Of the electronically mediated kind.
The Cause Caller site give you tools for setting up a "virtual phonebank" namely auto dialing software for contacting politicians and a wiki to provide callers with a script for guide their phone calls.
I used it to set up a page people can use to call Senator Obama's Senate and Campaign offices to express their disapproval of the FISA "compromise" that lets telecom companies off the hook for helping President Bush spy on us.
So far the response has been a little underwhelming, only about 6 calls or so generated, but I'm going to see what happens.
If you would like to give it a try, click this link to go to the page I set up. Read through the script, then enter your phone number in the box provided and click "start calling." The site will call your phone, then connect you to the first office. Stay on the line when they hang up and the site should connect you to the next office.
Thanks for the help!
Monday, June 30, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
I for one would like to welcome our lolcat overlords.
Some of you are probably familiar with the lolcat phenomenon - that curious internet practice of affixing silly captions to photographs of cats. One website seems to have risen to be the largest center for the practice, namely the strange and wonderful icanhascheezburger.com Lately, they've branched out, applying their online captioning technology - they call it the lolcat builder - to a variety of other subjects, including politicians.
Henry Jenkins, eat your heart out... here's remix culture in modular form easy to use as a mouse click. And here's what it gets you:
Pop-culture meets politics meets modular distributed production. Here comes everybody.
Henry Jenkins, eat your heart out... here's remix culture in modular form easy to use as a mouse click. And here's what it gets you:
Pop-culture meets politics meets modular distributed production. Here comes everybody.
Firefox Download Day
If you run Firefox as your web-browser, you should know they have a new version (firefox 3.0) available. If you download before 1pm EDT today, you will help them in their bid to set the World Record for a software download.
If you don't run Firefox as your web-browser, you should. It is available free of charge and under a fairly reasonable open-source license (the MPL - I prefer the GPL, but I am a purest). Lots of fun add-ons and gadgets are available. Security tends to be a bit better than IE.
My ad campaign for Firefox aside, I think the map they provide on their page documenting their ongoing world record attempt, the map which shows the number of downloads from locations worldwide, shows some interesting data points. It is possible these numbers have inaccuracies that keep them from being really meaningful, clearly they were not collected with a rigorous scientific methodology, but it doesn't seem entirely foolish to accept them as somewhat accurate (say, within the right order of magnitude) estimates. As such, they paint an interesting picture of how connected to the global network various places are in the current moment. Some things about this picture are not very surprising - they are the same features Castells noticed 15 years ago - but important to note as evidence of persistent inequality. A few features are surprising, however.
Nations of the developed world tend to have fairly large numbers of downloads. The US is first by far, with over 2 million downloads - though this must be at least in part a result of native pride (Firefox project is organized by the US based Mozilla foundation) and the fact that download day was set from 1pm EDT yesterday to 1pm EDT today, a time span convenient for users in most U.S. time zones. Western European Countries tend to have 100,000 downloads or more - sometimes much more, Germany has over 400,000 - Australia, Canada, Japan, China, and Brazil (Brazil actually beats out its fellow BRIC developing economies here, with more downloads than Russia, India, or China. This may be browser preference in part, but clearly shows the strength of Brazil's economy as well) round out the "over 100,000 club" with one more, somewhat surprising addition I will get to later.
Compare this wealth of downloads to the dirth of downloads on the content of Africa. Only South Africa has over 10,000 downloads. Only Nigeria, Morocco, Algeria, Kenya and Egypt have over 1,000. The Democratic Republic of Congo, a nation of 62 million people, claims only 45 downloads. That's 33 fewer than Greenland. Somalia claims only 10. There is one, lone Firefox downloader in Chad.
The Caribbean also is a low download zone, though it seems signifigantly better connected than Africa. The Dominican Republic, with about the same population as Chad, has almost 4,000 downloads. Of course, they also have about the same population as Belgium, which has 46,000 downloads. Cuba lags, but is not the total blackout zone it would have been a few years ago. They have 860 downloads as I write this and may pass 1,000 before the end of the day. Haiti is by far the least downloadingest Caribbean country, with only 86 downloads (for 8 million people)!
The middle east is also a relatively low download zone. Saudi Arabia, with about 7,000 downloads, is at about the same per-capita download rate as the Dominican Republic. Iraq has fewer than 200 downloads (does the US army run Internet explorer, then?). Israel and Turkey have healthy, if not astounding, download rates (25,000 and 50,000 respectively). The real shocker is the surprise I alluded to earlier. Iran. Iran has 185,000 downloads - more than Pakistan, India, Russia, China, Australia or Brazil. I suppose this might be some sort of fluke or bad number or IP geolocation flaw or something, but if it isn't... well, it says something about what sort of "closed society" Iran is running these days, I think.
