the current Ratner “vision” with what is and could be. You can also add your name to those who support the Brooklyn Speaks.

I keep the 2003-04 Annual Report for MAS on my desk, because in addition to being the most useful and beautiful (my two principles for anything) annual report/ advocacy tool combination ever, it quotes, over a photo of the lawn at Bryant Park, their founding members from 1893:

“To make us love our city, we must make our city lovely.”

Volunteerism

2006-10-03T18:23:00.000-07:00

I find it interesting and disturbing that when the BBC asks its readers How to Stop School Shootings (in response to the PA Amish killings), virtually all of the responses focus on gun control.

I agree that the U.S. prediliction for guns is a big piece of the puzzle. But what no one seems to acknowledge is that in so many of these cases, the killers turn the guns on themselves. That suggests to me that these acts are about desperate attention seeking, and like more straightforward forms of suicides, when covered by the press in ad nauseum, this post-mortem attention encourages similar acts.

The public has our Right To Know, but i'm not sure we always need to know about things moments after they happen. My First Amendment Fundamentalist status notwithstanding, I propose press organizations voluntarily (no gov't compulsion involved here) simply stop covering school shootings on a breaking news basis. Don't descend en masse, and don't take satellite feeds. Maybe leave it to the local old-fashioned print media to send a few reporters out. Leave the cameras behind. Then, in a few days or a week, put it on page 2 as a post-event analysis. Or don't cover it at all. It seems plain that all that media doesn't prevent these things from happening, and I really think it may be part of what prompts others to act similarly. There are plenty of violent events that don't get any coverage. Why shouldn't school shootings be the same way?

The Polar Bear Post

2006-10-01T04:56:00.000-07:00

When I first read about this guy who decided to get really close to a captive panda, I thought the guy gave the Panda a gash that required stitches. Thankfully, it was the other way around. And, the facility (not a zoo, but more like a breeding facility) says it won't punish the perp (i.e., the guy, not the bear).

This interests me because in my long-delayed post about the 1987 polar bear attack on a 12-year old who'd taken a swim in the bear's moat in Brooklyn's Prospect Zoo, the bear was most definitely punished with a swift death by responding emergency services officers (the Gothamist panda bit links to the Times Select articles about that event). The kid *was* killed, mind you, but he was also messing around after dark in a zoo full of wild animals that was off limits, and entered the bear's moat on a dare, suggesting that the 3 kids involved knew they were flirting with danger. Don't think that I'm some animals-should-have-the-same-rights-as-humans type, or that I'm not sympathetic to a terrible result of the oh-so-typical behavior of a 12- year old kid.

But polar bears are easily the largest, most aggressive, most defensive, strongest, toughest mofos among mammalian carnivores. Barry Lopez's chapter on the bear in his book Artic Dreams is highly recommended. It's practically a love letter - a deep appreciation for what is an astounding being. Auugh. He describes the bear from behavior to physiology, including the amazing and efficient hairs that keep in warm in its chilly home, and the reprehensible record of man's interaction with the bear. It's an homage that helps you understand why the Inuit traditionally respect and fear the bear in equal measure, without ever having to visit up north. (Lopez' book is fascinating even if you aren't interested in the Artic).

Most of us don't get drunk or dared and climb into zoo enclosures to, for whatever reason, be nearer the animals. But I still have to wonder what zoos actually teach us about wild animals, and especially what they teach us about our place in relation to them. I grew up with the zoo and wild animal parks in San Diego as my main form of weekend entertainment; my mother has Super-8 footage of me gleefully cavorting with the goats in the petting zoo as a toddler. I had a stuffed raccoon until I was 8 or 9. I got as close as the chainlink fence and 6 inch glasses permitted me to see the tigers (always my favorite) at the wild animal park. I have a natural fear and awe of things that are bigger than I, and owed at least in part to the zoo, an appreciation. But I wonder how much that natural fear - and therefore, appreciation - is diminished when, after watching Gus (pictured here) at Central Park Zoo mellow and swimming, an 8 or 10 or 12 year walks into the gift shop at the zoo to see a dozen cutified and stuffed versions of Gus there for the purchase.

The Impoverished Competition

2006-09-29T14:13:00.000-07:00

I've been very good about not pouting that no one else here appreciates the star power of Shahrukh Khan.

But I did notice the other day that around the corner from SRK's billboard sits another billboard with another famous bollywood face for another shi-shi brand of watch - and it's the son of Amitabh, Abhishek Bachchan, pictured here.

I must say, though he might have daddy's classic good looks, as for charisma....he doesn't come close to Khan, and the face on that billboard may as well be of any reasonably handsome mortal walking the streets below. I can't imagine what the ad folks who thought he could vie with SRK had in mind. Sorry, Abhishek. You're no match for Shahrukh.

Art Meets Wonk

2006-09-25T15:38:00.000-07:00

The Architectural League is one of those many places in my adopted hometown that so consistently and constantly produces fascinating projects that I’m often overwhelmed by its opportunities. Of all the Don’t Miss exhibitions, competitions, panels, and projects they are always offering, Architecture and Justice: Criminal Justice as Urban Exostructure is Definitely Don’t Miss.

