Viva la Evolucion!

2004-04-07T21:58:00.000-04:00

2003-11-04T00:07:00.000-05:00

Prose and Consqeuences
Discuss

Here's some debate about NYC's Ballot Issue 3, which, if passed, would eliminate party primaries in certain elections in favor of a primary en masse, open to all candidates and voters. The top two vote-earners then move on to the general election in November. Read about Christian and me (two guys you wouldn't wanna meet in a dark voting booth) duking it out ideologically. This is the first time in ages that I can remember having serious differences of opinion over a political issue. Most of my friends and I tend to vote (and think) similarly. I don't know anyone else who is for "Yes" on 3.

I'll bring you some post-vote analysis when the news breaks.

CMinusRocks: fairly unbiased: http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/feature-commentary/20031020/202/575
CMinusRocks: totally biased: http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/feature-commentary/20030616/202/423
p0pcult: i think party primaries are a bad thing
CMinusRocks: as ideas, I agree
CMinusRocks: however, the way new york politics operates now I think they are necessary
p0pcult: why?
CMinusRocks: just because parties are gone doesn't necessarily mean voters are going to educate themselves anymore
p0pcult: i agree wholly with that statement
CMinusRocks: a democratic primary allows voters to pick among candidates who are at least similar in some ways
p0pcult: most people who vote (which is always less than 50%) are self-educated anyway
p0pcult: the people who aren't educated are generally the ones who also don't vote
CMinusRocks: if a politically uneducated voter had to pick between a whole multitude of candidates, things get messy - and what the voter knows about a candidate comes from what they see (ads by the candidate)
p0pcult: furthermore
p0pcult: the people who end up in the final november election should be the two who earned the most votes
CMinusRocks: yes, that's what I'm having difficulty with
CMinusRocks: I agree with that last thing you said
p0pcult: and also most people who vote are educated
CMinusRocks: but I think non-partisan politics at the moment would give the upperhand to republican candidates, such as bloomberg, which I don't want
p0pcult: and also the fact that campaing finance is screwed up shouldn't affect this vote
CMinusRocks: I also think there are more democrats who vote party-line than republicans
p0pcult: i think it would increse the number of votes republicans earned, but not by enough to affect the outcome of races
CMinusRocks: and I think without a party line to vote on, there would be no ONE DEMOCRATIC candidate, and instead 2 or 3 strong ones factioned off by race or neighborhood
p0pcult: yes
CMinusRocks: you would have a strong latino candidate, a strong black candidate, and a strong liberal-white candidate
p0pcult: and if they earned fewer votes than their republican counterparts, then the people have voted republican
CMinusRocks: yes, and this is where my personal politics come into play - I DON'T WANT THAT TO HAPPEN!
p0pcult: i don't either
CMinusRocks: I'm voting more on my personal politics, than what I think is best for NYC democracy
p0pcult: but i think that good democracy is more important than my personal politics
CMinusRocks: I guess that's where I'm different
CMinusRocks: good democracy is a noble thing, but damn it if we have more republicans running things this country will continue going to hell
CMinusRocks: not that I necessarily think a democrat would do that much better
CMinusRocks: I just fear those repubs
p0pcult: so you don't believe in democracy if it allows republicans to get elected?
CMinusRocks: that's where spending limits come into play
CMinusRocks: I WOULD vote for question 3 if there were spending limits, which there are not
CMinusRocks: there are only fundraising limits
CMinusRocks: so a rich candidate has a natural advantage
p0pcult: but you're still ignoring that demographics of voters
p0pcult: especially in nyc
p0pcult: they tend to be educated
p0pcult: and vote as educated people
CMinusRocks: but I think there are a lot of fairly non-educated democratic poor who vote party line
p0pcult: how many poor people vote?
CMinusRocks: I guess we would somehow need to see a statistic on this
p0pcult: yea
CMinusRocks: uh, at my schools in the bronx there were always people there voting - and they weren't exactly very wealthy
CMinusRocks: I think you and I conflict on what we think the 'average new york voter' is
CMinusRocks: and that's a really difficult thing to guage
p0pcult: sure, but what percentage of the district population did they represent?
p0pcult: it is a densely populated area
CMinusRocks: ok
p0pcult: parties are a huge problem in american politics
CMinusRocks: oh I agree
p0pcult: by saying no to 3 you reinforce the two-party system
CMinusRocks: but they've been around so long it becomes problematic just to get rid of them
CMinusRocks: it's true
p0pcult: no to 3 mans no to 3rd party candidates
p0pcult: *means
CMinusRocks: but I think allowing non-partisan elections is just going to keep getting more bloombergs elected - people who basically buy their way into office
CMinusRocks: that's why I'm torn on this issue
p0pcult: see
p0pcult: i think that once the field to entry is leveled, then people with non-party-line ideas can come in and i think that this will revitalize the electorate
p0pcult: give politics fresh ideas
p0pcult: force candidates to evolve
CMinusRocks: you certainly look optimistically upon politicians and politics!
p0pcult: no i don't
CMinusRocks: I guess I'm a bit more pessimistic about how things would actually play out
p0pcult: not at all
p0pcult: in fact what i am saying is that if someone comes along with a good idea, the other candidates will have to copy it
p0pcult: it's like evolutionary adaptation
p0pcult: they will mimic to survive
CMinusRocks: I think parties also hold candidates acccountable to their peers within the party, to some degree
CMinusRocks: no matter what, affiliations will form, and you might get 3 or 4 alliances (parties without the party-ness), kind of like in European elections - and I think that is good
CMinusRocks: but I think finance reform needs to happen first in order for the goodness of non-partisan elections to shine through
p0pcult: finance reform will never happen
p0pcult: until
p0pcult: someone gets elected without being beholden to moneyed interests
CMinusRocks: I disagree - I think it might happen to a small degree
CMinusRocks: and it can definitely happen more easily on a local level (as opposed to a national level)

2003-11-01T21:14:00.000-05:00

Share Music

I believe in filesharing.
And I believe in Halloween.
I went as a pirate:

Christian took the picture.

And for anyone who wants a tshirt like mine, here is the logo for free.
Make your own, and spread the word.

I used Avery's InkJet T-shirt Transfers, which worked easily and inexpensively.

If every .mp3 pirate and filetrader in America wore this emblem on election day--this Tuesday,
we'd send a strong message to Congress about information freedom, intellectual property law, and our wintry discontent with the music industry. Think of it as "virtual voting." Show Congress the power of 'net Democracy.

This work is dedicated to the
Public Domain.

Afterword

CMinusRocks: do your dots in the SHARE MUSIC logo have any significance in terms of the way they are arranged? because they certainly don't look like an A
p0pcult: http://www.catb.org/~esr/hacker-emblem/
CMinusRocks: a good question with an even better answer
CMinusRocks: awesome
p0pcult: yea
CMinusRocks: How did you get the logo to transfer to your t-shirt?
p0pcult: i was wrestling with how i wanted to do a "logo" for the idea of sharing music
p0pcult: and i was reading slashdot.org
p0pcult: and saw this piece there, and it was like, "aha!"
CMinusRocks: seriously - it's perfect
p0pcult: i bought a box of avery inkjet tshort transfers from staples
p0pcult: *tshirt
CMinusRocks: I'll have to get some of those
p0pcult: $20 for 18 full-page transfers
CMinusRocks: works well?
p0pcult: easy
CMinusRocks: sounds great
p0pcult: did you ever play the "game of life" like on the mac or older computer systems?
CMinusRocks: nope
CMinusRocks: is that what that logo is?
p0pcult: basically where you can arrange these colored dots that evolve
p0pcult: based on a simple algorithm
p0pcult: that logo, the "glider" never dies and keeps moving around the screen
p0pcult: so it also kinda connotes evolution
CMinusRocks: nice
p0pcult: as in, the RIAA can stop p2p networks, but something new will come up to replace them
CMinusRocks: that's brilliant
p0pcult: yea
p0pcult: it's perfect
p0pcult: i want to see everyone in a "share music" tshirt they made for themselves
p0pcult: so we can establish a visual presence
p0pcult: everyone fileshares
p0pcult: and there are few people who feel it is wrong
CMinusRocks: I will definitely make clothes and wear them
p0pcult: right on

2003-10-15T21:18:00.000-04:00

If It Smells Like Puke, Don't Worry

Today was the first "bad" day of the school year.

Today was the first day this school year in which I felt that I failed in my mission as an educator of and advocate for children.

Mitigating circumstances had put me a crappy mood the moment I set foot in school. I knew that this emotional poision would cloud my ability to experience success with my students; I recall telling myself, "don't be in a bad mood, you'll have a bad day." But it was not to be.

Then, Quadasha arrived, late, halfway through first period, when she was supposed to take a make-up test for my class. I could see my hole day slowly expiring before my eyes. Last week's playful sarcasm had turned bitter. The words were the same, but intonation tells a second story. I was nasty.

By 9:05, every excahnge between me and a student was only successful in deepening my disillusionment.

605's near-perfection and amazing effort and results weren't enough to lift my spirits. After lunch was no better. I spent the last two periods of the day (as well as afterschool detention) choosing the wrong battles, picking the unnecessary fights. By the time 8th period rolled around, my head felt like it was trying to have a baby.

710. The specialist of special ed. Marvin, who has been trying to "create a new life form" in order to receive the reward I promised him of a Game Boy Advance SP, believes he has met with success. (To clarify the aforementioned deal: last week, Marvin asked, "If I create a new life form, will you get me a Game Boy Advance SP?" Imagining that the toy would be the least of his rewards, I replied, "sure," at which point Marving begged me to go back to his homeroom after school to examine a "life form" he had "created." Do not get the idea that I am teasing little kids by creating unrealistic expectations for them and baiting them with a proverbial carrot. Marvin proposed the deal.)

Today, Marvin carried a plastic container of some putrid-looking red chunky liquid into class. I could tell that this was the purported "life form." Marvin said that Life Form One had some problems, but that this was Life Form Two, and that, "If it smells like puke, don't worry."

I didn't bother to examine Life Form Two.

2003-09-24T20:15:00.000-04:00

This is Torture

Speaking of isolation:

I STILL DON'T HAVE A FUCKING KEY TO MY CLASSROOM! In my room: various chemicals some of which have safety ratings of 3 (of 4, higher being more dangerous), 27 iBooks, tons of teaching supplies, lots of chemistry equipment. And three cabinets that won't open.

You know those shitty little keys that lock up desk drawers and file cabinets? They are the bane of every teacher's existence, because at the end of each year, no one fucking remembers to turn in those goddam tiny keys. Which would be okay if teachers weren't so fucking overzealous about seniority. When a veteran teacher retires, the remaining teachers will pounce on anything they can get: physical plant, furniture, supplies, parking spots, you name it.

But no one wants to move a desk. Because every room has one. And the veteran teacher never turned in that shitty litte tiny key.

Hence, my problem: three cabinets worth of who-knows-what? in my classroom. And most importantly, I can use the storage space. And since, despite this being my fourth week of work this academic year, I STILL DON'T HAVE A FUCKING KEY TO MY CLASSROOM (see above), I seriously began to doubt I'd ever see the inside of these cabinets unless I made it my mission to.

Ingredients:

-Hammer
-Elbow Grease
-Liberal sprinkling of curse words

Mix. Results vill vary.

Behind door number one: lots of mouse poop and about three reams of ancient 11"x14" construction paper that had been chewed half to dust by Trevor. (The mouse who lives in my room.)

Door number two: dust and 4 cans of rust-oleum rustproofing spraypaint.

Door number three: a 16-mm film projector and several reels of educational films, including:

-Africa: An Introduction
-Plankton: Life in the Sea
-St. Louis Blues
-"The Eagle Has Landed" The Apollo 11 Story [in color!]

