On Markets

To take arms against a market of troubles, or by walking on its flows, to surf them?...

 

Is intellectual change afoot?

Roll Call of the Dead

When all our professions have been replaced, what will we do then?  Of course, there will always be something, won't there?

Satanic Verses: Myths

Great backstory to the furor around that book and its fallout twenty years later.  Yes, the liberal spine needs to relocate its spirit, its imperative, its animus.  And goddamn it--that just might hurt some feelings. 

Susan Sontag

Never thought of her as any sort of model, but this sentence gives me pause to reconsider:  "Sontag continued her intense and sustained engagement with canonical novelists, philosophers, and poets such as Jeremy Bentham, Joseph Conrad, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, André Gide, Hermann Hesse, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Henry James, Franz Kafka, Søren Kierkegaard, Thomas Mann, Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke, Anthony Trollope, and Leo Tolstoy."

More Lit-Bashing

I love hearing about the decrepitude of the study of literature in the academy.  It helps to justify a major life decision of mine (and one I continually question):  not to pursue the vaunted PhD and professor of literature perch. 

 

 

Paper Wasting

We waste a lot of paper.  While we have done a good job setting up recycling bins, we could save significant money on the purchase of paper if we found a way to internally re-use paper.  For instance, many times PDF files print incorrectly, producing a line of indecipherable gobbledygook on a huge number of wasted sheets of paper.  Turn these sheets over and they could be easily printed on again--so long as the person printing is only printing a document for internal use.  (I.e., it doesn't require a perfect sheet of paper). 

 

First step:  have a place to collect such sheets of paper.  (the person who printed the document tacitly approves that they be made available for re-use; i.e., there is nothing confidential or private on the mis-printed sheet.)

Second step:  put them in a printer in a designated drawer. 

Third step:  the IT department (perhaps working with printer vendor) will create a means by which anyone printing can choose which drawer they are printing from (so that they can print to the lesser quality paper if they wish to)

Fourth step:  Create 'job aid' sheets and distribute them to employees so they are aware of this option and how to use it.

 

 

On Writing

So You Want to be a Writer?...

YouTube Cashcow

Broadcasting--and earning a living--from the basement.  Wow...

Mortal Coil Shuffle

Worms amuck.  Oh yeah, that's where they live and consume us-- in the muck.  The world has gone awry. 

Mortal Coil Shuffle

Worms amuck.  Oh yeah, that's where they live and consume us-- in the muck.  The world has gone awry. 

Public Schools, Quo Vadis?

To reform or not to reform:  or rather, how much, how deeply to reform.  Soliloquies in Obama land.  I'm on the edge of my seat. 

 

Out of Control

I want to read this book--and it's online also.  It may be great, or it may be a Satanic manifesto on techno-triumphalism. 

 
Out of Control is a summary of what we know about self-sustaining systems, both living ones such as a tropical wetland, or an artificial one, such as a computer simulation of our planet. The last chapter of the book, "The Nine Laws of God," is a distillation of the nine common principles that all life-like systems share. The major themes of the book are:

• As we make our machines and institutions more complex, we have to make them more biological in order to manage them.
  
• The most potent force in technology will be artificial evolution. We are already evolving software and drugs instead of engineering them.
  
• Organic life is the ultimate technology, and all technology will improve towards biology.
  
• The main thing computers are good for is creating little worlds so that we can try out the Great Questions. Online communities let us ask the question "what is a democracy; what do you need for it?" by trying to wire a democracy up, and re-wire it if it doesn't work. Virtual reality lets us ask "what is reality?" by trying to synthesize it. And computers give us room to ask "what is life?" by providing a universe in which to create computer viruses and artificial creatures of increasing complexity. Philosophers sitting in academies used to ask the Great Questions; now they are asked by experimentalists creating worlds.
  
• As we shape technology, it shapes us. We are connecting everything to everything, and so our entire culture is migrating to a "network culture" and a new network economics.
  
• In order to harvest the power of organic machines, we have to instill in them guidelines and self-governance, and relinquish some of our total control.

 

Dead Story?

Alarm bells ring.  Will there still be a beginning, middle and ending?