This particular exhibition and program look at mapping incarceration and return rates in different American cities, and the policy implications of those patterns.

But it also reminds me of other policy implications in the relationship between architecture and incarceration. My work sometimes takes me to a small town upstate; the big shiny new high school is built on a site originally meant for a prison. When the town's NIMBY elements managed to block the prision, to save money the municipal authorities used the same blueprints for the prison to build the school, changing key features but also keeping the cellblock system in place. The shape of a building - at least in theory - says everything about its function, and the message to the kids who attend is obvious. That’s some policy implication.

And-
The Architectural League is housed in a gorgeous building at 457 Madison Avenue that is The Urban Center with another of my favorite NYC art-meets-wonk agencies, the Municipal Art Society, which champions urban design and planning and “believes that the physical city -- its light, air, land and open spaces -- and its sensible development are critical to New York's continued economic health and social well-being.” Check it out.

More Rx for Dubya: More Deep Breaths

2006-09-14T10:09:00.000-07:00

I am shocked! Simply shocked, I tell you, to learn that
the U.S. may have distorted its report on Iran's nuclear program.

I shouldn't make light....but....eh. At least they didn't send poor Colin Powell out with a Power Point as Exhibit A this time round.

No response yet from DC.....

UPDATE: I'm a bad blogger and posted after reading the BBC report but not reading the U.S. report or the IAEA's reply. Let me start over.....

I am shocked, simply shocked, to learn that the U.S. DID distort its report on Iran's nuclear program. Here's the IAEA reply to the U.S. Report. Read it - it's short, and quite informative.

Do-Gooders

2006-09-13T14:02:00.000-07:00

The cynic in me says, "Eh, right, next comes the corporate logo!" But the cule in me says, "I'm so down with Barca's new UNICEF logo!".

Plus, discovery: it's not the action photos that make coach Frank a hottie. It's the suits!

Tee Hee

2006-09-08T16:52:00.000-07:00

From the j-school's blog, I wish I had half the attitude and half the aplomb this child sports.

Rx for Dubya: Deep Breaths

2006-09-06T19:57:00.000-07:00

Fareed Zakaria is so f&#%ing smart, not to mention
reasonable, especially on Iran.

3 words: Secretary of State. It’s not a new idea, but Senator Obama? Senator Clinton? Are you listening?

Links are working now.

[TK: Da Bears]

2006-09-06T18:00:00.000-07:00

stay tuned....by special request from nightgrapefuit

SRK

2006-09-06T17:30:00.000-07:00

I can't get away from Shahrukh Khan because he's all over my nabe: most recently he's appeared on a billboard for some shi-shi brand of watch, decked out in black leather, slicked back hair, and familiar brooding pout. He's crouching, I presume to make himself slightly more accessible to the mortals he looks down upon. The ad asks: what are you made of?

Shahrukh Khan is made of about 100% charisma, but my thing for him started as distaste. Not only am I too old for and was never really prone to worshipping superstars (til futbol, that is), but I used to get intermittently and somewhat unwillingly dragged to Bollywood films. These were almost always too long, too musical, and too melodramatic for me to really enjoy. And for melodrama, Shahrukh seemed to me the worst. It's as if he studied all the subtle facial gestures of classical Indian dance forms and interpreted each as impishly, even vulgarly, as possible. Too far away and over the top for me. So relegated to a regular diet of Bollywood, I took a little solace in the more elegant, lowkey, and mature Amitabh Bachan. Classically handsome, understated - Amitabh (who was just in town, kind of) was the opposite of Shahrukh's histrionic prettyboy.

I don't remember when this changed - maybe the black combat pullover worn in Mian Hoon Na did it, or maybe the dancing in the streets of Flushing, from Kal Ho Naa Ho. Whenever. I cringe to admit it, but at some point, all the invisible, cumulative power of SRK finally got to me.

That I would like to think I'm too grown-up and above getting all distracted by some supposed hottie superstar on celluloid makes me all the more appalled when I find myself pretending not to be looking at all the SRK posters in all the video shops down the street. And this recent Guardian interview makes him all the more appealing. Not many other megastars would, in contrast to complaining about sacrificing their privacy or ability to travel in peace, admit to loving that they need 6 bodyguards everywhere they go (but only 2 in most parts of the UK and US), and that they live for the adulation and attention of their one billion fans. Also, evidence of: smarts (Econ degree!), progressive-ness (he's Muslim, married to a Hindu), and generous (contributes a great deal of the ridiculous amounts of money he makes to charitable causes)!

SRK claims there are tons of better-looking Bollywood actors than him. But it's not true: take an already ridiculously handsome or beautiful person, add that much of the invisible, omnipotent ingredient that is charisma, and you've got what gods are made of.