Oh and speaking of closed societies, the only country I could find on the map with 0 downloads was.... North Korea. I guess they win at being isolated.
If you don't run Firefox as your web-browser, you should. It is available free of charge and under a fairly reasonable open-source license (the MPL - I prefer the GPL, but I am a purest). Lots of fun add-ons and gadgets are available. Security tends to be a bit better than IE.
My ad campaign for Firefox aside, I think the map they provide on their page documenting their ongoing world record attempt, the map which shows the number of downloads from locations worldwide, shows some interesting data points. It is possible these numbers have inaccuracies that keep them from being really meaningful, clearly they were not collected with a rigorous scientific methodology, but it doesn't seem entirely foolish to accept them as somewhat accurate (say, within the right order of magnitude) estimates. As such, they paint an interesting picture of how connected to the global network various places are in the current moment. Some things about this picture are not very surprising - they are the same features Castells noticed 15 years ago - but important to note as evidence of persistent inequality. A few features are surprising, however.
Nations of the developed world tend to have fairly large numbers of downloads. The US is first by far, with over 2 million downloads - though this must be at least in part a result of native pride (Firefox project is organized by the US based Mozilla foundation) and the fact that download day was set from 1pm EDT yesterday to 1pm EDT today, a time span convenient for users in most U.S. time zones. Western European Countries tend to have 100,000 downloads or more - sometimes much more, Germany has over 400,000 - Australia, Canada, Japan, China, and Brazil (Brazil actually beats out its fellow BRIC developing economies here, with more downloads than Russia, India, or China. This may be browser preference in part, but clearly shows the strength of Brazil's economy as well) round out the "over 100,000 club" with one more, somewhat surprising addition I will get to later.
Compare this wealth of downloads to the dirth of downloads on the content of Africa. Only South Africa has over 10,000 downloads. Only Nigeria, Morocco, Algeria, Kenya and Egypt have over 1,000. The Democratic Republic of Congo, a nation of 62 million people, claims only 45 downloads. That's 33 fewer than Greenland. Somalia claims only 10. There is one, lone Firefox downloader in Chad.
The Caribbean also is a low download zone, though it seems signifigantly better connected than Africa. The Dominican Republic, with about the same population as Chad, has almost 4,000 downloads. Of course, they also have about the same population as Belgium, which has 46,000 downloads. Cuba lags, but is not the total blackout zone it would have been a few years ago. They have 860 downloads as I write this and may pass 1,000 before the end of the day. Haiti is by far the least downloadingest Caribbean country, with only 86 downloads (for 8 million people)!
The middle east is also a relatively low download zone. Saudi Arabia, with about 7,000 downloads, is at about the same per-capita download rate as the Dominican Republic. Iraq has fewer than 200 downloads (does the US army run Internet explorer, then?). Israel and Turkey have healthy, if not astounding, download rates (25,000 and 50,000 respectively). The real shocker is the surprise I alluded to earlier. Iran. Iran has 185,000 downloads - more than Pakistan, India, Russia, China, Australia or Brazil. I suppose this might be some sort of fluke or bad number or IP geolocation flaw or something, but if it isn't... well, it says something about what sort of "closed society" Iran is running these days, I think.
Oh and speaking of closed societies, the only country I could find on the map with 0 downloads was.... North Korea. I guess they win at being isolated.
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Red Red Radishes
MD, his spousal unit, and I went to the Radish festival in McClure, Ohio. MD was disappointed, apparently you shouldn't let your anticipation for a regional festival build up over the course of four years. I thought it was alright... fun polka and some interesting things to take pictures of. Like this sack of radishes: 
More on my flickr page.
More on my flickr page.
Obama on Gay Marriage
I'm curious what JS, MP and others who have expressed some concern about how forcefully Sen. Obama would support gay rights as President will think of this report, which suggests that the Senator expressed cautiously worded support for gay marriage in a meeting with Protestant ministers. Brave for sticking to his guns in the face of a hostile crowd, or wimpy for using "cautious" language?
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Fragments from a 21st Century Travelogue
Binghamton, New York
My grandparent's home. They are dead; the upper floors lay vacant; a few belongings are piled in the center of the living room on the odd chance someone wants them. My mother has already removed paperwork, documents, photographs. Among them the stamped passbook that brought my great-grandfather through the checkpoints of the British Army in occupied Germany after the first world war.