Of course I was incredibly eager to see if the projector worked. [It does.] A couple students were in my room for detention while I was finishing my exploration of the projector, and an idea was born: educational films of the 1950s and 1950s during detention. And a quiz afterword, to see if you were paying attention.

During today's screening of "Plankton: Life in the Sea," W.T. remarked, "Mister Faehnle, I am never gonna talk back in class again. This is torture!"

One point for the teachers.

2003-09-24T19:35:00.000-04:00

Living in a Vacuum

Sometimes, when I am at work, it seems like I am not on Earth. I work in a public school. September 11th was my 4th day as a teacher. I didn't know about what happened until well into the afternoon. Out school doesn't have much money, so there are few televisions, and certainly no cable hookups. Most of the computers don't work, so the internet was inaccessible. Currently, the room in which I teach has no windows. And no cell phone reception. Some of the rooms in the school don't even have a phone jacked into our school phone network. I have a small FM radio, but I can barely get reception because of the thick concrete walls that encase the science lab I teach in. The amount of isolation I can endure in one workday is stunning.

But today, it really felt like I was on the moon. I was teaching 710, which is the most special of our seventh-grade special education classes. J, for example, started throwing puches at himself, grunting and yelling, "Uh! Uh! Someone's punchin' me! Unh! Unh! Unh!"

I also witnessed a fight in which the two aspiring pugilists were standing so far apart that neither of the punches landed. They were swinging at air.

But the best was Marvin. Marvin asked me, "Mister Faehnle, what happens if a person eats an eraser?"

"Well, probably nothing, but I don't know for sure." I was puzzled, but I get weird questions all the time, and not just from special ed classes. I envisioned the worst, but dismissed the idea.

"I don't eat erasers any more," Marvin proudly asserted. He was really proud of this fact. I was a bit scared. We got back to business: bridges and how they work.

Marvin again, "Can I have an eraser Mister Faehnle? I made a mistake."

Uhhhh. That is the sound that came out of my mouth as my brain spun frictionless, none of the gears meshing, as I searched for a response.

"No." I looked at his work. Outer space, I tell you: "Marvin, you haven't even written anything on your paper."

2003-09-20T17:09:00.000-04:00

Hey

"Virginia."

[Beat]

"Virginia..."

[Beat. A stance & practiced glare.]

Poke, poke. "Psst, he's looking at you." Point.

"Virginia. Take off your jacket."

"No."

"I am not asking you. I am telling you. It's not part of the uniform."

"No."

Jamal: "Just take off your--"

Veronica: "Shut the fuck up! I ain't takin' off my fuckin' jacket. He's not my father."

Holy shit: "TAKE OFF YOUR JACKET YOUNG LADY!" wheredidMr.Thundersoncomefrom?howlonghadhebeenoutsidelistening?thisislikethethirdtimehehascomeintointerruptmylessons.

Me, to Virginia: "Ouch. Bad timing."

"Mr. Gibson I want an incident report. Including the curse words."

"Yes sir."

Thundering: "GET UP, YOUNG LADY, AND BRING YOUR JACKET WITH YOU!"

Leandro, to Virginia, unprovoked: "Yea."

Me, to Leandro: "You stay out of it. This is not your problem."

Jonny, to Leandro, unprovoked: "Yea, keep your mouth shut."

Thunder: "ANYONE ELSE NEED TO COME WITH ME?"

Me: "Yea, take these two."

ohfuckwhatayearthisisgonnabeanditsonlysecondperiod. "Textbooks, page sixteen. Copytheobjectiveandkeyterms. Hurryup." imsupposedtobeonaprep. whyisntIversonhereanywayohyeahhesgettingmarriedtomorrow. whywasntIinvited? whydheschedulehishoneymoonforthethirdweekoftheschoolyear? wtf?

---

lunch sucked. one of 706 pulled the doorstop out of his door and he still didn't have a key. so he didn't get a chance to eat until eighth period. when the phone rang:

"Good afternoon, this is Mister Gibson."

"Heyit's Dave, are you teaching a class this period?" thatsastupidquestionyoumadetheschedule.

"No. I'm on a prep. Eating my lunch. I still don't have a key to my room. I really need a key, because we have all of the science stuff in my room, including lots of potentially dangerous chemicals. and that science teacher from The High School keeps poking around my room. I'll be right down." goddammitIalwaysforgettopackaspoon: Gibson opened his applesauce cup and "drank" it.

The old IS183 building now houses four schools: MS203 (Gibson's school), PS162or8 (a K through 8 school for kids with severe behavior problems), and two new schools: MS224 (a middle school with a brand-new principal, and only two experienced teachers, the other four being first-years from America's Teachers, a teaching program that served poor urban and rural areas throughout the country) and The High School. It used to be more confusing. Gibson's first year as a teacher, there were only two schools in the building (183 and 162or8), but in addition to IS183 the second floor housed the Manhattan and Bronx borough School Maintenance offices. It was an awful setup: the Maintenance people were right in the middle of the second floor, so if you wanted to go from the north part of the second floor to the south part, you had to go either up to the third floor or down to the first floor and circumnavigate the Maintenance people. They kept the doors to their secion Locked At All Times. You had to go around. Way around.

But, the first year of 203 had been so successful, that Mayor Bloomberg, newly in charge of the Board of Education, oh wait Department of Education, moved the Maintenance people elsewhere and gave the middle part of the building to MS 203 at a press conference. A press conference that Gibson had asked to take his kids to, as a kind of mini field trip for his social studies class, y'know, to see government and the media in action, and also because it was right in the school building. The principal said no way.

But, during eighth period on a Friday, there are more important things to worry about. Like happy hour and finding out who is gonna go. Gibson was cruising through the just-finished middle part of the second floor, on his way down to Dave's office, trying to find Gino. The new layout of the second floor was confusing, not aided by the fact that the organization sheet with all of the teachers' room numbers was very very wrong. All of the listed room numbers didn't exist for the new middle secion. Idle wandering, looking for Gino: heyallfourfloorsofthisbuildinghavedifferentfloorplans. thatsfuckedup. fuckginosgotaclassnow.

"Hey, Gibson, sit down."

"Whats up Dave?"

"I spoke to Thunderson today. He wants to schedule a meeting with you about classroom management. [wtf?] If it's okay with you [wtf?] I'd like to be there." wtfwtfwtfwtf? Dave [wtf] was the building's [wtfwtf] union representative.

"Classroom management? I don't even get a chance to manage my classroom. Thunderson came into my room today. Okay. wait. I was teaching a class, this girl was wearing a jacket, told her to take it off, she said no, started cursing, thunderson heard her and barged in and started yelling."

"Oh, I didn't hear that part."

"Third time this year."

"Wow." Gibson considered Dave a good friend. Dave was a good friend.

"He's always interrupting my lessons."

"That's no good."

"I like to take care of my problems in-house, Dave, and he's making it look to the kids like I can't handle my shit."

"Yeah."

"702, I had them on Wednesday. Edgar Polanco is in that class. I taught Edgar two years ago in the seventh grade. He was sitting silently and taking a test and taking notes. Silently, Dave."

[Beat]

"And Thunderson even said we shouldn't be calling him unless there's a real problem."

"I know, Gibson."

2003-09-17T19:43:00.000-04:00

wow this is the coolest thing ever

2003-09-17T19:35:00.000-04:00

blogging from my mobile phone

2003-08-31T00:22:00.000-04:00

Dog Days of Summer

Ever heard a Lhasa Apso dog bark?

No?

Good.

I love dogs. I really do. I miss our family dog, who had to be put to sleep due to health problems that arose with his old age.

But the Lhasa Apso I can do without. On the web, almost all sources I could find claim that "Apso," roughly translated, is equivalent to "annoying hell-dog that barks a lot." This page even claims that the dogs "were never bought and sold but were given freely."

Probably because:

1). No one in their right mind would buy a dog with such a horrendously awful bark,

and

2). The Lhasa Apso is the fruitcake of the dog world. Once you get one, you look for the first opportunity to give it away. (Tibetan faux pas: being one of mutliple people to bring a Lhasa Apso to a white elephant party.)

Seriously.

The bark of the Lhasa Apso occupies what I like to call the "phantom frequency" of human hearing. Aside from Joey Lauren Adams (the actress who played the title character of the film Chasing Amy), the Lhasa Apso's voice is the only noise in the entire universe that occupies its particular range of audbile frequency. This phantom frequency will never be occupied by anything else, and as such, the damn Lhasa Apso will always, when barking, be sure to demand your immediate attention. Lovers of small dogs, do yourself a favor, and buy a Chihuahua instead. At least they can speak Spanish.

2003-08-30T22:05:00.000-04:00

I am dividng my blogtime and blogspace between the whimsical or personal (which will happen here) and the serious and universal (which will happen at my new blog idea). Check it out.

2003-08-30T21:21:00.000-04:00

The Good, The Bad, and The Oldies

Several months ago, before Dan moved out, I was chillin out in his room, and we were having one of our (approximately) once-monthly explorations of art, design, culture, and music. As usual, this was accompanied by the music that Dan was listening to most lately. Interrupting our conversation was this song I had definitely heard before; my jaw dropped, and I was barely able to manage, "Hey... who... is this?"

[reconstructed conversation: dialogue may not be specific; meaning and intent is]

"E-L-O."

"Huh? I could swear I've heard this song before"

"E-L-O. Electric Light Orchestra. You've heard lots of their songs before, I'm sure. This is Evil Woman."

"Cool. I think my parents used to listen to this stuff."

"Probably."

"Hey, I remember Stephen Merritt [of Magnetic Fields] mentioned loving their orchestrations in the 69 Love Songs cd booklet."

"That would make sense."

---

After buying ELO's Greatest Hits and porting it to my iPod towards the end of the school year last year, I was playing some ELO (Livin' Thing) in the classroom when I was working with one of the special education classes. Much, much, much, much to my astonishment, one of my students, Janet [not her real name], was singing along with the music, which was definitely out of genre for her. (Her favorites tend towards 50 Cent, Jadakiss, and R. Kelly.)

She said she kenw the song from home.

---

Earlier this month, at our dinner party for Ariel's birthday, one of my friends was perusing a bunch of CD jewel cases I'd installed on a wall as a form of interior decoration. He made a very public comment about the impressive decision to buy (and display) the ELO CD. We ended up playing it as post-dinner music.

---

My parents did listen to ELO. Horror of horros, then, that I find myself listening to my parents' crusty old music! I even had an all-Motown 4th of July party (see previous post for more details). Salvation came in the form of a discussion with Amanda. She, too, was commenting on the prospect of listening to old music of generations past. Not all of that oldies music was so bad, after all...

(To be sure, there's a bunch of junk on WMJI 105.7 that I won't listen to.)

Oldies aren't the songs that people necessarily liked best. They are, however, the songs that people remember the most. An example from my own day: Mexican Radio, by Wall of Voodo. That song really sucks. It's an absolute piece of crap, but who can forget it? But on the other hand, there are the oldies that actually embodies the spirit of the culture at the moment. (Like the movie or not, the Forrest Gump Soundtrack is a very good example of this type of music.) These are the songs that my parents listened to that I will listen to that probably my kids will be hearing on "oldies" stations. Because one does have to wonder, what will an oldies station play of my formative years? Nirvana? Probably. Hootie and the Blowfish. Probably (and unfortunately).

The most enduring music of a time is the music that captures and describes the cultural moment. So what will today's youth have to look forward to on the radio stations of their reminiscence? American Idol.

P.S.- It's good to be back.