Obit

2006-09-04T17:31:00.000-07:00

Everyone's probably heard by now, but Crocodile Hunter Steve Irwin was killed yesterday by a (usually docile) stingray while shooting a documentary.

When I had cable, his show was don't miss TV. Sure, he seemed to get too close too easily to really dangerous animals a lot of the time, but I loved his dorky and infinite sense of wonder and awe in the face of all those crocs, deadly snakes, and other creatures as only a former wanna-be zoologist, or maybe a child, could.

Proving that there's an obit ready to go for anyone who is anyone, the Beebs' Irwin obit is here, but doesn't mention how he died.

UPDATE: Here's a much better obit/tribute to the man, and it's from one of my least favorite news sources, The New York Times.

More on Prior (Self-) Restraint

2006-08-31T17:36:00.000-07:00

About the NYT blocking Brit web access to that terror suspect story yesterday, Poynter's oneliner from Chris Floyd put it better than I did, in less space.

British Due Process v. The American First Amendment

2006-08-29T19:35:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling very First Amendment Fundamentalist tonight. Hence, a rant.

Should I not have been surprised to learn, while perusing Foreign Policy's blog, that The New York Times has blocked British users from accessing a story that details evidence against those being prosecuted for the airline bomb plots that resulted in this most recent wave of heightened airport security?

I'm not familiar enough with Brit press law and whatever their equivalent of federal law is, so I could be missing something. But blocking access to information that a few enterprising reporters - or enterprising others - are able to gather just never seems like a good idea to me. While I understand that the Times' explanation basically says the paper is covering its legal arse, FP hints at why it is probably not such a good idea for this sort of thing to be enforced:

"The Internet frequently collides with Britain's phenomenally restrictive press laws. In 1997, Jack Straw's son was busted selling cannabis to an undercover reporter. But because he was a minor, his name could not be revealed in British papers. It was, however, all over the Internet and the London gossip scene."

Yup.....gossip and rumor are likely to fly far too freely in the absence of substantiated facts. And while part of the intent of the Brit restrictions might be to limit prejudice against the defendants, seems to me that rumor is far more likely to taint opinion than reporting that is based in fact.

Since the Times is an American paper, I don't understand how it might be subject to British press law; and I can't ever imagine the Times of the NYT v. Sullivan or the Pentagon Papers cases subjecting itself to what to me amounts to a form of prior restraint. Or, in this case, prior self-restraint.

Barcelonista

2006-08-21T14:22:00.000-07:00

Sick cats and vet bills preclude crosscountry travel, so I hadn't yet realized that my vacation, scheduled to start last Sunday, actually started the previous Saturday evening. And it started not in Seattle but New Jersey - a bad sign had I been anywhere but Giants Stadium.

I'd been drawn into Barca unwillingly by Franklin Foer's praise, and no sooner had my newly adopted team won the Champions League than a friend, a regular Virgil of futbol, pointed out they'd be here for this friendly in August against the Red Bulls.

It wasn't Camp Nou, but in our case that was another good thing, because we'd never get 6th row seats there like we had here. I hadn't realized how close the 6th row goalside really is - it's *right there*, and I see could all Puyol's messy locks bouncing up and down as a trainer led him through pre-game warmups (later I figured out he was injured, and as captain, and a Catalan local, he's a crowd favorite, and couldn't not make a showing). Gio looks just as much a little kid in real life as he does on bigscreen bar TV, possessed of the unselfconscious sangfroid of a 10-year-old. Except, that is, when his own team's goalie yelled at him for invading his territory, and Gio tried to pretend he wasn't bothered (as when you didn't want to admit your parents were rightly admonishing you for torturing the neighbor's cat). I finally realized that my soft spot for Gio is not actually a la the hottie kind of soft spot, but because he actually reminds me of a friend's nephew, who is (objectively) the sweetest and most darling 10-year-old ever. Unlike Deco, Gio doesn't sport any haught in his attitude, hence he comes off more 10-year-old than worldly futbol player with athletic charisma to burn.

That said, Deco's slightly haughty athletic charisma suits him well, and Marquez is in the same category. Giuly I just like because it's fun to say his name over and over in my faux French accent, and because he's more than solid. Favored star child Ronaldinho would normally bore me as the overdog, except he smiles too much and has too much fun the whole time - he's all joy, plus all talent. (Towards game's end, when it was time to vote for the player of the game, his name showed up on the board as Ronlahdo de Assisi....eventually fixed). Eto'o - love his compact efficiency, even if he didn't have the greatest of nights. And, while Messi is great fun to watch with his longhair wonderboy partner on the pitch, I was a little annoyed with the ungraciousness of the large Argentinian contingent in the crowd who more or less "Messi-ed" Eto'o off the field. I know that in reality this was coach Frank Rykaard's decision, but Eto'o put up an excellent effort and just ended up having a bit of a crappy night.