In the basement is another mass of detritus: the tattered remains of board games that entertained me, my sister and my cousins when we were children, ancient appliances in various states of disrepair (probably awaiting some promised fix when my grandfather's stroke hit), black rotary Bell Telephone telephones in classic semi-gloss bakelite. My Grandfather, a plumber, had hoarded great masses of pluming fixtures, nuts and bolts, pipe hangers, valves. My mother, aunt, and I sort them carefully and haul them to the local scrap dealer. We make 300 dollars on two hundred pounds of copper and brass. We wait behind a long line of thin, leathery men in pickup trucks at the scrap dealer unloading pipes, refrigerators. One is knocking the wood and foam out of an aluminum boat with a sledgehammer. My part of America is mining its cities for raw materials, selling itself off by parts. I think of electrical lines being run to ultra-luxury hotels in Dubai, of data centers going up on south Pacific islands with no natural resources remaining but their lack of anything resembling coherent structures of legal jurisdiction.
Enfield, New York
My mother's fiance has four years of firewood stacked in front of the post and beam home he designed himself and built with the help of friends in the early 70s. The house is small inside, but comfortable and surprisingly well lit. He brags that he made it through the winter last year without even expending a full year's worth of firewood, all while showing me the massive pile of new wood he will add to his stock this year. I ask about the apparent oversupply of fuel and he shrugs and says, "its poor man's capital, i guess," and compares it to the scrap cars a friend keeps on their lawn, or my grandfather's pipe fittings.
Lock Haven, Pennsylvania
This is the last morning my girlfriend and I will spent in this central Pennsylvania town, with its views of the Appalachians looming low and green over the Susquehanna. I look up from the air mattress on the floor of her empty apartment and see swallows cutting through the pale yellow morning light. Will there be swallows in the Southern City we are moving her to, I wonder? I suspect not. The swallow, I believe, is a natural cliff-dweller and nests among the habitations of humanity only when they are old and quiet enough to mimic their ancestral environs. The low slung brick and concrete and stone buildings of this old river town are swallow heaven. How long until we tear them down, for copper conduit, for steel rebar?
In a 21 foot Truck, West Virginia
If you are a novice truck driver and decide to attempt to maneuver a 21-foot Penske moving van containing all of your beloved's worldly possessions along the narrow and winding roadway that is US 70 in West Virginia, here is what the experience will be like: the world dissolves into one long moment. Your human ability to reflect on the past and plan for the future goes away, except insofar as "the past" refers to the last bend in the road and "the future" refers to the next one. Your conscious mind will grab hold of some tiny piece of thought. Perhaps even this very notion, that "this is one long moment." It will repeat this thought over and over (this is one long moment this is one long moment this is one long moment this is one long moment) a sort of cartesian checksum, a way for it to verify for itself that the truck has not slid from the highway and with it your being into nothingness. This slim thread of ego is all that remains, the rest of you is devoted to the needs of the body, to holding the bouncing truck on its narrow and twisting course, to fighting off the dull ache growing ever sharper between your shoulders. (Some smarty pants may have noticed that I have mixed my philosophical systems in a manner that may not be completely internally consistent. Fuck you! I survived the truck-rodeo! I am among the living! I will appropriate dead men's philosophy as I see fit.)
Unnamed Southern City, North Carolina Piedmont
The girlfriend is a private person. I'll call the city she has moved to "Unnamed Southern City" out of respect for her not to be exposed to the stark gaze of the massed denizens of the global networks. Unnamed Southern City is a riot of growth, both botanical and artificial. Dense green hedgerows are interspersed with sprawling strip malls, apartment complexes, gated communities. The original ecology meets capital's emulation of its supposed darwinian imperatives.
There are no swallows here. The old brick factory shells that harbor them back home never existed in this place. Instead the sprawl sports small, vertical clumps of concrete and glass office towers, new workplaces for a new economy in the new south. Note to the ghost of Bill Faulkner: today the it is the North that is old and vanquished, the South has become young and victorious.
Unnamed Southern City, a small jet aircraft, Regan airport, another small jet aircraft, Syracuse, New York
The aircraft from Unnamed Southern City to Regan is so small I cannot fit my backpack in the overhead bin, and completely full. I have lucked out and drawn a bulkhead seat. I watch the frazzled flight attendant escort a hopeful standby passenger onboard, only to discover that someone was in the toilet for the headcount and there is no seat for her. She escorts her back off the plane. Her bag must be withdrawn from the plane by the crew. There is a delay. My fellow travelers groan. The plane spends less than an hour in the air. The truck and I spent 5 hours making this distance a few days ago. We pass Richmond on our way to Washington. A ten minute flight, a century and a half ago, the distance between two warring Americas.
Regan sits so close to the city you can almost touch it from the tarmac. There is a forest of cranes along the Potomac, between us and the silhouette of the Capitol dome. New construction for the security state. The war, it seems, is still hiring. I spend two hours in the airport, watching the constant motion of arrivals and departures, the thousands of pieces of aluminum kept always moving by the energy of our dwindling petroleum supply. Amazing that it works at all, flinging people through the stratosphere on a daily basis. More amazing when it is gone.