2003-07-05T13:43:00.000-04:00

Local Legend

"You fuckin' crazy."
"You must have lotsa energy. Can you go all night?"
"You are Olympians"
"You got fuckin huge balls."

Last year it was an accident: the BBQ was supposed to be on Christian's roof, and Nick & I were supposed to be in Ohio. Things don't always work out the way you plan them. The BBQ last year ended up on my stoop up in the Heights. It was fun; a small commited group of people on a mission to enjoy themselves generally will surprise themselves along the way with what they'll come up with for fun. That's the moral of the story.

This year, we planned the BBQ. Food was prepped, grills were assembled, the Keg-a-cue was blazin' it in full effect. Guestlists, assembled, were e-mailed and not responded to: check it out. But we still had a great time. A bunch of friends showed up. (I want to go on the record with my full support of the Columbia Ultimate teams in all their endeavors.) The neighborhood was out, we fed people, had an all-Motown soundtrack.

Then, and this is after just about all my friends left. Then, Christian challenged (jokingly, it seemed at the time) to a street luge race.

We are just as crazy as they said. All told, a 1/2-mile racetrack with a hairpin turn through a live 6-way intersection, rocketing on skateboards down a hill at 30 MPH towards US Rte. 9A.

Next stop; X-Games.

2003-06-14T16:01:00.000-04:00

audblog audio post

2003-05-25T19:29:00.000-04:00

http://www.artofthemix.org/FindAMix/GetContents.asp?strMixID=50895

2003-05-25T01:02:00.000-04:00

Last Night

Ah, so my fair brother Nicholas googled me: "Andrew Faehnle".

And he found this.

Then I came over to his apartment.

NF: Hey, dick, why didn't you tell us about Teacher of the Month?
AF: ...
AF: ...

[beat]

AF: ?
AF: (o_O)

[beat]

NF: I googled your name. Check it out.
AF: wtf?
NF: Congratulations.
AF: wtf?

[fade]

It is weird for someone to know something about my history that I don't know.
Or is it common, and something we just never run into?

I decided how to remedy the situation: throw a "February 2003" party. Play the videos and songs that were hot 3 months ago.
Dress like we did 3 months ago.
It's a meta-party.
Full of meta-sin.
Mmm. Meta-sin.

2003-05-25T00:55:00.000-04:00

Hit of the Week #3

Examining the odd things that bring people to Viva:

1). catfight black female dominate vs white male
leave it to someone in Germany to look for this...

2). pictures of monica lewisky [sic]
eww.

Viva la Evolucion!: disappointin' sex fiends since October, 2002.

last week's Hit of the Week

2003-05-19T11:45:00.000-04:00

Have you ever drowned in honey?
An end so sweet you don't even care
Because, really,
It's a better way to go than the alternatives.

2003-05-15T12:51:00.000-04:00

Sex and Nalgene

So, my project of the moment is meeting a girl who is cute and smart and cool, because, well, I'm ready for some kind of more serious dating or maybe even a relationship, instead of all of this freewheeling dating I've been doing up until recently. I've very recently met this girl who is cool and who I like, but I get lots of mixed signals from her, so I don't know what's up. It's very frustrating, because I like her, and would be willing to invest some time to see where things go, but I don't know.

I suppose, considering what I know about positive attractors and network theory, that I ought to explore it for all it's worth, because doing so will indicate more interest, which would (presumably) reinforce the interest she has (at times) shown, which would make me show more interest, etc. But people aren't predictable the way that quantum particles are. And she has read Viva from time to time, so how will that affect the feedback loop? I don't know.

At the same time, I don't want to show overinterest. Nothing implies desperation like overbearingness. And no one likes desperation.

So, back to my project: I have started carrying my nalgene bottle most times when I go out. What does that say about a person? They they're "crunchy?" That they want to exude preparedness? That they don't like paying for water? Clearly, the nalgene bottle isn't the core of the issue. Anyone can see that it's all about what's inside. More directly, since people will unquestionably size you up based on your appearance, which in my case approximately = clothes + small-ish courier bag + headphones/iPod + nalgene bottle, will people judge based on whats in the bottle?

If I have no water in my bottle, what conclusions can be drawn? That I'm heading home? That my adventures are over? That it's a done deal?

What about full: I'm heading out into the world. Does it connote a sense of naivete?

What is the optimal water level for meeting someone? Leave the bottle at the halfway mark and let the other person decide if it's half-full or half-empty? Use the nalgene as a psychological metric for the people you meet? Or do you go for adventure, and go maybe 25% full, like you're right at the point of the climax in the movie, and that, asuuredly, anyone who joins you on your adventures will have an exciting, if not explosive, time? Or do you play it cautious, go somewhere between the full anf half-full mark? You're already warmed up, in the thick of your adventures, but you have enough water to share, and you can last for a while?

Maybe, in an attempt to convey resourcefulness, covering the bottle in duct tape is the best answer. You can always say it's easier to get a good grip. Or would that be, "ribbed, for her pleasure?"

2003-05-12T22:30:00.000-04:00

my head hurts,
my throat hurts,
but my heart feels fine.

2003-05-11T20:47:00.000-04:00

Whenever I feel lonely, I ride the subway.

2003-05-11T17:21:00.000-04:00

I have just completed my semester of grad school, and all of my requirements for my M.A. in Engish Education.

The last project.

2003-05-10T23:07:00.000-04:00

Oh my lord, a contest!

Howard Han is the coolest fucker ever invented; check it on Pirate Radio.

I wanted to download the video, so I searched google: electric six gay bar.

I found something odd.

So, I am starting a contest.

1). Make a video for the song "Gay Bar" by Electric Six.
2). Post a link in this discussion.
3). I will judge the entries on May 20. I will buy the winner a copy of Electric Six's new album, which is released on that day. Make sure that your website has some contact information so that I can get ahold of you if I decide you win. My decision is final. There are no particular criteria by which I will judge the winner. Read my blog to get an idea of how my brain works, and you might have a leg up on the competition.

2003-05-10T16:34:00.000-04:00

Hit of the Week

It's been an odd week, so I have three offerings of how people got here:

scary optical allusion
erm? even ignoring the typo, i can't figure out what they were looking for.

homemade PE equipment
that sounds dangerous and scary...

cracked free medical textbooks
huh? where do all these kooks come from?

total number of people who got here by keyword searching viva la evolucion: 1

previous Hit of the Week

2003-05-08T23:59:00.000-04:00

Grrr

The thing that gets me madder than anything else in the world: stupidity.

Today I got an email. It was from Teach for America. I am supposed to meet with April, who is supposed to be something of a mentor or supervisor to me. The e-mail was not written by April (who was previously a teacher), but by someone else, who was also a teacher. The email:

Dear Andrew,
I have scheduled your one on one meeting with April for May 22nd at 2:30. Unless you absolutely cannot reschedule a previous engagement you have at this time, please consider this your appointment. Thank you.

?

?!? 2:30? April knows, and the person who wrote this should know that my school day ends at 3:00pm. Granted, maybe they are punishing me because I never bothered to schedule this appointment my self, and they're giving me a crap time to slap me on the wrists. My reply to the e-mail:

I teach until 3pm on weekdays.
I'll see if I can reschedule this previous engagement with District 7, but it seems unlikely.
Generally, the earliest I can make it into the office is 4.

Thanks,
Andrew

Grr. TFA is really out of touch with its corps members...

2003-05-08T11:29:00.000-04:00

Less

There is nothing wrong
with economy of words;
it may be better.

2003-05-07T20:34:00.000-04:00

Notes on a Movie No One Has Seen by Christian and me

2003-05-07T00:31:00.000-04:00

Wholesome, pt. 3
(or, can you tell I'm really bothered about this?)

A long-ago girlfriend of mine once compared herself to me with the following: she'd just rather fuck up the system, whereas I'd rather subvert it from within.

She was right. I have always valued subversion over open rebellion. Probably has something to do with my lifelong fascination with spies and the touch of paranoia I've been blessed with (concomitant in my mostly useful, sometimes schizophrenic ability to see connections where most people don't).

So, I offer this last comment on my wholesomeness: it give me access to the culture of power that I work so hard to subvert every day.

That's why I am a teacher.

2003-05-07T00:08:00.000-04:00

Tonight, I saw Peter Jennings cry.
News at 11.

2003-05-06T17:20:00.000-04:00

Yayayayayay!

My Master's Project, dear readers and friends, is in the hands of my advisor.
I am officially done with the requirements of my M.A.
I'll graduate in October, because I want to squeeze in one last class.

My graduation present to self: a brand-new skateboard. Yay!
Now that I've got all that expensive education and stuff (Yale, B.A.; Columbia M.A.),
it's time to skull myself or break my neck.

My thesis advisor liked the skateboard idea: she said learning to ride it
would feel similar to how it might be for my students who struggle with writing.
She thought it was tres cool for me, as a teacher, to be learning something so totally new.

She also thinks I have a good article in me about the value of TFA.
I agree with her, and it is nice to hear people vocally support
and encourage me. There isn't enough of it in the world:
interpersonal feedback. Let me know when I'm doing a good job:
it'll only make me work harder to do better.

2003-05-06T10:40:00.000-04:00

i love the endorphin-high feeling i get after a particularly exhilarating run.
it makes the world seem okay.

2003-05-05T22:54:00.000-04:00

Do vegans swallow?
Discuss

Seriously. Do they?

(crossposted on Sex Gods of the Internet)

2003-05-05T17:22:00.000-04:00

Focus, pt. 2

Ok, I am really on a quest for focus now. I wan't it; haven't got enough.
I want a skateboard and Yoga classes too.
I think they'll help with my balance.
I've been using Christian's
balance board a lot lately, and it has given me a marked
increase in my balancing skills. I know it sounds lame to practice balancing, but it's what I've been doing whenever I get the chance.
(And it's even more embarassing not to be able to stand on one foot for 5 seconds without
waving your arms around like an asshole.)

2003-05-05T16:23:00.000-04:00

Foreboding

Baghdad was once the capital of a large Islamic empire.
And now we fuck with them.
I fear the future.

2003-05-04T22:26:00.000-04:00

Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

Over the course of this week, thoughts of past girlfriends have been popping into my head. Why? Because it's spring and I'm single?

2003-05-04T22:24:00.000-04:00

Wholesome, Pt. 2

Speaking of wholesome, yesterday I attended a meeting the purpose of which was to organize a northern Manhattan chapter of Food Not Bombs. I've never been involved in any kind of activism at all. (With the exception of attending the 2/15 anti-war rally.) It felt good. It made me happy. Then I walked home 20-ish blocks, visited a cool clothing store and bought a linen shirt from a gorgeous salesgirl. I love linen.

Too good for my own good.

2003-05-04T21:41:00.000-04:00

Hit of the week:

"christian music filesharing program"
yup. someone typed that into google and eventually ventured onto this site.
i like to try and imagine their reaction.

2003-05-04T15:54:00.000-04:00

Wholesome

I got lost in Brooklyn today, right around the "X" formed by the G and L subway lines. New York City zoning regulations require that you must either be Polish or a Hipster (or can pass for one or the other) if you want to live in the area. It's really bizarre. I slept over at Jane's place. There were four of us in the relatively tiny bed: me, jane, her brother, and a guy whose name sounds like "Brent" but isn't because when I called him that I was told that his name actually has no vowels in it. I guess he's Polish, too.