I never got a good enough look at Rykaard to see if looks in life, as he does in still photos, a bit shaggy and not very attractive, or looks as dashingly handsome as he does in moving pictures. But in any instance, his exuberance when his team performs beautifully is arresting. When there's any decent reason to explode into a smile, Rykaard easily throws off the serious look that other coaches often envelope themselves in. Better yet, he transforms into Brother of Gio, as he did during what I think was Barca's 2nd and winning goal in the Champions' League game: running 'round with arms out, like a kid who's imagination and ecstasy (natural, not synthetic) transformed him into a airplane on a runway, about to take off. Contrast this with the tight, controlled downward pumping fist and dour face of Arsenal's head coach (I'm not a real futbol fan, so I don't know the guy's name) and it's easy to prefer Rykaard. I also love the noncomittal, everything is everything, zen attitiude about his team that comes across in the few interviews I've read. All that relaxed control equates to something close to mastery.

The evening's 4-1 victory was made all the sweeter by the happy accident of having found the Nevada Smith's Barcelona contingent right above us, next level up, keeping the spirit. Not that more spirit was needed in the sold out crowd that seemed to be about 95% Barca supporters, home turf for the Red Bulls notwithstanding. And when finally we made our way out ensconced between cadres of Brazilian and Argentinian fans trying to out-do each other in post-game chants the bubbling panic in my gut told me that no matter how much fun it might be to squeeze into popular bar matches between sweaty futbol boys, I probably do not have what it takes to get through a match outside the U.S. (So funny that Ronaldihno and Messi compliment one another so well on the field, but their respective national fans haven't found the way to translate that cooperation to their fandoms.) We made it out to the outrageous bus line, and got lucky to find a friend of futbol's virgil to let us cut the line. Hours later back at the Port Authority, I stumbled my way to the E train back to Queens, futbol-star-crossed and half asleep, surrounded (judging from all the jerseys) by lots of other Barca fans.

Also, I make no apologies for naive or ignorant omissions or misstatements above. I'm new at this, and gaffes are permitted and necessary.

Now, which way to Camp Nou?

Detour

2006-08-13T04:28:00.001-07:00

I was about to post my big list of Things I'm Going To Do In Seattle, where I was supposed to spend two weeks. However, due to circumstances beyond my control, it looks like I'll be spending my summer vacation right here in NYC.

I'm still adjusting, but it's not a bad place to spend a vacation. Perhaps I will pretend to be a tourist and at last check out the view from the top of the Empire State Building.

Namesake & First Amendment Fundamentalist

2006-08-03T12:33:00.000-07:00

Lenny Bruce was found dead 30 years ago last week. I suppose I named the cat after this guy because I could then pretend that the spirit of Lenny Bruce was always near. Not the overdosing, lawsuit-obsessive, betrayer-of-friends part of him, but the part of him that would keep up his routine city after city, knowing he was more likely than not to be hauled away to jail again and again, just for using the f-word. I'm not sure he's a First Amendment martyr, as some would cast him, but he was definitely a First Amendment Fundmentalist (I'm so making the t-shirt), the only kind of fundamentalist I can appreciate.

If I attribute this photo to Getty Images via the BBC, does that make it okay to use here? I hope so.

In the future: fewer photos of people, especially icons.

Speculation & Succession

2006-08-01T10:01:00.000-07:00

Oh, the flurry of speculation about whether or not Fidel Castro is dead now that Cuba has announced the handing over of temporary power to his brother Raul! And then there's the flurry of speculation about how Cuba will change with Fidel out of power or dead. Will the Miami exiles return en masse and reclaim their posh homes and sugar cane plantations? Will capitalism overnight quash decades of the red menace that festered in the backyard of the U.S.?

I don't think Castro is dead, and while I'm pretty sure there's lots of talk in Havana today about the (temporary or not?) hand-off, I also don't think it's the shocker for Cubans there that the U.S. government would like it to be. During rallies on Havana's Plaza de la Revolucion the crowd for years has alternated between chants of "Fidel! Fidel! Fidel!" with "Raul! Raul! Raul!"...that's some seriously strategic succession planning.

Addiction or Compulsion?

2006-07-28T12:38:00.000-07:00

On Monday I walked into the campus bookstore for file folders and I walked out with file folders and 2 new books:

The Journalist and The Murderer by Janet Malcolm & Public Editor #1, by Daniel Okrent

I don't need any more books.My stack of Books To Read was 41 books high Monday morning. Now there are 43. I've read only 3 books since April. Plus months of barely touched New Yorkers, forsaken for the Paris Review, which I've half-read both issues, but then, that's only quarterly so you see I have a problem. I started in on a collection of Orwell essays on Monday and am still not done with the first.

Some of my lack of reading time can be attributed to a very dense summer session course, the reading for which was the equivalent of at least a few volumes.

But I'm about to start work on my masters project again and I'm not sure how I'll be able to get to any of these books.

Just picking out a few for my impending vacation seems daunting.

I avoid bookstores for this reason. Libraries are also dangerous places, but on my list of things to do while I am in Seattle is to Be In the New Central Library At Least Once Every Day. That's the "Living Room" of the library pictured above. I'm in love with Koolhaas' building, and perhaps I will take many books and curl up in one of the big nerf chairs and read lots and lots.