 

Dawn of a News(paper) Future

"Information is now a public service as much as it's a commodity.  It should be thought of the same way as education, health care. It's one of the things you need to operate a civil society, and the market isn't doing it very well."

 

You can't keeping cutting newsrooms forever--for the sake of almighty profitability--and imagine the journalists won't finally reconvene elsewhere.

The Game

Hmm... So much to say on this subject--the changing mores of the dating game--that she doesn't even touch upon.

 

 

Future Occupations

A roving English teacher/librarian in the hinterlands of South America.  Rambling along the rutted roads, tomes in tow, atop his donkey--the  biblioburro is born amidst the drug war mountains of Colombia!  From so many perspectives, this guy is my hero... 

On Genius

Some come early, some come late. 

Farming the City: Building a Sustainable Food System

I was lucky enough to see a presentation on "Farming the City: Building a Sustainable Food System," recently.  It was a free lecture sponsored by SEED Wayne, a campus-community collaboration dedicated to building sustainable food systems on WSU's campus and in Detroit area neighborhoods.  The guest speaker was Will Allen, 2008 MacArthur Fellow and urban farmer.

 

More on it:

 

"Will Allen is an urban farmer who is transforming the cultivation, production, and delivery of healthy foods to

underserved, urban populations. In 1995, while assisting neighborhood children with a gardening project, Allen began developing the farming methods and educational programs that are now the hallmark of the non-profit organization, Growing Power, which he directs and cofounded.  Guiding his efforts is the recognition that the unhealthy diets of low-income, urban populations, and such related health problems as obesity and diabetes, largely are attributable to limited access to safe and affordable fresh fruits and vegetables. Through a novel synthesis of a variety of low-cost farming technologies – including use of raised beds, aquaculture, vermiculture, and heating greenhouses through composting – Growing Power produces vast amounts of food year-round at its main farming site, two acres of land located within Milwaukee's city limits. Over the last decade, Allen has expanded Growing Power's initiatives through partnerships with local organizations and activities such as the Farm-City Market Basket Program, which provides a weekly basket of fresh produce grown by members of the Rainbow Farmer's Cooperative to low-income urban residents at a reduced cost. 

 

The internships and workshops hosted by Growing Power engage teenagers and young adults, often minorities and immigrants, in producing healthy foods for their communities and provide intensive, hands-on training to those interested in establishing similar farming initiatives in other urban settings. Through these and other programs still in development, Allen is experimenting with new and creative ways to improve the diet and health of the urban poor.

 

Will Allen received a B.A. from the University of Miami. After a brief career in  professional basketball and a number of years in corporate marketing at Procter and Gamble, he returned to his roots as a farmer. He has served as the founder and CEO of Growing Power, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, since 1995 and has taught workshops to aspiring urban farmers across the United States and abroad." 

 

It was a vision of the future.

 

 

 

Game Plan for Financial Snafu Survival

Since the New Deal became the Nude Ill, stripped and derided by Right (and cowardly Left).  By Ripofflickins and Blemocrats.  Now were all hunkered down in our bunkers, preparing to siphon gas for our collective clunkers, like a nation of Mad Maxes.  But like an spry-minded folksinger of old, Greider offers a no bull ballad for us to learn the words to-- those who still play a real six string (the rest are strummin their financial instruments wondering where everything went...)

 

Latin

Latin. In high schools. Awesome! I wish I had stuck w/my personal studies of it. I may just take them up again!...

Tragedy of Man and Machine

A woman on a bike hit by a car and dragged to her death.  Pure tragedy.  And in the larger context, unfortunately emblematic of the balance of power between humans and cars in the Motor City. 

Better Off?

How it pains me to see that only a crusty conservative like George Will is able to occasionally elevate punditry to a meditative philosophical inquiry. 

 

As for me, I have read Middlemarch and been immeasurably enriched-- but before four years ago. 

Urban Martinets

On inner city schools. Yes, I've always thought serious regimentation and discipline was a must.

Bottom's Up, Wall Street!

I'll be playin my tuba at the buyout, someone's got to hold down the bottom end...

The Soft Parade

Um, this is what they're talking about when they say America's "soft power" is on the wane. 