The plane to Syracuse is both larger and less crowded than my previous flight. It seems unlikely this could be a profitable venture for those operating the airline. Again we are less than an hour in the air. I touch down in Syracuse, my mother picks me up from the airport. A few minutes later I am standing at the sandwich counter of my childhood grocery store, remembering looking at the Washington monument a few hours before. A strange juxtaposition of the familiar and novel.
I step outside. It is cool here, and quiet. Swallows are swooping from the old brick office building standing beside the Owasco outlet. A yellow Faye drugstore ad fades and peels from its side. There is no traffic, except for a single dumptruck belching thick black diesel smoke. In its bed are appliances, copper pipe, aluminum conduit...
My grandparent's home. They are dead; the upper floors lay vacant; a few belongings are piled in the center of the living room on the odd chance someone wants them. My mother has already removed paperwork, documents, photographs. Among them the stamped passbook that brought my great-grandfather through the checkpoints of the British Army in occupied Germany after the first world war.
In the basement is another mass of detritus: the tattered remains of board games that entertained me, my sister and my cousins when we were children, ancient appliances in various states of disrepair (probably awaiting some promised fix when my grandfather's stroke hit), black rotary Bell Telephone telephones in classic semi-gloss bakelite. My Grandfather, a plumber, had hoarded great masses of pluming fixtures, nuts and bolts, pipe hangers, valves. My mother, aunt, and I sort them carefully and haul them to the local scrap dealer. We make 300 dollars on two hundred pounds of copper and brass. We wait behind a long line of thin, leathery men in pickup trucks at the scrap dealer unloading pipes, refrigerators. One is knocking the wood and foam out of an aluminum boat with a sledgehammer. My part of America is mining its cities for raw materials, selling itself off by parts. I think of electrical lines being run to ultra-luxury hotels in Dubai, of data centers going up on south Pacific islands with no natural resources remaining but their lack of anything resembling coherent structures of legal jurisdiction.
Enfield, New York
My mother's fiance has four years of firewood stacked in front of the post and beam home he designed himself and built with the help of friends in the early 70s. The house is small inside, but comfortable and surprisingly well lit. He brags that he made it through the winter last year without even expending a full year's worth of firewood, all while showing me the massive pile of new wood he will add to his stock this year. I ask about the apparent oversupply of fuel and he shrugs and says, "its poor man's capital, i guess," and compares it to the scrap cars a friend keeps on their lawn, or my grandfather's pipe fittings.
Lock Haven, Pennsylvania
This is the last morning my girlfriend and I will spent in this central Pennsylvania town, with its views of the Appalachians looming low and green over the Susquehanna. I look up from the air mattress on the floor of her empty apartment and see swallows cutting through the pale yellow morning light. Will there be swallows in the Southern City we are moving her to, I wonder? I suspect not. The swallow, I believe, is a natural cliff-dweller and nests among the habitations of humanity only when they are old and quiet enough to mimic their ancestral environs. The low slung brick and concrete and stone buildings of this old river town are swallow heaven. How long until we tear them down, for copper conduit, for steel rebar?
In a 21 foot Truck, West Virginia
If you are a novice truck driver and decide to attempt to maneuver a 21-foot Penske moving van containing all of your beloved's worldly possessions along the narrow and winding roadway that is US 70 in West Virginia, here is what the experience will be like: the world dissolves into one long moment. Your human ability to reflect on the past and plan for the future goes away, except insofar as "the past" refers to the last bend in the road and "the future" refers to the next one. Your conscious mind will grab hold of some tiny piece of thought. Perhaps even this very notion, that "this is one long moment." It will repeat this thought over and over (this is one long moment this is one long moment this is one long moment this is one long moment) a sort of cartesian checksum, a way for it to verify for itself that the truck has not slid from the highway and with it your being into nothingness. This slim thread of ego is all that remains, the rest of you is devoted to the needs of the body, to holding the bouncing truck on its narrow and twisting course, to fighting off the dull ache growing ever sharper between your shoulders. (Some smarty pants may have noticed that I have mixed my philosophical systems in a manner that may not be completely internally consistent. Fuck you! I survived the truck-rodeo! I am among the living! I will appropriate dead men's philosophy as I see fit.)
Unnamed Southern City, North Carolina Piedmont
The girlfriend is a private person. I'll call the city she has moved to "Unnamed Southern City" out of respect for her not to be exposed to the stark gaze of the massed denizens of the global networks. Unnamed Southern City is a riot of growth, both botanical and artificial. Dense green hedgerows are interspersed with sprawling strip malls, apartment complexes, gated communities. The original ecology meets capital's emulation of its supposed darwinian imperatives.