The Longest To Do List Ever

2006-07-13T12:08:00.000-07:00

In lieu of harassing my friends by sending them “we have to eat here” “and here” “and here” e-mails and then forgetting or being overwhelmed by all the great options we have when it’s time to chart new dining out territory - kind of how I used to walk into video rental places pre-Netflix - I’m dedicating this post as the To Do List: Places I Must Eat in NYC Before I Die.

Here's something I came across via gothamist today. There are so many reasons to be in love with this city, and a 24-hour Belarussian deli is one of them:

Belarus II, 495-497 Neptune Avenue, Brooklyn, 718-373-5595

New Food To Dos will appear (probably very) regularly in the comments here - feel free to share recommendations.

And if you wanna get serious about it, check this out.

This Arendtian Thing

2006-07-11T18:31:00.000-07:00

When co-conspirator nightgrapefruit talked about being a bit bored with her blog recently - "it's not really *about* anything" - and pursuing a trash blog, I panicked. I'm down with the trash blog - I'm angling for the sr. trash reporter position - but what I like about the slight random-ness of the current incarnation of nightgrapefruit is that when she's far away, or when weeks in the busy city go by without real time meetings, I can still visit and maybe see what's up, where she's been, or what she's been thinking about. I'm not a big fan of the more exhibitionist forms of personal blogs - I have this Arendtian thing about what belongs in public and what belongs in private....but I do like how ng's blog reflects her trajectory without indulging in exhibitionist declarations that amount to TMI.

I started here wanting to take public radio to task specifically and taking the idea of objectivity in journalism to task more generally. Instead WIWITB has been an intermittent mish mash of all kinds of stuff. I like the idea that my own blog could reflect my trajectory without subjecting friends and the idly curious to the more prurient details of my private life. I'm less interested now in critiquing what I love and hate about public radio. I'm far more interested in building a critique of the idea of journalistic objectivity and collecting examples of why and how the field can and should abandon its quest for balance and do its work much much better. For one thing, it's a quixotic quest, and not in a good way. More importantly, to paraphrase what someone once said to Tucker Carlson, it's hurting America.

But, I like that wall between public, and, well, semi-private. And since there is so much media criticism out there that takes on the broad spectrum of journalism, I very much like the idea of focusing on one aspect, especially outside the overly simplified context of right v. left, or Fox v. CNN.

So, bifurcation it is to be. This semi-private place remains Whatever I Want it to Be. So if I feel like pretending that cheese grows underground like potatoes, or want to write about how I am simultaneously repelled and attracted to all the posters of ShahRukh Khan that dot my nabe, or be outraged when the Bush Administration accuses the New York Times (not my favorite paper) of treason, or review my restaurant week experience at The Mercer Kitchen, that's here.

Personal Equations will be over at:

http://personalequations.blogspot.com

and will be up and running shortly. And since it is important to have a grand ambition - nothing half-assed about it this time around - it will take on the mission of Exploding the Myth of Objectivity in Journalism. Bookmark, visit often, and comment.

Nonaligned News Service Launches

2006-07-02T09:01:00.000-07:00

From Al Jazeera -

"Developing countries have introduced an internet-based news service intended to provide an alternative to the Western media that they say is biased."

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/0689B772-774D-4C0B-A223-A3A9FE70393D.htm

Rx, in Memoriam

2006-05-24T19:17:00.000-07:00

"Listen: You don’t feel well, so you go to see the psychiatrist. And the doctor listens to your story. And, if he’s a good doctor, he’s listening for the parts of the story that are making you feel sick. His job is then to help you tell a new story about yourself, especially one that will make you well. Newspapers are the same way. Journalists are telling each other stories about themselves that are making them sick. So the remedy is to tell a new story about journalism that will help make journalism healthy again."

Roy Peter Clark posted this and many other snapshot quotes and stories that he heard from James Carey over the years. Carey, among many other things, was a preminent communications scholar and professor at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and passed away May 23rd. RPC's tribute is here:

http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=101795

Carey was a charming, eloquent, and thoughtful little old man with bright twinkly blue eyes. I sat rapt in the front row of the last Critical Issues course he taught at Columbia in the Fall of 2004. I should have taken the evening course with another prof, made convenient for part-time students, but it was easy enough for me to take long Friday lunch hours to sit in with the full-timers. I made a point of sitting front row right, the better to watch and wait for Carey to take his turn with co-teacher, Steve Isaacs. Because while Isaacs could hold the room alternating between soliliquy and bullying commentary out of us, Carey's spare and wise words were the punctuation that made meaning out of Isaac's passion.

A Beautiful Fairy Tale

2006-03-27T20:10:00.000-08:00

OR - A Random Off-Topic Theory

I'm pretty sure that cheese grows underground, like potatoes, fertilized by olive oil.