 

Basically, we're losing that Jeffersonian North Star of our identity amongst nations.  Ironically, even though we're doing this to sate the appetite of our corporate plutocracy, our Hamiltonian edge in international economics is also being eroded. 

 

Gee, Ma, that's Ok--we'll just send in more tanks!

Pallin' Around?

Being a (the?) fount of conservative talking points, Brooks can't just come right out and say here that he is utterly alarmed by the underwhelming resume of the Republican VP.  So he has to wrap up that criticism with a bit of Cincinnatus imagery and 'liberal elite'-bashing. 

Damn Straight

I'm not usually into Bob Herbert, but this soapbox uppercuts connect on liberal bashing and liberal self-hatred.  And what have conservatives done?  Oh yes, the free market.  The free market.  And low taxes.  Praise be. 

Digital Natives on the Fritz

The apocalypse is in our own students' skulls. 

 

 

95 Think Tank Theses

Provocative plea from right to reform itself.  Hear, hear!

Will Vs. Obama: Battle of Rhetoricians

I think George Will is jealous of Obama's eloquence and vies to outdo him.  But can a pundit's column really compete with a politican's speech?  And isn't the demand for 'more particulars'--really just another rhetorical ploy itself? 

An Urban School That Works?

I agree with this idea:  lower income students need serious order in their school (and in their habits) if they are to succeed.  Anything that stands in the way of implenting order is detrimental.  I wonder, however, if the facts about the school correspond the the Will's rosy vision. 

Naysayer Bullseye

Perhaps this is just a pat paradox, but often I find naysayers to be the greatest optimists.  What is more hopeful than seeing either the truth (if you're right), or recognizing that things can (only) get this bad (if you're wrong)?

 

Also, I have an old friend whose name is actually Dr. Dooms.

Bush Bull

I seriously doubt the premise here:  that Bush is a Trumanesque visionary whose cowboy bluster actually succeeded in turning the world tide against radical Islam; and that selling out the middle class of America for the mach-speed growth of India and China is a categorically positive deed of a benevolent capitalist.  But, hey, it's always good to consider the contrarian's POV.

Alas, once a "trend" is reported, it's doomed for a backlash. So the literary rockers will probably soon be loathed and a new crew of AC/DCites will arise. Hey, there have been literate songwriters forever. Just not always so celebrated...

On Kultcha

So very sad yet true:  gadgets have supplanted thought amongst the sassy masses, always eager not to think, but to reap the social benefits of appearing to think. 

Right Vs. Left

William Greider vs. Free Market Ten Commandments.

Invincible

A very cool local artist, Invincible. 

Science Dying On the Cross Of Self-Esteem?

Sometimes I should level about my own anti-science misgivings.  They aren't mentioned in this article.

Eating Al Desko?

How to find time for yourself to think?  Oh, you righteous busybodies--here's my solution--chill out, quit your job and become a mailman. 

 

Or maybe you can program your computer to provide you more time.... 

Quo Vadis, Elitist?

Turning the tables on the dirty word bandied about to stave off bouts of inferiority.  Fact:  box seats at athletic events easily cost as much as good seats at the opera.

 

 

Literary Darwinism

Literary Darwinism probably won't be the savior of literary criticism.  It's always bad to set yourself up as the messiah--tends to garner unreasonable expectations.  However, it may open up fresh perspectives, put the cult-studs on notice that some of their assumptions are outmoded or worse--trite.  And possibly be a step in the direction of Consilience--the unifying of science are humanistic knowledge--which is a noble endeavor, even if some doubt it can ever be a reality. 

On Education and Inequality

More of the same old education hand-wringing, writ in the academic economic detailia. 

100 Greatest Detroit Songs Ever.

Need we say more?

 

 

Aw, Someone Burst Wall Street's Bubble

As one of the commentators put, "The new American capitalism = privatize profits, socialize losses."  Even when one grants that we're all in this together, it inspires vomit.   

Satanic Epistles Fetch High Price, at Expense of Public?

Even in the sale of our forebears heirlooms, conflicts can arise between public and private interest.  Especially when they were famous forebears who interacted with Satanic epistolary pals. 