There are no swallows here. The old brick factory shells that harbor them back home never existed in this place. Instead the sprawl sports small, vertical clumps of concrete and glass office towers, new workplaces for a new economy in the new south. Note to the ghost of Bill Faulkner: today the it is the North that is old and vanquished, the South has become young and victorious.
Unnamed Southern City, a small jet aircraft, Regan airport, another small jet aircraft, Syracuse, New York
The aircraft from Unnamed Southern City to Regan is so small I cannot fit my backpack in the overhead bin, and completely full. I have lucked out and drawn a bulkhead seat. I watch the frazzled flight attendant escort a hopeful standby passenger onboard, only to discover that someone was in the toilet for the headcount and there is no seat for her. She escorts her back off the plane. Her bag must be withdrawn from the plane by the crew. There is a delay. My fellow travelers groan. The plane spends less than an hour in the air. The truck and I spent 5 hours making this distance a few days ago. We pass Richmond on our way to Washington. A ten minute flight, a century and a half ago, the distance between two warring Americas.
Regan sits so close to the city you can almost touch it from the tarmac. There is a forest of cranes along the Potomac, between us and the silhouette of the Capitol dome. New construction for the security state. The war, it seems, is still hiring. I spend two hours in the airport, watching the constant motion of arrivals and departures, the thousands of pieces of aluminum kept always moving by the energy of our dwindling petroleum supply. Amazing that it works at all, flinging people through the stratosphere on a daily basis. More amazing when it is gone.
The plane to Syracuse is both larger and less crowded than my previous flight. It seems unlikely this could be a profitable venture for those operating the airline. Again we are less than an hour in the air. I touch down in Syracuse, my mother picks me up from the airport. A few minutes later I am standing at the sandwich counter of my childhood grocery store, remembering looking at the Washington monument a few hours before. A strange juxtaposition of the familiar and novel.
I step outside. It is cool here, and quiet. Swallows are swooping from the old brick office building standing beside the Owasco outlet. A yellow Faye drugstore ad fades and peels from its side. There is no traffic, except for a single dumptruck belching thick black diesel smoke. In its bed are appliances, copper pipe, aluminum conduit...
Sunday, May 25, 2008
A real post soon
Sorry about the lack of blog-content, dear readers. For now, this selection, from a fafblog clearly back and in its prime.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
This is awesome
From The Onion News Network: "Gay Scientists Discover Christian Gene"
This is a pretty sharp piece, I like it a lot.
This is a pretty sharp piece, I like it a lot.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Doing My Small Part
For democratic media. Here are some clips of Rev. Jeremiah Wright being interviewed by Bill Moyers on his PBS news program. Watch these, and try to get others to watch them. They're the best antidote currently available for the "LOOKOUT! SCARY BLACK MAN!" show that has been made out of excerpts from his sermons.
Share the links and spread the love children. Lets get the message to the peoples.
Share the links and spread the love children. Lets get the message to the peoples.
Summer Art Project
I'm going to be trying to do a summer art project this summer, taking some pictures of the Grain elevators of Wood County, Ohio.
The Grain elevator seems a fitting subject for this moment of rising food prices, and I enjoy taking pictures that capture the odd beauty of industrial equipment. These ungainly behemoths have that in spades.
The pictures are coming up here... I'm going to try to put together a web-page with a map and some captions in the next few weeks.
The Grain elevator seems a fitting subject for this moment of rising food prices, and I enjoy taking pictures that capture the odd beauty of industrial equipment. These ungainly behemoths have that in spades.
The pictures are coming up here... I'm going to try to put together a web-page with a map and some captions in the next few weeks.
Friday, April 25, 2008
Jack of All Trades
Or perhaps more like the deuce of all trades. Sure I could be working on my Dissertation, or on my various political projects, but no... tonight I decided to learn some javascript.
I managed to hack together this crude but kinda fun tool with javascript and the google maps API. It shows a map, you click on something, and it outputs the Latitude and Longitude of that something in nice clean text, ready to be cut and pasted into GPS babel, or hand-keyed into a handy GPS unit.
I'm going to play with Google Maps some more for an Art project I want to play with this summer. I find this stuff to be useful when I'm having a video game craving... the same kind of problem solving is employed, and at least I'm learning a little something in the process.
The tool is here if you want to play with it. It is on my server box on my cable connection, so don't all click at once.
If you find the code useful, feel free to take it (of course), but you'll need your own key from google to use the google maps API.
I managed to hack together this crude but kinda fun tool with javascript and the google maps API. It shows a map, you click on something, and it outputs the Latitude and Longitude of that something in nice clean text, ready to be cut and pasted into GPS babel, or hand-keyed into a handy GPS unit.