Right now I'm particularly obsessed with the variety of ways we have to savor food. Underground cheese was a theory I developed in a very quotidian e-mail exchange with a co-worker about our favorite foods. She suggested that this theory sounded like a beautiful fairy tale. Doesn't it?

They throw up their hands, then wring them.

2006-03-26T13:58:00.000-08:00

Four or five years ago the New York Press was one of the better weekly reads in the city. The old writing corps - the ones who almost all had a bit of an edge with little pretension, and whose pieces I mostly wanted to read beyond the first graf no matter what their political persuasion or subject matter- they've been gone for a while. And Steve Weinstein provided me with yet another reason not to pick up the The New York Press on a regular basis. Factchecking isn't an important part of the Press' editorial process:

http://www.nypress.com/19/11/pagetwo/conterfeit1.cfm

It's SW commenting on the Nick Sylvester brouhaha at the Village Voice (a weekly that, with a couple of exceptions, I'm sorry, has mostly bored me beyond tears forever despite its storied history). When Weinstein says that editors can't be held responsible when their reporters fake the news, I've got to ask, what is the point?

I had to laugh especially loud when he bemoaned the Press' inability to hire fact-checkers - because they can't afford them. Ummmm - ain't getting the facts right kind of a basic principal of the practice? If your readers can't trust you to make a reasonable effort at accuracy beyond trusting your reporters, why should they read your paper at all when they can visit the fiction section of B&N? Since Jayson Blair, lots of publications have come up with ways of tracking their reporter's work, for example, with random deep fact checking missions. The Press is a WEEKLY even. It's not like they've got a phalanx of ambitious cub reporters in the city room clamoring for A1 and shoving supposed scoops in Weinstein's face at 2 am every morning, or whatever time of day those types clamor in the metro editor's face. And Weinstein is a BOSS, right? That means oversight rests with him, and he takes responsibility - or should - when something goes wrong.

This reminds me of the Times' internal report on the Blair fiasco. You read more, it seems, about how embarassing it was for the paper than what a betrayal to its readers it was that all those editors allowed Blair to continue writing. I don't think it's idealistic or unrealistic to expect level A pros to step back and just say they're responsible, and figure out how to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Lewis Lapham wrote an an essay in the July 1981 issue of Harpers called Gilding the News, about the Janet Cooke incident at the Washington Post. Cooke won a Pulitzer for a story about herion-addicted kids. After the prize, we learned that the lead character in the peice, Jimmy, was a composite of several characters, and that Cooke lied on her resume. Gilding The News still holds up today and it's still a better piece about what's wrong with journalism than any other commentary I've read since Blair, Glass, or Sylvester. I'll dig around to see if it is online.

It's an interesting book, but I'm a slow reader

2006-03-23T16:16:00.000-08:00

Three quarters through the book and I'm still not sure what Foer is up to. I'm not sure how one makes a case for globalization by demonstrating how global capitalism has kind of fucked, or at least not really fixed, football.

The top Italian clubs throw the umpires. The Ukranians import Nigerian players, who are then treated poorly and whose playing style is unappreciated and stifled. The Serbs worship a war criminal who runs their key club, and he's eventually assassinated. The Brazilian football barons of yesterday co-opt Pele until he is bankrupt, who remakes himself only to make new financial mistakes with the barons of today. If this is how great globalization is for football, I'm becoming convinced that Foer must be making the case against. Or else he's making the case that it's just such a great sport that no amount of whack corruption can ever hinder its popularity.

More Sheltered

2006-03-13T19:17:00.000-08:00

But not from Europeans, conspiracy theory, police intervention, or death threats... A story in tomorrow's Guardian about a Pittsburgh area school board that dropped the International Baccalaureate (IB) for being too foreign:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1730530,00.html

(I'm using Safari and last time I checked I can't link any other way. I'm too lazy to see if that has changed).

It's just one more thing Republicans seem to be disagreeing about lately. From the article:

"The irony for Upper St Clair is that the Republican district board members who have banned the IB are going against the views of the president. Despite his disdain for the UN, the Kyoto protocol, the International Criminal Court and many other international institutions, Bush specifically called, in this year's state of the union address in January, for expansion of the IB programme.

Despite the cost of the Iraq war and America's ballooning deficit, which is robbing social, health and educational programmes of funding, he announced an extra $380m to boost IB initiatives and a homegrown alternative called Advanced Placement."

A similar recent effort in Fairfax , VA failed. Maybe the Virginia contingent didn't call their opponents Marxists enough times as did the Upper St. Clair anti-IB camp.

To be fair, the guy who received death threats was in the anti-IB camp.

And I just noticed...BBC uses the term "The American President" - at least in its radio programs. The Guardian does not. Hmm. I guess they haven't got the the AP style guide, eh? Anyway, I wonder what the rational is at the BBC v the Guardian. I have to say, I like the British press more and more the American press less and less. The brits still have a healthy adversarial tone to their reporting and their commentary that is more and more rare here.

Sheltered

2006-03-13T18:22:00.000-08:00

That's me.

