Nirvana Circuitry

The city of the internet--the Paris, the New York, the metropolis of metropolises.  Till our eyes burn out. 
 
All the implicit assumptions within this article--technology as imperative to competition--to claiming territory for oneself-- is exactly how we'll become gross sleek cyborgs.

Permanent Yoga Vacation

I've got to remember this place next time I've got...  a lot of time off.

Grow!! Food!!

I saw this guy speak.  Will Allen is awesome.  May the future of local produce grown everywhere arrive soon!

Grow!! Food!!

I saw this guy speak.  Will Allen is awesome.  May the future of local produce grown everywhere arrive soon!

To MA or not to MA

Well, since I'm in the business of peddling these degrees, I guess opinion riffs like these should be noted by me. 

Nature is a Haunted House

More bits of the puzzle come into focus:  deformed frogs point to boys born with undescended testicles and armies of obese adults.  As if it were invented by a horror writer with Norman Maileresque sexual politics, it sounds like the piss of women on the pill--that all-important pill essential to reproductive freedom--is one of the leading causes of males becoming epidemically... sensitive.
 
Industrial chemicals--for almighty efficiency--and higher yields--more more more!--come back to haunt us, nature taunting us before she exterminates us. 
 
 

Quick Fix

Work out in six minutes a week.  Ok, maybe ten or twenty. 
 
Now this is science I'd like to hear about!

Efficiency in Education: Eliminate the Humans (I Mean All of Them)

Ongoing revolutionary rhetoric of the techno-educators.  They won't be happy until tenured faculty kiss the feet of doobie-rolling freshmen zoned out on YouTube and ask for their approval.  Because that is what the kids are doing, man!  That's what the digital natives are doing!  Well, yeah, let's face it.  Knowledge isn't knowledge anymore.  It's just some dumb fact you link to and recite.  Really, why even have lungs, a mouth and lips to enunciate it?  Flesh is so old-fashioned.  Just have the screens there, talking to the other screens--now that would be progress in pedogogy.  Eliminate the human altogether. 

Whither, Christendom?

Well, of course this factual article on Muslim immigration in Europe manifests a latent alarmism.  However, it raises legitimate concerns.  I don't know what the demographic trends suggest, but one can't help but wonder--perhaps in a far off futuristic apocalyptic vein--if Israel is not prototype of Europe itself:  the liberal Westerners outnumbered in their own state by the uber-reproducinng Islamic population.  (With the obvious difference that Palestinians originally occupied the land).  Hard choices will need to be made--and enforced--at some point in time.  I don't think it is any crime or diminishment of liberal values for Europe to declare that it wishes to remain Europe.  Leave it to America to deal with the world's immigrants. 

Ah, Short School Days...

More educational sledghammering against our short school year and short school days.  Reform will come, but slowly and slyly. 

Cheers for Jeers

Funny, browsing in the Al-Jazeera I find the clearest statement for the banker schemes that bankrupted America. 

Another Libertarian Dreamer Gone Awry

Imagine that-- a tale of an idealistic libertarian whose business becomes a magnet for criminals.  

Ah, the Trustafarian takes a Tumble

The market giveth and the market taketh away for the trust-fund trendies on the NASDAQ umbilical.

Ah, the Trustafarian takes a Tumble

The market giveth and the market taketh away for the trust-fund trendies on the NASDAQ umbilical.

One more opportunity for doom

Booming DNA nanotech of the future.  Or more likely, the stuff of doom.

Vox Crapuli

Popularity lists-- yes, I've always thought this would be a great gag:  to get everyone to stare at nothing, and have someone then convince them that indeed this was something.

 

That's theater!

 

Paolo Freire

Funny stuff on education. 

Dear Graduate

Alright, this is hoakey, but these are worthy exhortations about living life fully.  Everyday we graduate..

Sign of the Times: Encyclopedia Gone Bust

Encarta always annoyed me--luring you to their website then trying to hustle a subscription out of you. 

 

But anyone in the information profession has to wonder if such changes bode well for actual content creators.  Is advertising truly the only way to make money?

 

 

On Public Intellectuals

Another index on whether we're getting smarter or stupider:  the public intellectual. 

 

Most compelling assertion:  the language of social sciences, namely economics, has replaced literary criticism as the benchmark for any serious 'public intellectual' discussion.

 

Something I'd long suspected but hadn't yet heard spelled out.

A Poet Who Lives in the Same City As Me

M.L. Liebler, Detroit poet.

More Cantankerous Cross-Atlantic Harrumphing in the WSJ

Whither Western Europe?  (Once known as Christendom)....

Take a Sledgehammer to Higher Education?

More thoughts on reforming academia. 

 

So many voices crying in the wilderness.

Motor City Woes' Silver Lining

Bad news for the Motor City auto industry--but an provocation to a revitalized and positive vision of our Michigan economy.

 

 

The Great Sickness of Our Time

Crackberries and Ipods and disconnected humans-- this guy describes the typical scene I observe going home on the bus all-too-often.