The cramped sleeping conditions resulted in little "good sleep" for me, though everyone else seemed to be doing fine. I have always been bad at sleeping anywhere but my bed. So, when I decided at 2-ish this afternoon that it was about time to head home, I was disoriented a bit. I wandered around Brooklyn in big circles, maybe with an 8-block radius. I wanted to find the L subway because the G doesn't touch manhattan, the at-that-time-distant island I call home. I ended up under the BQE, saw lots of men dressed like old-school European sailors. It was a thoroughly bizarre experience. Not my NYC at all. Instead of Spanish all over them place (which I can fairly comprehend, especially if it's written), there was Polish. That was weird: not having access to a large amount of the culture where you live. Up here in the Hts, it's all good, especially because a lot of the kids I teach are latinos and latinas.

Because I am really stupid about Brooklyn, I decided to come up with an algorithm for finding subway stations there. All of the streets looked, physically, more or less plausible for having a subway station. I could see the Empire State Building, so I could navigate radially. I'd forgotten this cool trick:

1. hold your wristwatch so the face is parallel to the ground
2. rotate the entire watch so that hour hand points towards the direction of the sun
3. halfway between the hour hand and 12 is due south

cool, eh? it's like a compass all the time, if you can just remember how to do it. but i'd forgotten it, so navigating radially was only of limited use. So, here's the method i came up with:

1. walk in the general direction you want to head. for example, towards the Empire State Building.
2. wander. if you see something interesting on a side street, go. if you don't see anything interesting, go. this step is important because it increases the breadth of your search. it adds an element of randomness, which is important to keeping the algorithm robust
3. maintain your general direction
4. if you come upon a street with a high amount of pedestrian traffic (relative to the other streets in your path), go on it. head in the general direction of your fixed point.

in doing this, i quickly found the G train. Yay. If I hadn't been so silly, I'd've just walked down Nassau (the cross street right by Jane) to the station I took an hour to find. Blah. I really didn't mind the walk though. I've been walking quite a bit lately. Local knowledge, as espoused by Jane Jacobs and Emergence. It also give me time to think and to work on my focus. I need focus. If anyone has some to sell, I could use it.

So, pondering #1: what's with hipsterism?
Have hipsters always existed? If so, where have they all been hidden away and why are they so en vogue now? If not, what was everyone before they were a hipster?
Why do they all have 27 different tattoos and one-of-a-kind, 100% irreplacable thifty/vintage clothing. And very expensive/mass produced courier bags and electronic gadgets?
Why do they hate affectation? It's like if you care about something, you lose your aloofness and can no longer be cool.
(I can't be a hipster. I have too much commitment to--among other things--my students. Otherwise, culturally, I'm pretty down.)
I get infuriated by their lack of caring. They tend to be politically down, but their apathy is so deadening.
Maybe it's all the drugs? And why don't they like hip-hop? Or neo-soul?
I was told last night by Jane that I'm too wholesome.
She asked me if I thought she was a hipster.
I said "no." All her friends say she is, Jane said. But, Jane said, they don't really listen.
No one really listens.

#2 : fortifiedfullness (a socratic dialogue)
Am I wholesome? Of course you are.
Is that bad? By no means.
But all of the people I am attracted to are by various measures unwholseome. And that is bad because...?
Unwholesome types don't generally like wholesome typies. True.
Maybe I should go do something dangerous and then blog it so everyone will know what a badass I really am. Now you're being silly
But I'm not that wholesome. Really I'm not. Remember the golf cart? The abandoned subway station? How about the Hudson? My cornrows? And the revolution? C'mon. Drew...
But. But. Drew, you can best serve your higher goals by being wholesome. Fight fire with water, remember?
You're right. I'm a goodguy. You can change the world if you really work on it... Ok, gotta go. It's time to cook dinner
You cook? Of course. It's practical and yummy and doesn't support yucky corporations like McDonalds.
I should have guessed...

2003-05-04T02:04:00.000-04:00

Jane's story

2003-05-03T23:58:00.000-04:00

"Extreme Adventures:" A New Company

2003-05-03T23:37:00.000-04:00

Phucking with TiVo

2003-05-02T13:01:00.000-04:00

Panopticon

How can one argue that our government is not rapidly turning into a panopticon, the surveillance architecture in which the central authority is hidden but can see all of its subjects. The gurrent government is making a bid to give the CIA powers to spy on American citizens We already know that the NSA and FBI do so, but now the CIA?

wtf?

2003-04-26T19:02:00.000-04:00

Our Apathy is Their Victory

Corporations and the Ameircn Government are fairly self-sustaining systems. Without wiping out huge portions of the infrastructure or population of either, it would be very difficult to destabilize either to the point of collapse. In this way, each are emergent entities. You can replace (or remove) parts, and other people will step in to be the new CEO or Supreme Court Justice, etc.

This results in an interesting phenomenon: the people who are component parts of these organizations are not really in control of the organization, as a whole. The networks that have been built by a corporation or a government have generally been so reinforced over time that they will be sustained at high cost.

2003-04-26T18:00:00.000-04:00

music

2003-04-26T17:57:00.001-04:00

three kings

three kings: how is this movie not considered the best war movie ever?

aside from being beautifully shot, well-acted (and -cast), incredibly nuanced w/r/t Desert Storm,

2003-04-26T17:57:00.000-04:00

browse

Tried to find a copy of pedigogy of the oppressed yesterday at Barnes & Noble. (I had a copy, but left it--locked--in my school over spring break. Oww.)

For some reason, I'd forgotten that the store had a small (and inconveniently-accessed) educational philosophy section. In my temporary amnesia, I'd decided upon a game (and experiment) to play: I would not ask an employee where to find the book.

My progression:

1. Early Childhoo

I spend a lot of time online. A lot. Maybe the fact of my online presence has distorted some higher cognitive function of my mind, but I seriously thought that not asking an employee for help would actually be a difficult task. Well, it was.

we're engineering the randomness outta the web. thats why browsing is bad. kevin kelly was right: our biological systems are becoming more (culturally) engineered.

2003-04-24T18:38:00.000-04:00

What the World Needs Now...

Our current democratic experiment has run its course.
Evolution has shifted from the individual to the cultural.
Government by the mob. By the mass.
Not the mad mob of Marx's day, but the smartmob.
The concentrate, ultra-niche blobs that aggregate
to form collectives and collections
That make the whole
greater
than the sum of its parts.

Together,
we
can
accomplish anything.
All we need is to do it.
A lot of small change adds up quickly into social change.

Together,
we are stronger
than
the forces that would have us apart.

When will we learn
the strength of ourselves?

2003-04-22T11:10:00.000-04:00

And you still trust the government?

Cisco buys Linksys.
Now they have market share for both industrial-strength and home-use networking.

Cisco embeds eavesdropping into its hardware.
Remember the relative safety/privacy of your home firewall?
Also: what happens when bugs and holes start to show up in the code/hardware? Some hax0r from Estonia owns everything received/sent from my apartment?

DMCA forbids noodling with the hardware. (Access controls, right?)
No wonder they've got Jack Bauer--er, Kiefer Sutherland--doing Cisco ads during 24.

Obviously, Kiefer Sutherland is Big Brother

2003-04-21T00:51:00.000-04:00

Your Vote Counts

I think it is time to start a new democracy in our country.
We need honest and accountable politicians.
We have the infrastructure to add unprecedented levels of transparency to the government.
Why haven't we?

We're not allowed to.
Legislation like the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) forbids us from asking quesions and discussing digital rights management features.
It sounds to me like the government wants to regulate information flow, that is, to stop transparency.
Ashcroft has told his department to avoid complying with FOIA requests.

What do we do? We resurrect democracy.
But it only works if everyone participates.
By not voting, you relinquish your claim on the government.
It's like fighting over food at the dinner table in a large family: just because the food is on your plate doesn't mean it's yours; you gotta eat it.

To restate an argument made on this site previously:
Think about the American Flag in the wake of 9/11. Symbol of jingoism, economic imperialism, cultural imperialism.
What happened to all of the positive connotations? After all, people still try to come to the US at risk to their own life.
Something good is going down in this country. The positive still exists.
It's just that the people who believe in the good of America (its pluralism, its standards of living, its promises) have given up on the flag.
Why?

No one carried a flag on 2/15 at the protests, except in irony. I didn't. Eww. Carry that thing?
No one carried a flag at Columbia's protests.
Protesters carried flags against the Vietnam War.

Similarly, if you fail to vote, you are, in effect, giving up your claim to a pice of the democratic landscape.
By not voting, help defeat your own cause, whatever it may be.

Vote. It's your world.

2003-04-21T00:23:00.000-04:00

Downloaded Musiq and India.Arie today.
On a neo-soul jag, thanks to Cody ChesnuTT.
Seein' the roots again at FieldDayFest.
I'm pumped. Just gotta finish the M.A. first.

2003-04-20T23:51:00.000-04:00

central park with nick today
last night:
indian food in fort washington
extra in a movie
columbia ultimate gathering

i love spring break.
now, for some schoolwork...

2003-04-17T13:30:00.000-04:00

"cogitate"

In my much-discussed (on here & by me, anyway) research, I came across an autoboigraphy of John C. Lilly, M.D. The dolphin researcher who eventually got heavily involved in researching psychoacoustics and consciousness-altering substances. In reading an excerpt from "The Center of the Cyclone: An Autobiography of Inner Space," I came across this interesting passage:

If one listens to a tape loop of a repeated word for
fifteen minutes, one may hear as many as thirty different words other than
the one which is on the tape loop. We did an extensive study of the word
"cogitate." We exposed something of the order of three hundred subjects to
this word for periods of fifteen minutes to six hours. We asked each subject
to write down the words that he heard or to report them with a microphone on
another channel of the same tape recorder.
From these three hundred subjects we got on the order of 2,300 different
words.

Sounds interesting, right? There was an address included where you could send about ten bucks to order a cogitate tape loop, but my first thought was about the archaic format. I don't remember the last audiocassette tape I touched. Got to thinkin about my underutilized Audioblogger account, and made a loop. Haven't tried it yet. I don't know if the "cogitate" had to be at a certain frequency, so I don't know what'll happen. I'll write about it for an upcoming post. (And I'll try to experiment with changing the loop time to alter the frequency. Feel free to download (and don't forget to set your .mp3 player to loop playback):

cogitate

I suspect that you'll need to shorten the period of the loop, so that there is almost no time at the beinning or endling of the loop.

In other news: yay!

2003-04-14T23:50:00.000-04:00

Props

Props to:

Christian for telling me about Radio 4
Ms. Brooks for putting cornrows in my hair for the first time ever. They looked great. (I've had it done twice since.)
Howard Han for being such an intrepid blogger.
Nick, my brother, for working hard to make FEWS a reality.
Mike from Nigeria, the excellent taxi driver I rode with on Saturday night. He lives in the Bronx, not too far from where I work. I think his medallion number is 1C18.
My well-behaved students who sometimes get overlooked in all the chaos in my classroom.

2003-04-13T23:59:00.000-04:00

Aiiiiiii-yeeeeeee

Damn, I hate having to run internet explorer just to blog. But this, courtesy of my stand-up friend Howard Han, is too important to let pass by.

Also, de we really "run" Internet Explorer anymore? Or is it so integrated into Win XP that double-clicking the IE icon merely starts an interface to a selection of processes that have already been churning away?

2003-04-13T21:34:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately, last night I was having problems using Audioblogger to get a post online. Here's the jist of it:

Christian, Jackie, Nick and I were walking westward on Houston, and there was a taxicop who had pulled over some man driving a nice Beemer.

It was unusual, and somewhat unsettling, to see a Yellow Cab with a rotating red light in the front, flanked by two men with police badges slung on chains around their neck. Ostensibly these two men were plainclothes cops, though the numbers of those in the city have been drastically reduced after the NYPD allowed undercovers to opt out of undercover duty after the deaths of two plainclothes cops in a "buy & bust" deal that went sour on Staten Island. At least, I think it was S.I.