I'm going to play with Google Maps some more for an Art project I want to play with this summer. I find this stuff to be useful when I'm having a video game craving... the same kind of problem solving is employed, and at least I'm learning a little something in the process.
The tool is here if you want to play with it. It is on my server box on my cable connection, so don't all click at once.
If you find the code useful, feel free to take it (of course), but you'll need your own key from google to use the google maps API.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
If you like, please link
This is egotistical to even ask, but if you like the post below, and support what it is saying, please link to it on your own blog (if you have one). If we can get enough links, maybe people will start to read it.
Again, I hate to even ask, but I'd like to see if we can use this crazy internet to reach somebody.
Again, I hate to even ask, but I'd like to see if we can use this crazy internet to reach somebody.
Open Letter to Barack Obama
Dear Senator,
I'd like to start out by saying that I'm a strong supporter of yours and have enjoyed being active in your campaign. I helped organize the get out the vote canvass here in Bowling Green, Ohio - there are even pictures of me working on it in the Getty Images photo pool of the day's events. I think you represent our best hope of real political change in our country.
That said, I have one question regarding last night's debate:
What the hell was that?
Seriously Senator, what the hell? I understand that the questions were nonsensical and a complete distraction from the actual issues facing our country, I understand the moderators did Hillary's attack job for her, I'm as pissed about it as everyone else in the liberal internet-sphere.
But here's where I, with all due respect Senator, think you went wrong when confronted with those questions:
you flinched
You didn't hit back hard and stick to your convictions, you waffled and stammered. The "bitter" question, I'll admit, you got just about right - but with only about the tenth of the energy you really needed to hit it with. The Wright explanation, on the other hand, is a disaster. Again, Senator, I realize you have very experienced campaign operatives working for you, and I am just a grad student and volunteer in Northwest nowhere Ohio, but I really take issue with how your campaign has decided to respond to that question - at least your "short form" answer, the longer Race Speech in Philadelphia was brilliant.
The short answer you gave last night (which seems to be the standard for the campaign) went something like this, "I didn't know Pastor Wright said those awful things, and the awful things he said don't reflect the other good things the church has done. I trust the American people to understand my views aren't Pastor Wright's views, and that Pastor Wright's views are part of a larger context." Senator, if you are going to trust the American people, you have to trust them all the way. You have to trust them to understand Pastor Wright's context, and to reject the notion that you and he share the same politics. Your current answer, on the other hand, attempts to disconnect you from the Pastor's remarks by denying you ever heard them, which suggests you really don't trust Americans to do this, and instead feel the need to make a denial which stretches the bounds of plausibility even for your most staunch supporters: that you did not know what your Pastor of 20 years was saying on the pulpit. I've watched a number of flame wars erupt over these remarks in a variety of online forums, Senator, and not once did your supporters use your denial as a part of their own argument as to why Pastor Wright's remarks should not disqualify you for the highest office in the land. Instead, they have appealed to the basic truth of the second part of your answer: that Wright's fiery sermons make sense in the context of a Black church community struggling to deal with the realities of oppression in the United States, even if the words of these sermons are often over the top; that a church should not be judged by the words of its Pastor alone; and that suggesting that a man's ideas are exactly the same as his Pastor's is absurd.
This sort of waffling, this attempt to deny and then explain continued throughout the debate. Again, I understand the questions were bogus, but just because we want to transform American politics does not mean we can expect it to transform itself for us. We're going to have to be able to operate in the current political environment, until we have secured the ability to transform that environment. The bogus corporate media cannot be ignored, it must be defeated.
In my humble opinion, the way to do that, Senator, is to trust the American people and to trust them all the way. Don't flinch, don't waffle, don't deny. Explain, persuade, and stand up for yourself. One of the things that first attracted me to your campaign was the strength and confidence with which you did these things in the early days of the primary season - a seeming million years ago. As the season has gone on, that confidence has seemed to wane and falter, and I think I know why: you have something to lose now. And so, like so many Democratic candidates before you, you've stopped fighting to win, and started fighting not to lose.
Please, Senator, if by some odd chance you should actually encounter this small letter written by a small campaign volunteer, I have just one request to make. A request I believe will be shared by millions of others just like me.
Fight to win again, Senator. Fight like you have nothing to lose. Democrats have been betting small and losing small for generations now. Look where it has gotten us. It is scary to bet big, but it may be the only chance we've got.
I'd like to start out by saying that I'm a strong supporter of yours and have enjoyed being active in your campaign. I helped organize the get out the vote canvass here in Bowling Green, Ohio - there are even pictures of me working on it in the Getty Images photo pool of the day's events. I think you represent our best hope of real political change in our country.
That said, I have one question regarding last night's debate:
What the hell was that?