Rock Stars, Hoop Dreams and Lit Profs

Ah, grad school in the humanities:  it brings some perversely sweet sigh of relief when I read reality-based assessments of how idealistically crazy it is to go for that vaunted PhD.  Because I came to the same conclusion myself once upon a time, and restrained myself, and occasionally experience pangs of wonder and regret at the road not taken. 

Israel on the Offensive? (No Pun Intended)

Wow--I've suspected that Israel would get an itchy trigger finger, what with Iran's nuclear dick starting to swell.  But I didn't think the calculus could be laid out so clearly...  I guess we'll see. 

Carrot Cuffing Indian MBAs, Engineers and Doctors

An update on the Indian overseas courting scene, puts the job/marriage/home quest in cultural perspective.  I'd end up cuffing the carrot forever. 

Pity the Poor Bankers

Oh, woe is the banker whose TARP checks cannot be returned to Uncle Obama.  It's all a plot by the nefarious left to controlled that once-vibrant American (anti-)institution--big business and free trade.  So says a Fox crony at WSJ. 

Urban Farming in Detroit

This is a  great idea--I've been driving around the Eastside wasteland for a few years now--it's almost like a jungle in the summer--thinking about how great it would be to see these plots converted back into farmland.  As city's implode, maybe Detroit can lead the way in de-urbanization.  We've still got enough folks with enough memory of the country life down South they came from--who knows?

April Singularity

Thank God, this is only a fun April Fool's joke from Google.  Harbinger of the future, however, IMHO. 

Krugman Crashes the Party

A background piece on Paul Krugman, NYT columnist and stalwart voice of loyal dissent on matters economic and otherwise.  And here I thought he'd been taking some of those days off from the column in order to work things with the Obama administration. 
 
Krugman was one of the lifelines of mainstream media truth during the Bush years.  His writing can be terse--he has no flair for the rounded metaphor or the saucy wit of David Brooks, his conservative competition at NYT.  But he does have guts. 

Humans Reproducing Rapidly on this Earthly Emerald Isle

Exciting prospects for the future.  



 

Help, Terrorists, oops, I mean-- gasp!-- Europe!

Oh the great conservative fear of Europe.  It's like their gay or have cooties, and the conservative cool dudes actually lend serious credence to the idea that we'll catch it from them via Obama and the great liberal revival.

 

You have to love the moralistic rhetoric though.  And this does dovetail with the critiques of Great Britain's socialism and its effects on the working class by another anti-bleeding heart screedist, Theodore Dalrymple.  What I find funny however, is that if a government program threatens to weaken one of the 'institutions' of society--family, community, faith, vocation--this then is an unintended consequence and cause for alarm.  Yet these same institutions are daily massacred (and sometimes reconstituted) by the onslaught of technology.  No one dares question that. 

 

Like most high minded moralizing, it seems the essence of the message is resentment at redistribution:  we don't like that the poor people are getting some of our money.  It's dressed up here to make it seem like the government is somehow stealing the lower classes right to self-esteem.  "Jones, if you could only buck up and learn to love that mop and bucket and pay to put your kid through kindergarten, well then you might find a purpose in life and not hit your wife so hard."

 

Why doesn't government count as a potential form of community?  Yes, none of us loves the government.  But if it truly can be of, by, and for the people--well, aren't we the people? 

 

And so the old chestnut of American exceptionalism is dusted off.  Don't try to change our uniquesness.  What is that uniqueness:  to happily suffer a neo-gilded age slaughter, all the while patting ourselves on the back because this is a fervent expression of our singular national identity.  No, it's just the same old greed, new face, new nation. 

 

Perhaps though, to be helpful when sorting out such potential redistributionist schemes that the mauve Obama-ites will pander to the hearty red-blooded electorate, we should propose a new axiom:  not just might makes right, but only might gives rights? 

 

 

 

Global Essay Mills (and then some)

An in depth expose on essay mills.  My two cents:  bring back oral exams.  Make it understood that students will be thoroughly quizzed on all portions of their paper.

 

Two:  this is more evidence that in our meritocratic educational imperative, we are engaging in mass self-deception akin to when Mao's agricultural 'reforms' caused mass famine in China.  Everyone is saying, yes, I'm educated, yes I have a degree (yes, s/he's educated, yes, s/he has a degree).  But it's all only so much fakery.  The degree is merely a receipt.  Give out less degrees, make them mean more.  Quit the systematic disruption of the economy (which parades under the name of progress) which exports lower skilled jobs and forces everyone to become part of the global farce.  In a word, shove a stick into the treadmill of education and unstrap the progress harness. 

Someone to Read

C. Wright Mills. 

Millenial Clits Unite!

Two articles with their fingers to the vulva, I mean, pulse of contemporary female sexual explorations... From swingin London and trippy Frisco.  
 