Which brings up two issues:

1.) The men were real plainclothes cops. That's scary, and it even seems like borderline entrapment to have two cops tooling around in a taxicab, accepting fares. (I can't be sure that the guys were accepting fares, because I only saw the taxi at rest.) That would also be stupidly risky to the civilian fares that the cops picked up.

2). The men were not real plainclothes cops. That's even more scary, and it reminiscent of a recent cluster of crimes (as reported by ...) wherein the alleged criminal used fake or illicit but real police badges to fool the alleged victims into compliance. Couple that with a taxi, in which your potential victims actively seek you out.

I really wish audioblogger took the post, because in it I noted the medallion number of the cab in question. It was (I think) 6Y.. At least I recall there being a "6" and a "Y" in it. Maybe. Because in either case, I think that someone should do some follow-up checking to see what the fuck is going on here.

At any rate, I gotta go because someone is trying to evict me from my comfy chair at Butler Library, and I can't afford to let that happen.

2003-04-12T13:53:00.000-04:00

i am an indie snob!

How indie are you? test by ridethefader

You're just too cool for school, aren't you? You're pretty narrow minded
and opinionated with regards to music (and probably most other things
as well). But you're allowed to be, because you really are better
than everyone else. You take pride in obscurity.
You probably prefer vinyl too, you elitist bitch.

Hmm. The truth comes out. But, nah, I don't do vinyl.

2003-04-12T11:31:00.000-04:00

I have been using Opera 7 for about a week now, and it's great.
Except for blogger.

In my first post ever I complained about Opera's too-small textbox.
Well, damn: opera 7 has no textbox where I can edit.
So I have to use IE, which sometimes crashes my computer and I haven't been able to figure out why.
Damn Win XP Pro.

Say what you will about the instabilities of, say, Win98, but at least I had a decent mental map of it, so I could troubleshoot it effortlessly.

In other news, we once again bitched the Hudson Hotel.
And someone googled my blog by name. Yay!

Sorry for the lack of real content, but I am still working on that big paper garbage, and now the deadlines are in sight.

2003-04-12T03:06:00.000-04:00

audblog audio post

PS- He hit the roof of the building across with a mug. Barely, but it had a favorable bounce.

2003-04-06T15:09:00.000-04:00

Beaten to the Punch

Christian has already written up a narrative of the events of last night, so I won't do it.

2003-04-03T22:30:00.000-05:00

A Teaser

So, as I mentioned, I've been working lots on several papers for graduate school. In an effort to generate interest, here's the Works Cited/Bibliography for the most interesting of what I'm writing right now. Bonus points if you can figure out my thesis from the sources provided.

Works Cited

-Blavatsky, H. P. Practical Occultism. Aydar, India: The Theosophical Publishing House, 1948.
-Gladstone, Neil. “The Secret Language of Sigur Ros.” CMJ New Music Monthly November 2002: 46-50.
-Kelly, Kevin. Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World . Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 1994.
-Lovecraft, H. P. “The Music of Erich Zann.” Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre. New York: The Ballantine Publishing Group, 1982.
-The New American Bible. Nashville: Catholic Bible Press, 1987.
-Persinger, Michael A. Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs. New York: Praeger, 1987.
-Persuad, Raj. “Holy Visions Elude Scientists.” Guardian. 20 Mar. 2003: n.pag. On-line. Internet. 25 Mar. 2003. Available WWW: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=P8&targetRule=10&xml=/connected/2003/03/19/ecfgod119.xml
-Stephenson, Neal. Snow Crash . New York: Bantam Books, 1992.
-Thompson, Mark. “Regarding Varieties [sic] Psychoacoustic Noise.” 27 Dec. 1989: n.pag. On-line. Internet. 3 Apr. 2003. Available WWW: http://users.lycaeum.org/~martins/M2/noise_ahf.html

Background Sources and Works for Further Inquiry

-Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo. Linked: The New Science of Networks. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 2002.
-Beck, Guy L. Sonic Theology: Hinduism and Sacred Sound. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1993.
-DeLillo, Don. White Noise. New York: Penguin, 1984.
-Du Maurier, George. Trilby. Rutland, VT: Everyman, 1994.
-Hofstadter, Douglas R. Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1979.
-Hofstadter, Douglas R. Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language . New York: Basic Books, 1997.
-Johnson, Steven. Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001.
-Khan, Hazrat Inayat. The Mysticism of Sound and Music. Boston: Shambhala, 1996.
-Kipling, Rudyard. “Wireless,” Collected Stories. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994.
-Kramer, Samuel Noah, and John Maier. Myths of Eniki, The Crafty God. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
-Midgley, Mary. Evolution as a Religion. London: Methuen, 1985.
-Millard, Andre. America on Record: A History of Recorded Sound. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
-Minsky, Marvin. The Society of Mind. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.
-Persinger, M. A. “Preadolescent Religious Experience Enhances Temporal Lobe Signs in Normal Young Adults,” Percept Mot Skills. 1991 Apr. 72(2). P 453-4.
-Persinger, M. A. “Propensity to Report Paranormal Experiences is Correlated with Temporal Lobe Signs,” Percept Mot Skills. 1984 Oct. 59(2). P 583-6.
-Rheingold, Howard. Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Books, 2003.
-Schafer, R. Murray. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. Rochester, VT: Destiny Books, 1977.
-Toop, David. Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds. London: Serpent’s Tail: 1995.

2003-04-03T22:27:00.000-05:00

I have been spending a lot of time in Columbia's Butler Library lately, trying to plow through volumes of written material to work on my much-alluded-to and quite mysterious grad school paper, and taking the occasional hour or two to commit some ideas to paper. (But it's all on my computer, so it isn't really paper, then, is it?) Taking the occasional hour or two to commit some ideas to disk. To data. To electrons. To ASCII. Trying to commit some ideas to ASCII.

Usually, I work in the lounge (unless I am hunting down something in the stacks), because lots of people come and go, and (let's face it), as a result there is a greater incidence of eye-candy with which to distract myself. Especially as the weather turns springy. The lounge is not without its distractions: people tend to leave their cellphone ringers on, and also there is a lot of talking. Which, I suppose, is okay, because the amount of time I am spending at the library is putting a serious damper on my social life. At least my paper is decent, and certainly compelling.

Today, sitting behind me, was a graduate student TA (teaching assistant), who was in the process of meeting with the undergrads in his sway so that the fledgling academics could discuss their final papers for some sort of course on social history or literature. (I could gather this from several references made to the views of earlier generations, as well as one student's plea that this course was just fulfilling a requirement, that he was a science guy, and that he couldn't both write a paper and do his problem sets and final exam for his important classes with success. To try to balance both was, in his estimation, to fail both.)

After Grad Student 1 (GS1) was done meeting with his undergrads, a graduate student friend of his--GS2--came up and they began to complain about the students they taught and the lack of adademic rigor that the undergrads exercised in writing their papers.

GS2 specifically mentioned how many of his undergrads would use the internet for research and vite directly from the WWW. As someone who has found the World Wide Web a useful research tool, I took great (though silent) offense to this criticism.

At the moment, the Web is one of the only tools that provides searchable full-text of many academic books. There are plenty of databases that provide searchable texts of journals, but to locate a specific passage in a specific (print) book often can be time consuming, especially if the exact language used is not remembered. Granted, it is usually the case that only old popular literary works are available (because of their post-copyright status), but this is a very useful thing nevertheless.

Furthermore, (and as a teacher of Technology & Computers, this is a topic of much interest to me) as the knowledge produced by humanity becomes more ubiquitous, it is important to have a searchable database of as much as possible. As a mentor of mine once told me, as the amount of available information increases, it is more important to know how to find a thing than to know the thing.

The internet is not without its infotoxin, however. It is incredibly cheap to publish bad, inaccurate, or false information, and have that information be as pervasive and available as something that is correct and useful. The internet does not excuse a good researcher from validating what has been found in his or her investigations. But, seriously, GS1 and GS2, you need to chill out and recognize a good tool that can be used poorly and incorrectly.

2003-03-27T21:33:00.000-05:00

Big Brother?

Because of the PATRIOT Act

and

Because of these crappy local DMCAs

Get your encryption before it is too late!

The international PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) homepage
Anynymous e-mail
Anonymous websurfing

2003-03-26T20:43:00.000-05:00

Don't Let the War Get You Down

Online research is a dangerous thing. You never know what you're going to come up with. For one of my grad school papers, I googled the search term "C. W. Shumway" which eventually, in the web's labyrinthine way, brought me to this page:

Timothy Leary & Robert Anton Wilson's "8-Circuit Theory of the Brain"

Those who know me irl know that I have been on a real self-improvement kick: since the new year, I have quit smoking cigarettes (cold turkey), begun exercise daily, and seen dramatic gains in the work habits of my 6th grade students (because I have been a better teacher).

What interests me is that in one form or another, I have been internalizing the "Winner Scripts" from the above piece. (Ask Christian about it; I'm sure I've made him sick of my superpositivity on our runs.) It is those who posess or follow thises winner scripts, presumably, who are most able to affect and control their own lives to the highest degree of success.

In other words, I have adopted the following 8 mantras, though not necessarily in so many words:

-I will live forever or die trying.
-I am free; you are free; we can have our separate trips or we can have the same trip.
-I am learning more about everything, including how to learn more.
-Love, and do what thou wilt.
-How I feel depends on my neurological knowhow.
-I make my own coincidences, synchronicities, luck and Denstiny [sic].
-Future evolution depends on my decisions now.
-In the province of the mind, what is believed to be true is true, or becomes true within limits to be learned by experience and experiment.

Anyhow, in graduate school today, we had a marathon session (4 hours!) because my professor was out for a week. She was hosting "A Conversation with Salman Rushdie" at another university, in another state.

After the break halfway through our session, one of the students gave her presentation about RL Stevenson's Jekyll & Hyde. During her presentation, she broke into tears, blaming it on the war with Iraq. (Columbia had big walkouts and protests from noon to 4pm today, and so the war was much on everybody's minds.)

The net effect was that class became a bitch session about America, the War, Globalism, George Bush, Capitalism, the 2000 presidential election, et. al. It made me very pissed off at the academic world, because I see protest without action as a huge problem with democracy.

Voting is essentially a speech act. Yes, you press a lever (or not), or punch out a chad (or not), or "X" a box (or not), but they all derive from the same action of voicing one's preference. The problem is that much of our country does not view speech as a legitimate act, and that view tends to skew left/right. (Take the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill sexual harassment hearings as support for my assertion that much of the right does not view speech to be an act.)

So, I testily ranted about the need for action, re-voicing (remember, I am a part-time grad student, and academia tends to skew left, and take speech as an act: consider that in the 90s free speech was severly restricted on many campuses by "non-discrimination" clauses) my argument about reclaiming the flag, which goes something like this:

"When I was at the Feb. 15 protests in NYC, I didn't see a single American flag, except those carried ironically. Whatever happened to the ability to seriously love your country and still be critical of it? Where are the Woodie Guthries? Yes, "This Land is My Land," but he also had a lot of issues to sort out with America. So do I.

"But why has the flag become such a symbol of economic imperialism? Because we let it. America still has some good things going for it. We promise more freedoms to more people than anywhere else in the world. (True, we don't follow through on our promises too well, but that's what we're trying to improve.) So, why can't the flag be a symbol of the fact that we value diversity, and that we like innovation and free speech? Because some of us are afraid to carry the flag.

"Well, there's only one way we can get the symbol back: carry the damn flag!"