 

You Ain't Goin Nowhere

A lonely voice argues that, on balance, in spite of loud and gleeful predictions to the contrary, America isn't over the hill. 
 
Says Uncle Sam, "We ain't goin nowhere."


 

On the Cuban Caudillo

To what ideals did Fidel actually show fidelity?  Even to admirers and apologists of the left, does his dubious heroism rest on anything other than surviving the pirahnas of capitalism for half a century? 

Oh, You Mean Mammon isn't All Good?

Finally, a card-carrying economic big-wig, questioning our absolute love of private property and worship of the market.

 

 

Mangy Change or Free Range Change or Strange Change or...

The sneaky rhetorical ploys of Brooks are always a delight of observe, even if one disagrees with their partisanship.

On Rap And the Pantheon

I like the idea of people trying to bring everything under one roof.  Or at least take a look at all forms of art/music and be honest about what makes it in the door and why or why not.  And, so on rap. 

 

Machines Freed Women

So nice to see Camille Paglia point out something that has long appeared obvious to me--everytime I do my own laundry (as most males in the history of the world never did). 

 

"Second, feminist theory has failed to acknowledge how much the emergence of modern feminism owes to capitalism and the industrial revolution, which transformed the economy, expanded the professions, and gave women for the first time in history the opportunity to earn their own livings and to escape dependency on father or husband. Capitalism's emancipation of women is nowhere clearer than in those magical laborsaving appliances such as automatic washers and dryers that most middle-class Westerners now take for granted."

Re: Evil, Onward Ho...

Thinking no longer requires humans, or words.  Only digits.  This is the true advent of the post-human.  Not cybernetic beings, but beings who don't require humans at all. 

Young Artists Rise!

Youth with creative drive and determination keep me hopeful for our future. 

 

And who would've thought earbuds would become a piece of jewelry?

A Scientific Literary Criticism?

Blasphemy in the Temple of Literature?  Or a way out the dead end the critical theorist have put us in?  In death there may be rebirth...

On Lawrence, Freedom and the Family

Though I'm not sure I agree with this guy's analysis, it brings back fond memories of reading Lawrence as an undergraduate.

 

 

Hammering Away

One damn cool song by Steve Earle.

Vicodin...

Vicodin, vicodin for another outta work autoworker worried 'bout benefits...

Torturer in Chief

I remember talking to a friend a few years ago, before the Abu Goebells stuff had even blown up, telling him about the torture in the name of freedumb and suckurity our proud USA was employing.  "No, not really," he said, so naively incredulous.  Our own president authorize that?

 

Yes, really. 

 

Murakami: Master of the Business of Art

Sordid Warhol of the East or Sage of the New Age of Mega-Commodification? 

 

Key Murakami idea to contemplate here:  "You cannot create an art piece unless you know how to make and sell it."  Novel way of thinking of 'creativity'.  Not only making it, but marketing it.  Seeing and spawning 'original' paths to get it in consumer's hands, on their minds, on their credit cards...

 

Is there a relationship between the "superflat" non-hierarchical art world that Murakami espouses, and the "world is flat" global capitalism of Thomas Friedman? 

On Whitman and the Religious Impulse

I remember hiking mountains in the Northwest and chanting Whitman poems aloud by the side of some lake, the surrounding cedars and firs and mountainside like a great natural amphitheater--the lake, seen from above, seemingly a wide eye open to the universe.  And Walt Whitman and I its voice.  Or rather, giving voice to all its voluptuous citizenry.  This essay speaks to one of the converted.

 

Even though, years later, when I visited Whitman's home on a trip through Camden, I got a parking ticket. 

Fish on French Filosophy

I normally can't stand Stanley Fish, but here he has proved refreshingly elucudating on all that fancy French theory we on this side of the Atlantic like to get so up in arms about.

 

 

One-Handed Reading

Well well well...  I once asked a creative writing teacher about the market for ham-handed erotica--Penthouse Forum type stuff stretched (no pun intended) to novel length--and he, bless his gay soul--TOTALLY MISLED ME!!!  He said that the video market had done away with it.  Why read it when you could so easily download it, watch it in high definition.  But apparently he was wrong.  As this brief interview with one Edward Lear has made me realize.  That's it.  The lecherous and lewd scenarios that constantly are suggested to me by the guttersnipes of my imagination--I'm going to put those to use.  Onward, ho! 