Seriously Senator, what the hell? I understand that the questions were nonsensical and a complete distraction from the actual issues facing our country, I understand the moderators did Hillary's attack job for her, I'm as pissed about it as everyone else in the liberal internet-sphere.
But here's where I, with all due respect Senator, think you went wrong when confronted with those questions:
you flinched
You didn't hit back hard and stick to your convictions, you waffled and stammered. The "bitter" question, I'll admit, you got just about right - but with only about the tenth of the energy you really needed to hit it with. The Wright explanation, on the other hand, is a disaster. Again, Senator, I realize you have very experienced campaign operatives working for you, and I am just a grad student and volunteer in Northwest nowhere Ohio, but I really take issue with how your campaign has decided to respond to that question - at least your "short form" answer, the longer Race Speech in Philadelphia was brilliant.
The short answer you gave last night (which seems to be the standard for the campaign) went something like this, "I didn't know Pastor Wright said those awful things, and the awful things he said don't reflect the other good things the church has done. I trust the American people to understand my views aren't Pastor Wright's views, and that Pastor Wright's views are part of a larger context." Senator, if you are going to trust the American people, you have to trust them all the way. You have to trust them to understand Pastor Wright's context, and to reject the notion that you and he share the same politics. Your current answer, on the other hand, attempts to disconnect you from the Pastor's remarks by denying you ever heard them, which suggests you really don't trust Americans to do this, and instead feel the need to make a denial which stretches the bounds of plausibility even for your most staunch supporters: that you did not know what your Pastor of 20 years was saying on the pulpit. I've watched a number of flame wars erupt over these remarks in a variety of online forums, Senator, and not once did your supporters use your denial as a part of their own argument as to why Pastor Wright's remarks should not disqualify you for the highest office in the land. Instead, they have appealed to the basic truth of the second part of your answer: that Wright's fiery sermons make sense in the context of a Black church community struggling to deal with the realities of oppression in the United States, even if the words of these sermons are often over the top; that a church should not be judged by the words of its Pastor alone; and that suggesting that a man's ideas are exactly the same as his Pastor's is absurd.
This sort of waffling, this attempt to deny and then explain continued throughout the debate. Again, I understand the questions were bogus, but just because we want to transform American politics does not mean we can expect it to transform itself for us. We're going to have to be able to operate in the current political environment, until we have secured the ability to transform that environment. The bogus corporate media cannot be ignored, it must be defeated.
In my humble opinion, the way to do that, Senator, is to trust the American people and to trust them all the way. Don't flinch, don't waffle, don't deny. Explain, persuade, and stand up for yourself. One of the things that first attracted me to your campaign was the strength and confidence with which you did these things in the early days of the primary season - a seeming million years ago. As the season has gone on, that confidence has seemed to wane and falter, and I think I know why: you have something to lose now. And so, like so many Democratic candidates before you, you've stopped fighting to win, and started fighting not to lose.
Please, Senator, if by some odd chance you should actually encounter this small letter written by a small campaign volunteer, I have just one request to make. A request I believe will be shared by millions of others just like me.
Fight to win again, Senator. Fight like you have nothing to lose. Democrats have been betting small and losing small for generations now. Look where it has gotten us. It is scary to bet big, but it may be the only chance we've got.
Monday, April 14, 2008
I Read Talking Points Memo
So you don't have to. Another interesting tidbit posted up there today:
When Rep. Davis offhandedly mentions "that simulation that related a nuclear threat to this country," what exactly is he talking about? Do the political parties, as a part of their vetting process, run candidates through some sort of advanced computer simulator game designed to recreate the experience of commanding US Strategic Forces during a nuclear strike on the United States? A sort of 21st century equivalent of Starfleet's Kobayashi Maru scenario - designed to test Starship officers in a "no-win scenario?" Are we to understand from Rep. Davis's comment that Sen. Obama - demonstrating both his intellect and his disregard for conventional thinking - responded to the scenario in the same way as the famous James T. Kirk, by re-programming the simulator to allow for victory, in this case perhaps a nice, peaceful negotiated settlement involving multilateral agreements and robust international organizations heading off any nuclear exchange?
If so, the Obama people need to get this out the the press! The Trekkers will turn out in droves! Imagine the bumper sticker:
Obama 08 - He Beat the Kobayashi Maru
Yep... that's gonna be the big November surprise people, the Trekker vote. You heard it here first.
---UPDATE
I finally tracked down Rep. Davis's comments. He does indeed imply that he and Sen. Obama were involved in a "highly classified simulation" of a nuclear threat! Kobayshi Maru!
Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY) on Obama: "I'm going to tell you something: That boy's finger does not need to be on the button. He could not make a decision in that simulation that related to a nuclear threat to this country."The point most others are making is that Rep. Davis seems a wee bit racist when he refers to the first Black Senator since the reconstruction as "boy." I agree, of course, but there is something much more interesting here...