[One thing sociolinguistics has taguht me: words (which are, at their most basic, arbitrary symbols) have politicap power and can be claimed and reclaimed. Queer. Nigger. Even "bastard." All of these words have been reclaimed by in-groups to change the connotation from negative to positive, when used by member os the "in-group" (the group to which the word refers). The phenomenon is common enough to have a name: semantic amelioration.]

And another student in my class responded with something like: "But I feel so powerless. There are so many protesters who protest but no one listens to us."

And I offered two solutions:

1. Speech is good, but action is better.

2. (This is where I tie in the crazy stuff at the beginning) I think that part of the project of the media war is to make us depair and believe that we are powerless. WE ARE NOT POWERLESS! But if we think we are, then we will be. We, the dissenters, need to claim back our symbols, and adopt those winner scripts, in a sense.

My professor tried to derail my rant by asking, "What kind of action do you propose?"

I must confess, I didn't have what I then felt to be a good answer. I replied, "I don't know. Do good. I am a moral relativist, but I know that there are things that are not bad. Clean up litter. Give a hungry person food. Fix a broken building in the inner city. If everyone does a little, the net result is a big thing."

But what I realize, is that it is the question of my professor that is part of the problem. It is a stall tactic. If I organize a hundred people and tell them to do something arbitrary and not bad, we will accomplish good. But when the organized begin to ask, "but what do we do?" that the fight is truly lost.

We are fighting a war on the homefront, a war of disfranchisement, disillusionment, of self-questioning. We need people of conviction to organize and (as Nike said) Just Do It. That's one cultural symbol I am not above re-appropriating.

2003-03-25T23:10:00.000-05:00

If it seems like I haven't been posting a lot of original content, there's a good explanation for it: I'm haven't been. Most of my writing currently is spent on one of several projects for graduate school (I'v got 3 papers I'm writing, one of which is my Master's Thesis). However, at least one of them will make it onto here when a draft has been completed. It should be demonstrably cool.

Peace and g'night.

2003-03-25T12:37:00.000-05:00

one of my students, J.T., singing a song that she wrote with the help of her little sister.

2003-03-24T21:53:00.000-05:00

Crapmachine, courtesy of Jon Yang

JYD Arch: but I guess they're having trouble cause they can't generate any cash
JYD Arch: it's a nice complete site though
p0pcult: looks like it
JYD Arch: oh
JYD Arch: you'll like this
JYD Arch: http://www.e-flux.com/projects/pruitt/index.php3?num=1
JYD Arch: and this
JYD Arch: http://lovethosekids.com/playgrnd/sandart.htm
JYD Arch: and this is just damned cool http://www.sodaplay.com/constructor/index.htm
p0pcult: yess
p0pcult: i saw that on boingboing a while back
JYD Arch: uh huh
JYD Arch: hehe
JYD Arch: fun ain't they?
p0pcult: yeah
p0pcult: so, how's life?
JYD Arch: eh, not bad
JYD Arch: kinda just being lazy..which ain't so good unemployed
JYD Arch: reading a lot about military tech though
JYD Arch: heh
p0pcult: i noticed
JYD Arch: uh huh
JYD Arch: oh btw
JYD Arch: it's not terribly important
JYD Arch: but
JYD Arch: I don't actually subscribe to Janes
JYD Arch: I'm just hooked into their system to get past the first round of security
JYD Arch: 2nd round subscriber clearance is upwards of 850/yr
JYD Arch: janes defense weekly is 1025ish
p0pcult: d-zamn
JYD Arch: actually 1110
JYD Arch: heh
JYD Arch: yeah, and janes is split up a lot so each section requires additional memberships...but you gotta member though, that janes, on average, knows about tech months before anyone else does...
JYD Arch: like that super-topedo that might have sunk the kursk
JYD Arch: and GPS jammers
JYD Arch: their articles are dated months before anyone else's
p0pcult: super-torpedo?
JYD Arch: yeah
p0pcult: erk?
JYD Arch: the russians
JYD Arch: russians
JYD Arch: have a torpedo
JYD Arch: the tech has been around since the early 80s/late 70's
JYD Arch: but not fully mature
JYD Arch: still is not
JYD Arch: but
JYD Arch: conventional torpedoes have a max speed of around 80kts
JYD Arch: more or less 100 mph right?
p0pcult: yeah
p0pcult: i believe 1 knot is 1.2 mph
JYD Arch: well there is the theory that if you create a pocket of gas around a submerged object you can effectively reduce drag
JYD Arch: so the russians have figured a way to create a "super cavity"
JYD Arch: that fully encloses a rocket powered torpedo
JYD Arch: that races along at around 250kts
JYD Arch: which means, it no longer matters how quiet a russian sub is
p0pcult: but then, why not a "super sub"?
JYD Arch: cause as soon as a US attack up opens up with sonar, the russians can fire off a super-cavitating topedo(s) and they'll hit home before the US topedo reaches target
p0pcult: right
JYD Arch: well, because they have not figrued out a way to use propellers to power supercavitating vehicles
p0pcult: gotcha
JYD Arch: hence the rockets
JYD Arch: they've obviously working on it
JYD Arch: but no suck luck yet released
JYD Arch: and that would make a shitload of noise
JYD Arch: which is ok if you can't chase it
JYD Arch: and kill it
JYD Arch: but still
p0pcult: it would scare the whales
JYD Arch: haha
JYD Arch: well that's the other thing
JYD Arch: is that, going that fast underwater
JYD Arch: the torpedoes don't even need warheads really
JYD Arch: they're moving fast enough to be kinetic kill weapons
p0pcult: right
JYD Arch: so whales'd be fucked
JYD Arch: I rekon it's easier to scrape a whale off a sub than a deer off a car though
JYD Arch: unless it dents the bumber
JYD Arch: bumper
JYD Arch: they've (the russians) have the capability of putting a nuke on one of these torpedoes and it can if placed inside a carrier battle formation, destroy the whole group
p0pcult: wow
JYD Arch: hm?
p0pcult: (sorry for the delay; i've got like 3 things going at once.)
p0pcult: oh, just responding to the nuclear torpedo scenario
JYD Arch: no biggie
JYD Arch: oh heh
JYD Arch: digs
JYD Arch: hey, I'm gonna bail
JYD Arch: you have a good night
JYD Arch: talk later
JYD Arch signed off at 9:59:51 PM.

2003-03-24T21:22:00.000-05:00

One of the coolest things about blogging, in my opinion, is how the non-commercial blogs have infiltrated search engines. Because of the incredible variety of things about which I write on Viva, the textual content is a real word salad: lots of immiscible chunks all thrown together.

Check out some of the searches that have returned Viva as a result:

-plug me in download video "add n to x"

-EVOLUCIÓN DEL GOT
-reconstructed tshirts
-free 7yearolds having sex porn Eww. That's a dubious honor: being one of three sites returned on this search. (Legal Disclaimer: this blog has--and I have--nothing to do with child porn. A friend of mine, a second-grade teacher was talking about his 7-year old students, and elsewere I have used the words "sex" and "porn" on this site. And "having" is just a damn helping verb.)
-Bennetton clothing advertisements

-"25th hour" "fuck you" download

That's the power of networking for ya.

2003-03-24T20:55:00.000-05:00

Welcome, Jon!

Ok, Jon doesn't want his own blog, so I have invited him here. He readsJane's, so he knows about all sorts of cool military tech. He's also trained as an architect, and is an all-around stand-up kinda guy. My affiliations with him run across the gamut: from my brother's FEWS project, to various artistic escapades.

So, expect some shock and awe from Mr. Yang. We could use some here at Viva in these crazy times.

2003-03-24T20:44:00.000-05:00

Biotech, indeed

Fascinating (er, crazy) article about the future of warfare. Tech + soldiers = movie plots come to life.

(via the blogless Jon Yang)

2003-03-20T19:41:00.000-05:00

As longtime Viva readers know, I have been somewhat incredulous at the lack of security at base of the Geoge Washington Bridge in New York City. Well, today, on the usual "lighthouse run," I noticed a statistically significant increase in security: a military Humvee with at least two soldiers inside. They weren't there when the threat level was previously orange. They weren't there on Tuesday, the last day I ran that route.

2003-03-19T13:12:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, while attending a conference on Human Rights and Global Citizenship, again the notion of distributed activism came to me. You hear it all the time: in order to ensure your own human rights, you must watch out for the human rights of others. I call this distributed activism because all it would take is a lot of of people just a little effort to see that human rights are protected worldwide. Many hands make light work, in a sense. Furthermore, when our own rights are under assault, we are in less of a position to protect them.

A world of one will have no rights violations.
In a world of two, a rights violation is dangerous because the victim is probably not in a position to protect himself or herself.
In a world of three, things begin to get interesting: if a violation occurs, there is a perpetrator, a victim and a third party, who has three choices: side with the perp (and reduce the free world to a population of two), side with no one (again reducing the free world to a population of two), or side with the victim (thereby maintaining freedom for all).

It's a simplistic, recursive argument: at some point, if no one speaks up, there will be no one left to protect the freedoms of the few. Or, as put by Martin Niemoller:

"First they came for the Jews
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out
because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me."

The only thing I remember distinctly from President Bush's St. Patrick's Day speech was his indication that "just following orders" is not a defense for action.

I hope that the American people, and especially those in charge of protecting us, can follow those some guildines: following orders is no excuse for infringing on our civil liberties or our human rights. I would like to thank the State of New Mexico for its promise to protects its residents, as discussed on Boing Boing.

It is up to us to police ourselves and each other, to ensure that all can share equally in what freedom and liberty we have.

2003-03-19T09:22:00.000-05:00

Happy War Day!

I was late to work today because the police found a "suspicious package" at the Yankee Stadium subway station. Traffic was being rerouted (including the bus I was on), and obviously I couldn't transfer to the 4 train at Yankee Stadium. A man in a police uniform stopped the bus to explain that the subway station was closed, because of the package. Lots of cop cars were around; the streets were blockaded.

I feel like I really blew it because I had my school's digital still camera with me and didn't take any pictures.

2003-03-18T21:21:00.000-05:00

Excellent blog (well-written and well-informed, and with a beautiful layout and color scheme) from a guy I knew in college:
OxBlog

2003-03-18T18:14:00.000-05:00

Confidence Man

If you know me, or regularly read this column, you are likely to understand that I embrace information and its free flow. I try to dedicate myself to learning as much as possible about as much as possible.

In a recent conversation, I was asked, "What makes you you, Drew?" My response (literally: I wrote it down I thought it was so good) was:

"I believe, more than anything else, that the world is truly unknowable except through what we, ourselves, directly experience."

I try to give every new idea I encounter some brainspace, and let it percolate for a bit in my head, before acting or making a decision on it. Let the new ideas compete with the old ones, and let the most adaptable stick. Pretty much meme theory, on an individual level.

As a result, I have entertained (fairly seriously) some odd notions in my life, some of which I have shared here. But even more interesting is that I seem to be a magnet for people with odd notions. (Lexical note: in using the term "odd notion," I do not mean to denegrate the ideas or the people who hold them. I am merely designating their position outside standard systems of belief or knowledge.) Because I refuse to outright dismiss a new idea, I listen. Speaking as a person who has harbored odd notions previously, I know that an attentive ear is very enticing.

As an undergraduate, I set up an outdoor viewing of Transformers: The Movie with some friends on a publicly accessible Yale quadrangle. (Cross Campus, right by the Women's Table, for those of you familiar with the area.) Some guy that neither any of my friends nor I knew joined the viewing, which was fine with us. After the movie, the guy started talking about how he was in the CIA and he could call in a strike on Saddam Hussein (this is taking place in spring of 1998) any time he wanted.