Conjectures on the California Crisis

More on the California self-combustion, from Victor Farmboy, the rustic pundit

Early Morning Hangover Moment of Clarity

It's great to see Friedman finally waking up.  If only he would've had the balls and foresight to put this message in his fist-pumping globalization bestsellers, maybe we all would've been a bit closer to reality.  But he's like the friend who buys you shots when you're way past the limit, then commiserates vociferously the next morning when your headache is ringing.

 

 

Isn't It Rich?

It's great to see a conservative start to moralize and worry about Americans' diets-- and the economic machinations behind them and ramifications of them.  Sort of contradicts that naive libertarian, "Jeez, that's an issue of personal choice, isn't it?  I'm free to fatten myself and die however I see fit?"  Or unfit.  Let's just say, in not merely a caloric sense--the irony is rich. 

 

That said:  here, here, I concur:  the heartland corn hegemony has got to stop.

Possibilities... Left

It's refreshing to hear such broad candor on the current crisis. 

Enhancements

Google gadgets. 

 

Humanities/Machinities

I once attended a book reading by this Delbanco guy mentioned in the article.  No, wait, that was Nick Delbanco.  Are they related? 

 

So market value for humanities is down.  Unsurprising.  As we all become cogs in a machine, chiefly valued for being and efficiently oiled part specific to its purpose, anything reeking of the human must be squelched.  The entire technocratic arsenal of education might be re-termed, the Machinities.  Machine-at-ease?...

Home Prices

Street level insanity in the the D.

California Kaput

Is the golden age of the Golden State over?

Contradictions?

As per normal, Obama's actions cause the gasket-blowing Brooks to drop a few time-honored conservative catchphrases--'unintended consequences', etc--for the peanut gallery.  But what's funny--though absolutely contradictory--is how he claims to be in favor of gradual change, not disruptive change.  Yet what do market-worshipping conservatives look to invest in every day?  Companies with new killer apps that will bring 'disruptive change'--forcing everyone to buy them and to buy in to the new paradigm--or die.  That's what modern technology is built on--wave after wave of disruptive change.

 

Also, as for Burke--the 18th century great mascot of fuddy-duddy-ism.  I'm all for the  'wisdom of the ages'.  But what is it?  Who has access to it?  Who administers it?  Who measures it?  Funny, the wisdom of the ages once said monarchs should rule by blood, women and blacks were inferior, Christianity (or Islam or Hinduism) was the one true revelation of God, etc.  Wisdom--its a great business.  So many flavors to sell. 

 

When we think about seven years ago and Iraq--the program for a New American century--huge 'epistemologically immodest' top-down world-brokering initiatives--was Brooks skeptical about those?  No he was the head neocon cheerleader for them. 

 

 

The Rappin Mathmatecian

More educational cogito ergo sums...

Pepper the Growth Ogre with Questions

You have to go to France by way of India to get the radical proposition that growth isn't categorically good for the planet or humanity. 

High Flying in the D

Will you go out with a bang, a whimper--or just out the window?

On Publishing...

The fast forward future of  DIY writing... publishing, I mean.  Hasn't writing always been DIY?

Gated Goddess Communities

On Utopias... for lesbians.

On Political Sex Scandals

We're in a time of transition.  Technology allows an immense amount of investigative access and media amplification of any person's sexual back history.  So every politician can expect this hyper scrutiny.  But people do not become politicians--born gamblers on the people's trust--by leading squeaky clean lives.  The risk itself spurs them on.  Perhaps Oedipus, ancient leaders of Thebes, actually knew he was sleeping with his mother--and hid it all along!....  But the truth will come out.  Of the closet or of the past. 

 

The cumulative disgust with politicians will in the future at last lead people to gladly cede the control of their lives and leadership of their communities  to machines, robots,  programs, asexual cyborgs, what have you.  And then we humans will be free to fornicate like canines, happy pets of the machines.  Riddle of the sphinx solved!

 

Ah, Hefner

What a guy...

Death of NYT?...

We've all heard of the frightened cries, but who could think it might be so soon?...

RIP Bush

The grand ambition of a fratboy succumbs.  Goodbye and good riddance. 

Screens and Pages

Another elegiac salvo from the high literary ramparts in the rhetorical war over the future of reading, and the screen vs. the page. 

Ayn Randians Rebel

Remember Atlas Shrugged?

Detroit Beatdown

Hilarious example of urban dialect. 

300--Minority Report

On the self-imposed exceptionalism of the West (which has sired, as is rarely pointed out, the exceptionalism of America). 
 

On Beauty

Modern art-- another investment scam, a Ponzi scheme of critics and 'creators' in collusion--and really very little to do with beauty.  That's long been my opinion, but as 'art' is not technically my province, I've felt like an uninitiated ignoramus when I give voice to my suspicions.  But here it is confirmed. 

Must We Go To College?

I've had these exact thoughts before about our nation's insane belief that everyone must go to college.

 

 

Gifts from the Heart

Mead, jam, and mix tapes-- what better gifts for the holidays.

 

 

On Moral Relativism

This spirited polemic degenerates into a thinly veiled attack on university humanities departments by the ever-aggrieved right-winger clinging to a ghostly absolute.  Nothing novel in that.