The week before last I was near Sarasota on a visit to family. I'll skip much of the whining I've done to friends and just relate two things.

I took a few runs through the subdivision and - creepy - simply sensed that if i didn't say hello to everyone i came across, I stood a good chance of being reported by the Neighborhood Watch. And because I wanted to run more than I didn't want to greet strangers, I said hello to all of them. Running in Central Park, I love being around all those thousands of other people but what I love just as much is that I'm not obligated to be fake nice to a single one of 'em. Also, while my nabe does not have Neighborhood Watch signs and I'm sure there's no group here, I've come home at 4 a.m. to plenty of civilians also coming in. I feel much safer back here. Perhaps for southerners its not about fake nice, but for me, it was.

Did i mention the giant confederate flag flying at one of the houses at the end of one of the cul de sacs in the next subdivision over? I just don't understand. It didn't comfort me that there was an equally giant American flag flying above it. I just don't know what to make of it, and I didn't have to guts to keep running right up to the middle-aged man sitting out on the well-manicured lawn and ask about it all. I turned right around before i got to end of the cul de sac, and kept running.

Typical liberal reaction.

Less seriously, and not Florida specific, but it was one of the first things that I heard off the plane and it still makes me laugh:

Overheard at the airport:

Grandmother (yanking her little grandson out of the path of the oncoming car at the terminals' curb): Do you WANT to get hit by a car? Is that what you want?

Grandson: ...yeeeeees?

Many a time in the city I've wanted to ask the grandmother's question to my fellow nyc pedestrians.

Football, and All Kinds of Enterprise

2006-03-06T18:33:00.000-08:00

I have made some headway into How Soccer Explains the World, by Franklin Foer, my first leisure reading since I took the term off school. It was sitting at the top of my very tall pile of books To Read since sometime last Fall.

Foer undermines his own premise, I think, when he says that dislocation and economic conditions can only do so much to explain the more virulent forms of soccer hooliganism (and I do hope he is going to get past the hooliganism parts). So, he discards the arguments a lot of the key critics of globalization (in its institutionalized form; I’ll make a distinction about this later) have made (so we expect he's going to end up as an apoligist for globalization and I'm pretty sure that's what he's after). But in the very next graf, he says the football hooligans in Yugoslavia took more cues from African American gangster rap than their material condition, ignoring that gangster rap very much developed, if not exclusively certainly in large part, as a response to dislocation and economic deprivation. He also seriously misuses what Hannah Arendt meant when she described the banality of evil, but I promise to go off on that later.

The book reads like sophisticated historical Cliff Notes for ignorant Americans who don’t want to feel as if we’re being ignorant – it’s an easy read without being a dumb read. I’m learning stuff and he’s a very good writer to boot.

Finally, the book is mistitled. The book is much more about how geopolitics explains the popularity of soccer and how vociferous many of its clubs’ fans are. It should be called How International Politics Explain Soccer. At least so far. I am only one third in.

So institutional globalization vs. De facto globalization. De facto globalization is my own little conception – it’s just that aspect of the human condition in which societies are mixing, trading, and colliding. Certain trends and ideas ebb, others recede. It is inevitable for political geography and economic geography to heave and groan as we shift ourselves around forever and ever. People both prosper and founder under it, but there is nothing inherent in de facto globalization that undermines the human enterprise.

Institutional globalization, on the other hand, is problematic, because with NAFTA and FTAA and their global equivalents there’s a pretty insidious assumption that markets and the right to create and reap profit trump democratic institutions and their rules. And that’s important. Markets and democracy need at the very least to be balanced, and if I had my way, the democratic enterprise would always be given the edge over economic enterprise. The problem with institutional globalization is that the profit motive is given institutionalized favor over self-determination. That’s bad.

one way to work with personal equations

2006-02-11T22:50:00.000-08:00

I'm looking for the longer reference, but as I've been reminded a few times by co-conspirator nightgrapefruit, i've been away too long.

David Nord, who has done a lot of writing about how citizens here in the U.S. engage with the press, has suggested one way print journalism could work to counter both pseudo-objectivity and the tendency most of us have to read only stuff we already agree with.

As most ideas approaching or inhabiting brilliance tend to be, it's a pretty simple idea.

Place opinion pieces, commentary, letters to the editor, and news pieces about a given topic - from various writers of various positions - all on the same page or pages in the paper. It's convenient for your reader- now she can find multiple related bits about Iran or post-Katrina events or how the Bush administration is hounding Goddard Institute head James Hansen on the same page. And it challenges your reader - now she has to read multiple points of view (at least in the form of scanning headlines and ledes). And because op-ed bits are included, it also has the paper setting an example of how to have - gasp - a civil, articulate debate in a public forum.

Personal Equations

2005-11-29T20:51:00.000-08:00

From wiki:
"The personal equation, in 19th- and early 20th-century science, referred to the idea that every individual observer had an inherent bias when it came to measurements and observations."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_equation

Those clever scientists decided the only way you could adjust for these biases was to take the measurements of several scientists, in order to find, for example, the correct location of that star you were all looking at.