 

 

Hi Tech Hotties Go Down On Another Democrat

For those who know Detroit--this happened on exit 69--Big Beaver.  High rise hotels, hi tech gratifications...  And a speeding ticket to go.

10,000 Hours To Take Off

Brooks the social observer/book reviewer cites a provocative factoid:  "It's commonly said that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master any craft — three hours of practice every day for 10 years."  Hmm.  Conscience check:  where have I spent my 10,000 hours, my ten years?...

Steinbeck?

It's always sobering to read a great writer's life work snipingly dismissed by an Almighty Critic, Lord of the Canon.  This, to remind all young aspirants to Parnassus what fate shall befall them should they fail to conform to the party lines of the academic criticism industry, the self-appointed guardians of all that is good and enduring in Literature.  Steinbeck knew how to tell a story, that's all I know. 

Human Trafficking

I guess people will debate about the reality of anything, including modern day human slavery, aka, sex trafficking. 

Decline of Suburbia-- hooray!

Enlightening article not just about the decline of suburbs, but the rebirth of cities. 

Bipolar Economy, Bear Stearns Massacre Blues

Our economy, it turns out, is bipolar.  Boom and bust, faith and doubt, sweet zeal and tortured skepticism.  Nonetheless, the deal-maker architects--the bankers-- in the belly (or should we say brain?) of the beast don't want any regulations.  Governmental interference would limit their highs. 

 

Oh but the lows.  Yes, they want some help then.  Money pumped in from the Fed like a quick prescription of Vicodiin or Oxycontin.  Yes, they love Uncle Sam then.  Could someone please do a quick revision of Bob Dylan's "Talkin Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues" as "Talkin Bear Stearns Picnic Massacre Blues"? 

 

Can we end this twisted joyride of denial?  Bipolar economy, heal thyself!  Get some antidepressants--some regulations--that is.  A nice little cocktail of pills, taken twice daily.  Yes, you will no longer see those delirious highs.  Stockroom running boys might not sweat so profusely.  But we will not all be out of a job and at the mercy of your mood when you hit those lows.  Smooth the peaks, even the valleys. 

 

Get to a shrink (oh, we're shrinking all right--all of our portfolios...)  Get a prescription--a fix.  Then to CVS.  Quick.

 

 

Another sell-out takes the pulpit

Actually, what I see here is not a tale of hard-working Schmo sticks w/it and after a few hard knocks makes it big. Rather it is your typical:  idealistic type decides he needs money and goes commercial, flaunting the tribulations of the marketplace (oh woe!) as some kind of gleaming professional wisdom.  Yeah, that is probably the American Way.  We figure if the Buddha really was so wise, he would have to sell a book w/seven laws based on his teachings--sure millions...

 

 

Brooks spits on Spitzer

David Brooks at his best  (Who could know better than he the perils and pitfalls the upwardly mobile and self-grandiose?)

Mischaracterized Earthies

Like most free market religionists, this guy has a beef with environmentalists because at times they actually question the workings of the market... (E.g., when the market appears to be helping the globe on its way to shitsville.) The market religionist, you see, devout worshipper of Mammon that he is, can't stand the thought that anything be put above the pure workings of his deity.

Decline and Fall of Literature

I read an article similar to this a few years ago in Slate, and when I forwarded it to a professor friend, was subtlely chastised for laughing along with the know-nothing rubes who always thrill in deriding the high-minded theorists among us... 

More fun satire on college liberal arts departments....

Dwelling in Possibilities

Brilliant--some of the ideas and imagery in this essay by a fusty septuagenarian comes straight from a heart half his age.

It's ok to be corny?.... They're turning it into fuel these days.

It's disturbing to think that the daily commute might be depriving--or rather, pricing out-- a malnourished Third Worldian of their daily bread. But perhaps a pinch in the pocketbook could trim the paunch of the Big Mac attackers. Armies of obesity face off against market forces!