When Rep. Davis offhandedly mentions "that simulation that related a nuclear threat to this country," what exactly is he talking about? Do the political parties, as a part of their vetting process, run candidates through some sort of advanced computer simulator game designed to recreate the experience of commanding US Strategic Forces during a nuclear strike on the United States? A sort of 21st century equivalent of Starfleet's Kobayashi Maru scenario - designed to test Starship officers in a "no-win scenario?" Are we to understand from Rep. Davis's comment that Sen. Obama - demonstrating both his intellect and his disregard for conventional thinking - responded to the scenario in the same way as the famous James T. Kirk, by re-programming the simulator to allow for victory, in this case perhaps a nice, peaceful negotiated settlement involving multilateral agreements and robust international organizations heading off any nuclear exchange?
If so, the Obama people need to get this out the the press! The Trekkers will turn out in droves! Imagine the bumper sticker:
Obama 08 - He Beat the Kobayashi Maru
Yep... that's gonna be the big November surprise people, the Trekker vote. You heard it here first.
---UPDATE
I finally tracked down Rep. Davis's comments. He does indeed imply that he and Sen. Obama were involved in a "highly classified simulation" of a nuclear threat! Kobayshi Maru!
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Obama!
From Talkingpointsmemo.com: a YouTube video clip of Senator Obama on Charlie Rose in 2004, explaining sentiments similar to those that recently got him called "elitist."
I think it is pretty clear here that, far from being elitist, Senator Obama is doing his best to explain the anxieties of working class people to the (largely privileged) media. For those of you "sick of the politics" of this campaign season, watch his thoughtful analysis here and then look me in the eye and tell me you've seen a politician who thinks and speaks like this in your lifetime.
You haven't. And you won't again. This is your chance America. Don't screw it up.
I think it is pretty clear here that, far from being elitist, Senator Obama is doing his best to explain the anxieties of working class people to the (largely privileged) media. For those of you "sick of the politics" of this campaign season, watch his thoughtful analysis here and then look me in the eye and tell me you've seen a politician who thinks and speaks like this in your lifetime.
You haven't. And you won't again. This is your chance America. Don't screw it up.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Another Good Column
By Garrison Keillor on Salon. He's been a bit hit-and-miss over there lately. This is a good one though.
The Pedagogy of Narcissistic Smarm
To involve my students in my lecture on Hebdige's "Subculture: The Meaning of Style" I asked them to provide some examples of contemporary youth subcultures, and how those subcultures might be engaging in the sort of semiotic rebellion that Hebdige suggests is the interesting potential of subculture. They named the emo, goth, and indy scenes as contemporary subcultures.
My favorite part: during the wrap-up I referred to the "emo-goth continuum" as being made up of "various distillates of crude punk." Clever, right?
Yep, that's what keeps me teaching, folks. The opportunity to say clever things in front of a captive audience.
My favorite part: during the wrap-up I referred to the "emo-goth continuum" as being made up of "various distillates of crude punk." Clever, right?
Yep, that's what keeps me teaching, folks. The opportunity to say clever things in front of a captive audience.
Thursday, April 03, 2008
Anthony Famiglietti 1919-2008
One of my earliest childhood memories is of spending a warm spring day with my paternal grandfather. I was a fanciful child, I always wanted to play games based on "imagination." The influence of Sesame Street no doubt. My parents tired of these imaginary exercises, since a young boy's notion of what a submarine or spaceship might be like is not very entertaining to an adult. But my grandfather indulged me, as grandparents will. That afternoon we were playing "Time Machine." We set the imaginary dial, and off we went to the sixties, or the forties, or the thirties, and with each stop my Grandfather would tell me stories of his experience in that time, tell me what it had been like to live through the depression, through the war, through the boom-time afterward. I remember being astounded at the long thread of living memory he possessed, and the ease and joy with which he wove that thread into tales and anecdotes.
That thread is broken now.
Like any good post-modern child of the mediated age, I have recorded images of my grandfather. Squeezed some small portion of the man's vast memory into patterns of bits, in the latest iteration of what must be a human tradition dating back to when we first became able to speak, but the full richness of his experience, and the funny, vibrant, sometimes bawdy man who lived it - that's all gone now.
Goodbye, Grandpa
That thread is broken now.
Like any good post-modern child of the mediated age, I have recorded images of my grandfather. Squeezed some small portion of the man's vast memory into patterns of bits, in the latest iteration of what must be a human tradition dating back to when we first became able to speak, but the full richness of his experience, and the funny, vibrant, sometimes bawdy man who lived it - that's all gone now.
Goodbye, Grandpa
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