Everyone else started to get freaked out by the guy whose ranting became more and more incoherent. I was intrigued, Having just bought Donna Kossy's excellent book, Kooks. I listened to the guy, who then told me to come with him. A friend (and fellow oddity-lover), Lucas Oppenheim, was still with me at the time, and he decided to join me for moral support and/or out of curiosity.

"God's code," was what really caught me. This guy claimed to have cracked it, and he was offering to show it to me. Original Sin be damned; I was literally willing to commit hubris. Furthermore, with enough local lore (The Ghost Ship [n.b. I'm related to the captain of the Ghost Ship], Skull & Bones, Grove St. Cemetery, the crypts under the town green, Benedict Arnold) to support more than a few conspiracy theorists, how could I pass up on this chance? (Particularly considering my interest at the time in conspiracy theory, having just read Don Delillo's Libra for a class on contemporary American literature.)

Lucas & I followed our guide to a subcompact car, full of, well, junk. The mystery man pulled out an extremely heavy-looking duffel bag and set it on the ground before me. He also handed me a handheld HAM Radio and said, "You're one of us now." Lucas was gifted with a multi-band radio and similarly inducted into the secret brotherhood.

After shaking our secret handshake and bidding our goodbyes, I lugged the extremely heavy duffel bag up to my 4th-floor dorm room and debated the morality of opening the bag. I decided that because I was now "one of them," I had been entrusted with God's code for a reason, and opened the zipper on the bag.

The take was odd: a bunch of medical textbooks, a couple of legal pads filled with med school notes, and a few assorted photographs that showed the crazy guy with the same woman. It was mind-boggling. I flipped through the texts. Nothing special there. I looked at the photos. They, too, appeared to hold no divine secrets.

I went through the legal pads, most of which were filled with notes on hypothalami and femurs. Towards the back of one of the pads, however, was paydirt: what could only be described as some occult derivation of divine secrets. Numerology abounded, linking the names of people and places to numbers, the height of the Washington Monument, and important historical events.

It was weird, and I felt bad.

I back-constructed some narrative n an attempt to make sense of it all: in my story, the guy was a med student, in love with the woman he was pictured with. The mounting pressures of medical school were only worsened when she broke up with him, sending him into the dark abyss.

I don't know if that story is anywhere near the truth, but I do know that the next day the same guy was arrested by New Haven police for stripping naled in Yale's Cross Campus Library.

---

I guess that my insistence on listening to people and their storys leaves me susceptible in a sense. I often don't just say, "Thanks, but no thanks. I've heard enough for a day." Sometime, I'll tell you all about Ivan...

---

The derivation of my set of personal beliefs is extremely experiential, and has been arrived at as I mentioned earlier: by testing ideas and seeing whether they fit in with my conceptual framework of the world. This has led me to have a very diverse set of opinions that tends to transcend political classification. (I consider myself very liberal, but a few friends have said that I am fairly conservative in their views. I don't really understand how they consider me conservative, but, I guess it's all relative, right?)

The problem with this homebrew philosophical style is that it leads people to draw incorrect conclusions about you. Today, for example, I attended a conference on teaching Human Rights and Global Citizenship. One thing I have noticed about many of these Human Rights (HR) freedom-fighters (both at this conference and also from elsewhere: friends, colleagues, classmates, etc.) is that if someone has an idea that contradicts their idea of HR, the freedom-fighters want to make that person think differently.

People have the right to an unpopular opinion.

We tend to forget that.

2003-03-16T17:14:00.000-05:00

I ran 7.5 miles at Riverbank today. I also saw some monks playing tennis, in full monk regalia. They were Franciscian. I know because I asked.

2003-03-15T21:18:00.000-05:00

Rules for Better Filesharing

Recently, in atempting to download two albums (Roots/Phrenology and White Stripes/Elephant) with the aid of an unnamed p2p filesharing program, I only succeeded in downloading files that were merely advertisements for the album itself, or selections from a single off the album (played on repeat for the duration of the song it claims to be).

It's really annoying when, in the middle of listening to a really good song, you find out that the .mp3 is just a teaser. Blargh. Obviously, this is a defensive tactic put forth by the music industry to flood the p2ps with garbage and bury the signal among the noise.

Until some enterprising young hacker finds a way to filter out this chaff, a behavioral patch will be necessary:

1. Download to a directory that is not shared.
2. Listen to your downloads soon after you download them.
3. Delete corrupt or misnamed or bad files.
4. Only share files/directories that you know are correct.

Following these rules should have a net effect on the spread of bad files.

2003-03-13T21:40:00.000-05:00

Evilness from the crapmachine:

CMinusRocks (9:31:07 PM): drew, I'm moving in with Jackie next year, so we can't do the loft thing
CMinusRocks (9:31:08 PM): sorry
p0pcult (9:31:25 PM): is that true?
CMinusRocks (9:31:43 PM): yes, we're getting married
CMinusRocks (9:31:54 PM): I'm saving up for a ring from tiffanys
p0pcult (9:33:26 PM): wow, i'm speechless
p0pcult (9:33:32 PM): congratulations
CMinusRocks (9:34:34 PM): uhh... just kidding, we aren't crazy...... christian's in the bathroom
CMinusRocks (9:34:38 PM): it's me, jackie
p0pcult (9:35:46 PM): you had me going
CMinusRocks (9:35:52 PM): drew (this is christian) you know you would have heard from me beforehand!
p0pcult (9:36:00 PM): i know
p0pcult (9:36:03 PM): i felt a little bad
CMinusRocks (9:36:10 PM): awwww
CMinusRocks (9:36:21 PM): you know you're my right brain
p0pcult (9:36:25 PM): but i suspected something was up because i hadn't heard from you
CMinusRocks (9:36:27 PM): jackie says worry
CMinusRocks (9:36:31 PM): sorry, I mean
CMinusRocks (9:36:34 PM): hahahaha
CMinusRocks (9:36:36 PM): freudian!
p0pcult (9:36:40 PM): "worry"?
p0pcult (9:36:42 PM): lol
p0pcult (9:36:43 PM): lol
p0pcult (9:37:07 PM): well, i'll let the two of you sort out that freudian slip
CMinusRocks (9:37:42 PM): *slip*
CMinusRocks (9:37:46 PM): "Oh, I've fallen!"
CMinusRocks (9:37:54 PM): ok man, don't worry
CMinusRocks (9:38:05 PM): my web browser is on loft listings right now
CMinusRocks (9:38:08 PM): the loft is totally ON
CMinusRocks (9:38:10 PM): ok man, peace out
p0pcult (9:38:14 PM): peace

2003-03-13T14:38:00.000-05:00

33 Seconds of Peace
Courtesy of Christian and his class at PS1.

2003-03-13T12:47:00.000-05:00

Informed Consent

Yesterday, BoingBoing linked to a very interesting piece about RFID tags in Benneton clothing which originally appeared in Wired.

I wonder how this might intersect with notions of informed consent. In one of my graduate classes, my professor is in the early stages of work on her doctoral dissertation. A few weeks ago, she said that she would like to conduct some focus groups and (possibly) interviews with members of our class, as well as possibly reproduce work samples we produced for the class. To accompany this information, she provided a letter detailing the process she was planning to undertake, along with an explanation of our rights as subjects of her research.

Does informed consent apply to spheres larger than the academic?

For example, does Bennetton have any legal or ethical requirement to let me know that the clothes I buy will have RFID tags in them?
Is Bennetton required (legally or ethically) to let me know the potential for misuse of the RFID tags in my clothing?
Should Bennetton have to tell me how I can disable the tag if I choose to?
Would Bennetton even offer disabling as a free service if I so choose it?
And how would Bennetton make these options available to me?

Right now, whenever I purchase commercial software, I enter a legally binding agreement in many cases merely by opening the packaging. Do I read the agreement in which I am a participant? Yes. Do most people? I doubt it. Why not? I think that many people are unaware of the actual legal terms of software "ownership." There are (fairly high) linguistic and technical barriers to being able to read and comprehend these EULA agreements. Is it possible to enter into a legally binding agreement if I am incapable of understanding what I am agreeing to? Probably, but that seems very wrong to me. That would be like giving the death penalty to a person with severe mental retardation. Oh, wait, we do that in this country.

Even more troubling is the emergent trend among websites to require users to opt-out if they do not wish to receive solicitation via email, snailmail, and even telephone. Again referring to the linguistic and technical knowledge prerequisites to understanding, these policies are fairly evil: not only may users be unaware of their ability to opt out, they may also be unaware that they are even "opted-in" by not taking action. Likely, these solicitation and information-gathering policies will leak into meatspace. Some already have, with no choce of opting out. Boo.

Can anything be done?

Well, the least legally restrictive way to counter these invasive policies is through a standards or protocol organization that would give recommendations for the use of invasive marketing processes. Such an organization would likely recommend "plain language" license agreements with up-front choices about what marketing research and solicitation you wish to participate in. The biggest drawback to this implementation is that there is no binding legality to it. That is, companies could choose to follow recommendations or not, as they see fit.

I am not a legal scholar, but I do not see much hope for any legislation in this matter, which brings me to a haunting question: when did the interests of business overshadow the interests of individuals in the eyes of our government? Does the government see the interests of business as a means to better serving its citizens? Obviously, the current administration, with its formation of the Information Awareness Office, has no qualms about the collection and organization of personal data into information sets, likely with the eventual goal of profiling individuals based on collected data.

2003-03-11T20:38:00.000-05:00

Am. Std.

"Mari."

"Time."

So read the left and right halves, respectively, of one of my blue zipup hoodies hanging on the wall by my bed. Note I said "hoodies." Yep, I have two dark blue zipup hoodies. My SUNY Maritime hoodie and my Jungle Jim's hoodie. The only physical difference between the two (aside from the logos) is that my Jungle Jim's hoodie is flannel-lined and more suitable for winter wear.

As I pulled on my Maritime hoodie, I wondered, "do I really need two navy blue hoodies? Why do I have two?" (As far as I knew, no one at Institute besides Dan and me bought the things.) "Why did we? Why do I always buy stuff?"

A look around my (large-for-Manhattan) room: stuff everywhere. Books on every horizontal surface. Shoes, LPs on Vinyl, a collection of odd board games, art, found ephemera, clothes, knick-knacs, trinkets, tech gadgest and components abound in my place. As I recalled a prior conversation with Christian, it hit me.

[Reconstructed prior conversation from Thriftland last Friday:]

C: Check out this t-shirt!
D: I love good t-shirts.
C: Yeah, they rock.
D: I am gonna frame my old t-shirts.
C: erm?
D: Yeah. Some of my favorite tshirts are so old and nearly worn through that they are merely loose confederations of tshirt molecules. I want to preserve them before they disintegrate in the laundry, y'know put them in a nice glass frame. They have so much history to them. I remember how I acquired every one of my best tshirts. Like y'know my "The Party's Over" t-shirt with the hammer and sickle? I got that the summer between my junior and senior years of college. A friend and I had just come back from a road trip to a reservation in South Dakota. We were staying in one of Yale's dorms, because my friend had some housing there for a summer job he was working, and it was before our sublet started. When I was putting my stuff away in the room I was staying in, I found a huge cache of tshirts, apparently left behing by some Yalie who didn't have time to pack up all his stuff before leaving for the summer.

[Apologies to Christian for my portrayal of him in this conversation. I didn't remember his dialogue, and rather than faultily quote him, I simply tried to record the underlying meaning of his half of the conversation.]