That's my theory of journalism. Many stories, many sources, something closer to the truth. Where they overlap and intersect dwells something closer to the truth. I don't understand the religious attachment to the idea of journalistic objectivity. I don't believe that it exists. And I think it's silly to keep pretending that anyone can be objective. Really. Silly.

So, here you will also find my personal equations on whatever it is up i'm to writing about or listening to.

quiet please, i'm listening

2005-11-27T19:51:00.000-08:00

What I'll be doing here, mostly: listening. mostly to the radio. notes, reactions, observations, rants. Fewer rants than anything else, I hope.

Latest listening: too much NPR. Out of habit. There's a lot of stuff there I love, but there's more out there, as I was reminded last month, at the Third Coast Festival in Chicago.

What I meant to post last weekend:

Lately I have been listening to Speaking of Faith, a public radio program that has often annoyed me. Why? Because there really is something about the way that the host, Krista Tippett, handles it all. Of course we expect a certain handling, a certain honoring of the topic. It's faith, it's ephemeral, there are few facts to be had at the end of the day, it's not something to be held tightly to. I still don't really like listening 100%, and I won't become a regular, but I've been doing it more lately. just hold on to it a little more.

But here is the main thing: yesterday, she spoke with Studs Terkel. Legend. He was occasionally patronizing (or perhaps a touch forgetful at 90-something) when he asks her (the host of a show about faith), you know what an agnostic is, don't you? She says yes. He says: a cowardly atheist.

I'm sure that's an old little joke and I have just not heard it before, but it made me laugh.

(also, i think i am listening to ATC weekend as i write and someone has been asked to hold a slinky to the mic. it sounds like things, soft little metallic things, sliding around. it makes me happy. i believe this bit is all about the choices for the toy hall of fame, which included the cardboard box, which made me very happy as a kid and happy now to know that, as always, the most simple is the best, for toys and the rest).

Next time: personal equations

truth and art and structure and essays

2005-10-28T14:38:00.000-07:00

I'll get around to explaining what I am doing here, but in the meantime:

From the Ten Month Beat, the j-school's blog (because I'm posting using Safari and can't link):

"for all the literary journos out there

a word of wisdom from a guy named Frederic Tuten.

Think of yourself as making art -- however bombastic or vague that may sound even to you--and not as a producer of products or units: You will thus relieve yourself of worrying about your work's social or political function, since all art is redemptive, salvational, ennobling and is a protest against ignorance, crime, lies and Death....One beautiful novel shames all broad enterprises and sends brightness through the prison walls of prisons, parliaments, and publishing houses.
I love this because it's an outrageous claim. When you're shouting to keep your courage up, why go halfway?

By novel you can think of any longer work where you take formal risks. (And if you think he's being a religious fanatic or something, check out the magazine where this essay appears.)"

My response was:

"is it really so outrageous a claim? why do you think so? I'm curious. A lot of people are attracted to this world because, as with any form of art, truth-seeking is bound up in the pursuit of a story, right? It makes sense. Sure, lots of us will have to slog through bread and butter stuff along the way, but aren't truth and art what lots of us want to make?__And it didn't occur to me at all that the writer was being fanatical in any way. I just thought, oh, right, that's what I need to hear from time to time. Maybe that just makes me fanatical or too idealistic?"

I shouldn’t have written that last piece in the form of a question. I should have just said – if that does make me fanatical or idealistic, so be it. Commit! I am a fanatic and an idealist.

I’m sequestered at home with a stupid cold that I thought I’d fought off in Chicago, sitting in panels and breakouts adding emergen c and ecinacea to glass after glass of water. I have a paper that I haven’t even started to write (should I compare hersey and levi writing about suffering or should I start a new deal with Herr on Vietnam. And what on earth would I say about Herr?). Helen, the prof for this seminar (The Literature of Nonfiction), e-mailed the entire class to tell us that even after out rewrites we still didn’t know how to properly structure an essay. And while I am usually one for being pushed, in this case it’s not about polishing a piece, it’s about not knowing what I'm doing, apparently. Which is a little harsh to be told when you are at a school where people might be presumed to know a little about how to write. I do always wonder how the hell I got in to begin with. It’s a little discouraging.

Anyway, I’m thinking of just using the example essay she provided and quite literally, for the rest of the term, using that as a template. This much background on an author, nut graph and thesis approximately coming in at this point, and so forth. Maybe that’s what I should have been doing all along. But I never write with structure in mind. I throw everything out in notes and then try to rearrange it until it makes sense, or until I think it makes sense. I think Louis Menand thinks that’s the worst way to write, I think he once wrote in the New Yorker that when he sits down to write he already knows everything he wants to say and he already knows how he’ll structure a piece. But Don Finkel, one of my professorial mentors, said it's better to start writing before you know what you think about something.

Maybe I’ll try that outline/template method as an experiment and see how it goes.