The point of the reconstructed conversation is (hopefully) apparent: history can be encoded in many ways. Of the list of contents of my room, I would consider many of them to be "artifacts," that is, they carry with them some sort of specter of history: personal, economic, cultural, even intellectual and political. This is a fairly trivial point: students of cultural studies have been writing materialist history for some time now, using artifacts from popular culture as a guide to the popular, social, economic, and political climate of a time. Many of my undergraduate colleagues in the American Studies department at Yale were as obsessed as I with pop culture. The dorm room of a typical Am. Std. (read "am stud") major was an interesting place to be: a museum that reflected the personal passions of the resident. Sort of a blog realized in three dimensions, with a highly intuitive, nonlinear interface that addressed all five senses.

Which makes me wonder: are Am Studs just as burgeois as everyone else, but hiding behind the postmodern veil of cultutal criticism to justify their consumer fetishism? For, just as tends to be the case with many bloggers, Am Studs are very fetishistic when it somes to the subject matter of their personal interests. It's like Am Studs are the angry teenagers of our consumer culture: they love naysaying the generation of their parents, yet still grow up within the system of their parents' understanding.

2003-03-11T17:39:00.000-05:00

Teacher Bands

Bat Eats Plastic (formerly Today):
I'm putting them up here on spec. Never seen them, but a TFA colleague of mine is their drummer.

2003-03-10T11:31:00.000-05:00

Language

At MS203, we have a student named Muhin (not his real name) who recently immigrated to the South Bronx from Yemen. He spoke no English upon his arrival in our school and he was consequently placed in our ESL class. (Which I am fortunate enough to teach Tech to several periods each week.) As far as I understand, no on ein his faqmily speaks or reads/writes English either. We had to bring in an interpreter so that we could get Muhin registered for classes.

Anyhow, Project Cicero came through with a book in both Arabic and English. I gave it to Muhin today, and when he opened up the pages and saw the Arabic script, his whole face lit up and he gasped in surprise.

What a good day.

2003-03-10T01:13:00.000-05:00

Cartography

I love maps (which I define to my classes as something that "shows information in relation to location"). I teach Social Studies (I majored in it) and I use maps all the time in my classroom. My class just finished a two-week "Map Week" (misnomer intended). I have a small, but burgeoning map collection:

-1954 map of European Soviet Union, in Russian
-3/4 isometric map of Yale University
-print of a handpainted watercolor map of Venice
-several mass transit maps from various cities worldwide
-street maps and road maps
-World maps
-video game maps
-map of locations in Wes Anderson's (anyone else find this site a little weird?) Rushmore included with Criterion Collection DVD

I also have several aesthetically displeasing maps, but they are not on display.

Anyhow, Christian rocks because of this conversation.

2003-03-09T22:53:00.000-05:00

#102

Went for another danger-run in Manhattan's northern reaches today. I have noticed that there are a few binary oppositions between which my runs tend to oscillate:

-strenuous/leisurely
-known/exploratory
-safe/dangerous
-smart/stupid

Generally speaking, a run will have either all of the former characteristics or all of the latter. Today was one of the runs of the latter (leisurely/exploratory/dangrous/stupid) species. Running north on Riverside drive along my usual run, I spied a new twist about one third of the way through: a previously-unnoticed set of stone stairs leading upwards.

As I jaunted towards the stairs, I noticed why they'd gone unnoticed by me up to this point: there was a concrete block placed at the base to prevent access upward. Undeterred by the foresight of wisdom, I deftly leapt over the concrete block and high-stepped it up to the first landing; making my way up the second flight of outdoor steps, I noticed that I was right in the middle of a homeless person's lean-t, constructed out of the solid rock wall to my left, and the wall of the stairs to my right. I didn't want to tread on anyone's personal space if I could help it, but ascending or descending the staris would have me doing just that.

Wanting to explore further, but not caing to (possibly) disrupt a well-concealed sleeping homeless person, I scaled the rock wall to my left, which was not difficult by any means. This brought me to a small patch of grass in the middle of the Henry Hudson Parkway. I could either run across 4 lanes of highway traffic in one of several directions or admit defeat and turn around.

10 minutes (who knew that there was a 5pm rush hour on Sunday?) 4 lanes of traffic, and one hellacious sprint later, I was at the base of a bunch of rocky outcroppings, running north along 9A (the Hudson Pkwy), separated from the traffic I'd just crossed by a little guard rail.

I had to climb some more blocked-off stairs (this time scaling rusty chain-link fences to do so), and eventually merged with the route I explained earlier that I thought was fairly dangerous. At least the days are getting longer, so I (suppose that I) will be safer...

2003-03-09T22:21:00.000-05:00

Diversity University, pt. 2

More thoughts on diversity, again from my diversity journal:

"Diversity, according to one of the dictionaries in my classroom, is (loosely paraphrased) the state of being different or differentiation. However, when most people use the word diversity, I feel that it carries a connotative meaning of equality or equation. Thus, diversity is its own opposite (in terms of connotation v. denotation). Diversity, then, I think embodies a certain measure of conflict and impasse, of shades of grey, liminal states, disconnects and transition, marginalization. What a tough idea: its existence is self-negating."

2003-03-09T22:15:00.000-05:00

Ok, just wanted to send a shout-out to the folks at Project Cicero. They do good things for my classroom, which makes them ok by me. Give them props if you get a chance.

2003-03-09T21:10:00.000-05:00

Barbies of the World. Fucked up or not? You decide.

2003-03-09T20:42:00.000-05:00

Notes from the Front

"Popular culture takes no fixed form or necessary ideological message. It is a contested terrain; historical circumstances shape production, reception, and appropriation, determining how plays, films, videos, and music operate in the spheres of popular culture" (Michelle Habell-Pallan and Mary Romero, eds. Latino/a Popular Culture, p. 2).

That's what I am trying to look at here, in Viva. What does our pop culture (and our historical pop culture) say about us? Where does it come from? Why does it come at all? Who owns it? Who produces it?

2003-03-08T18:10:00.000-05:00

Diversity University

From a "diversity journal" I was assigned to keep last year as a part of one of my graduate classes:

"I am diverse in many ways.

We could talk about the different choices I have made in my life, the genetic factors that mark me as an individual, but in the end, we are only giving lists of facts.

I think it is more important to realize that I am different because of a confluence of factors, many of which I have some control over, but some of which were determined possibly ages before I was even born."

2003-03-08T18:00:00.000-05:00

Cult Lit

Anyone who has seen me in the last few weeks would have undoubtedly noticed that I have started pulling my hair back into a short ponytail (one acquaintance deemed it samurai-like) to combat its present unwieldy-ness. In fact, I think it looks really rockin' at present, and will continue to wear my hair in this fashion for the near future. As i was soaking in the tub (as I am apt to do on weekends after a long run), my head started to itch. Not wanting to pull my hair out of its elastic by scratching my head, I kinda patted my head a couple times at the source of the irritation, and had a major realization. Re-pulling-back my hair is a pain in the ass to do, especially if it is in a very good state at the moment.

I'd seen many students do the exact same thing on many prior occasions. Patting their head. I couldn't figure it out; I thought, in fact, it was a bit odd and possibly even a pathological behavior. But when it happened, I realized the connecting factor: all of the students I'd seen do perform this action had had their hair in cornrows or tight braids of some type. From what I understand and have asked my students, these hairstyles can take tremendous amounts of time to put in place (proportional, obviously to their finery and intricacy), and would be consequently very stupid to scratch out of place for something as simple as an everyday itch. Duh. Makes perfect sense, Mr. F.

My larger point here is a plea for cultural sensitivity. What may not make sense or be readily apparent to oneself may be perfectly reasonable under the right conditions or with the appropriate knowledge.

2003-03-08T15:28:00.000-05:00

Man, I promised myself I wouldn't put anything up on here until I got all of my graduate work done for the day, but I can't help it!

I have been listening to Snoop Dogg's Beautiful on repeat, because it is so damn awesome. It makes me either want to live in a place that is warm all the time, or that it was summertime. I don't even really like Snoop that much, but man, this song is bangin'!

2003-03-08T01:45:00.000-05:00

Well, my plans to place audio clips of C-Town's band was a miserable failure. My cell phone was getting bad reception and probably wasn't intended as a recording device anyhow. So: I'll keep these up until Christian has a chance to hear them, and then I will delete them forever.

(But this does cause me to revisit my idea about having a cell phone that can record sound in .mp3 format and then wirelessly transmit the data when it has a good signal. Y'know, kinda in the same way the cameraphones take a picture and can e-mail it wirelessly. Duh. Makes total sense., but maybe the wireless bandwidth isn't there yet. But then why don't cell phones come with an adapther that I cam plug into a USB or firewire port and synch my data, my photos, and my yet-to-be-implemented .mp3 audio recordings?) [liberally edited on March 9, 2003 -Drew]

2003-03-07T23:07:00.000-05:00

C-Town's unnamed band, live @ The Charleston, Bklyn

2003-03-07T21:49:00.000-05:00

The Shame, live @ The Charleston, Bklyn

2003-03-06T13:31:00.000-05:00

not mayor bloomberg audblog audio post

2003-03-06T11:30:00.000-05:00

Mayor Bloomberg is having a press conference at my school today. My goal is to scoop the networks with an audblog audio post. Makes me wish the audblog service were configured differently, that is, that you recorded as soon as you called and then entered your access info afterward. It's hard to time everything correctly to capture everything you might want to otherwise...

2003-03-05T22:56:00.000-05:00

Lit Night
A favorite snatch of prose from one of my favorite war novels (though I have never completely gotten through it):
Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

audblog audio post

2003-03-04T23:23:00.000-05:00

Viva la Evolucion!

You may have noticed the change in editorial tack displayed on the left navigation bar: "Musings from a (culture) war correspondent." Mostly, it never displayed any philosophy, but if you go to nyc bloggers you'll see the vestigial "Flotsam & jetsam from the W. Hts.," but entirely missing from the philosophical fossil record would be the nebbish, "a place for the relief of (my) boredom." How much more uninteresting could make myself I sound?

Back in October when I started this blog, the name Viva la Evolucion! was not ill-considered. Here I sit, a 6th grade public school teacher in the south bronx, the origin of much of current--and historical--American pop culture. I teach social studies and technology, a pastiche of which (American Studies and Comp Sci) I studied at Yale, and I am currently a graduate student at Teacher's College studying (yep, something else) English Education. I can read whitepapers on Warhol Worms and understand them, as a break from working on my current oil painting. I live and work as a minority: my school population is approximately 60/40 Latino/a and Black; I live in (the ever-gentrifying) Washington Heights, where, for now, I am still a minority.

In other words, I think I am situated and trained well to look at the confluence of many different disciplines. That's what I try to do here. Examine popular or current (or sometimes even historical) culture and subculture, to look at what it says about our country. What's an American Studies major to do in his spare time, right?

2003-03-04T09:54:00.000-05:00

So, here's what's been taking up all of my time:

Muckraker Press

2003-03-03T23:15:00.000-05:00

Um, lately, I have been really busy with trying to set up about a billion blogs for my students, which is actually a lot more difficult than one might think. Every group needs:

-a blog
-an email address
-a web traffic counter
-permissions set so that I am an admin on the blogs, but the kids are not
-an entry into my database so i can keep track of who is on which newspaper staff
-press passes (business cards with important URLs, usernames, and passwords)
-so much tech support using the computer (that part is my job, though)

It makes me really tired, and I haven't been able to work on Sunday's 3 posts. I should't even be writing this now, but I have to comment on it. My blog compels me communicate, which can't be a bad thing, right? I am waaayyyyyyy behing in my stuff for graduate school, as well as The New Pioneers, and also a pet project (seriously lengthening my "National Security" essay--possibly to thesis length, just for the hell of it) I am working on that is gonna require a massive amount of reading.

And then I buy a cool subscription to audblog, as if I needed to waste two more minutes twelve times a month. I can't afford that paltry amount of time...

Eh, I'll sleep when I'm dead.