Unicorn + unitard = ...
Unus cornus, plures voluntas. (One horn, many uses.)
April 11, 2008
June 25, 2007
Mount Moran
Day 11669: Woke up, ate a sandwich, went to bed.
Day 11670: Woke up, ate a sandwich, went to bed.
Day 11671: Woke up, climbed a mountain, went to bed.
...now back to sandwiches.
Photomatic
Got a new camera for my birthday (Thanks Ani!). To celebrate the glorious future of me and my new camera, here's a small taste of the glorious past with my old cameras -- three random pictures. Can I get a Hallelujah!!!?
February 18, 2007
"The Awakening of Baghdad"
An open question: can anyone produce an example from history in which an occupying power successfully, over the long run, subdued the local population with military force?
I can't think of one. They usually wind up with drawn out guerilla warfare finally ending in full-scale revolution (Vietnam), or the colonial power is atrophied by the stretched-out conflict and eventually loses support at home, and leaves (India, Spanish and French colonies). Or, at best, the conquering power manages to assimilate the territory, leading to ethnic conflict fifty years or more later (Soviet republics).
Yet another method exists, one that has proved successful beyond historical expectation, one that we Americans basically invented. That is, of course, cultural hegemony and the thin wedge of the free market. It too, has its pitfalls, and I'm not going to defend it in full. But in contrast to a military campaign, it is less brutal, cheaper (hell, it makes money!), and, I think the record shows, more successful.
Yet here we are, in Iraq, still trying to do what's never been done.
The comparison with Vietnam is obvious, but it's worth calling it out explicitly: after our military left Vietnam in the '70s, it began the long recovery process, which finally, in the '90s, turned into a cultural victory. Today's NY Times has a travel article called "The Awakening of Hanoi", depicting the burgeoning art scene of the "stylish, European-influenced metropolis" that it has become.
The sooner we stop trying to force the Iraqi people at gunpoint to become what we want them to be, the sooner they can begin the transformation to what they want to be. Which, I think history has shown, is probably the same thing.
July 17, 2006
Why war doesn't make us safer
More evidence that a military strategy is a very difficult and unlikely way to make us safer in the war on terror, from
the
NYT article by Scott Shane about so-called global terrorism:
In fact, the vast majority of terrorists are provincial in their goals, said Robert A. Pape, a political scientist at the University of Chicago. His analysis of suicide attacks from 1980 to 2004 for his book, ''Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism'' found that 95 percent of attacks worldwide were motivated by resentment of the presence of foreign combat troops.
May 28, 2006
Time, Money, and Truth
"They spent something like $30 million, and we didn't. That's just a terrible imbalance when somebody's lying about you." - John Kerry, on The Swift Boat Veterans For Truth.
Today's New York Times has an story about Kerry finally fighting back against the Swift Boat Veterans, the propaganda machine that may have cost him the election by spreading the idea that he lied about his military heroism. He's gathering a mountain of evidence and new testimony from witnesses that should remove any doubt that the Swift Boat Veterans fabricated all their claims.
But during the election Kerry refused to release his military record, refused to air counter-attack ads, and failed to adequately rebut the charges. The article claims that a serious defense was not mounted out of fear that "directly challenging the charges would legitimize them", and also because they were "caught off guard". But now, two years too late, Kerry wants to set the record straight.
Which brings me to my point: In America today, the truth usually does come out in the end, but money can delay it, often crucially. If deceit has the force of money behind it, then truth might only flow like a glacier, inevitably but imperceptably. Eventually the fuel powering the lies dries up, and the truth is revealed.
This pattern is played out in so many of the major news stories of our age: the Enron collapse; the science of global climate change; the Valerie Plame affair; and the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. In each episode, money or political power allows a lie to be sustained for a time, usually just long enough for it to serve its crucial purpose which cannot be undone: launching America into war; silencing a critic; protecting investments and making money.
In our open society, with a free press, the blogosphere, and a strong rule of law protecting whistleblowers from reprisal, "The power of truth" does indeed seem to prevail in the long run, but that's not good enough. Sometimes a few weeks of deceit is all that is needed to facilitate great injustice. We need to accelerate the cultural vetting process that rejects propaganda, but often too late.
January 19, 2006
Gore's MLK speech
"In the absence of rigorous accountability incompetence flourishes."
- Al Gore, 2006
Everyone must read or listen to this recent speech by Al Gore who unflinchingly describes the "constitutional crisis" that has developing in our country. Gore puts the dangers in perspective, claiming that our democracy is essentially decaying into "rule by a strongman regime" -- the "principal alternative to democracy throughout history", and the type of government that America was founded specifically to forever avoid.
Today we have a President who admits to authorizing thousands of wiretaps against American citizens without any court approval, who legimitized torture in American prisons, who has appropriated the power to detain American citizens indefinitely without access to a lawyer, and who is pressing for even more powers with the expanded Patriot Act. What happened to our checks and balances? How did we let this happen? Do we still have a functioning democracy, and if not how do we get it back?
A few passages deserve repeating:
"And indeed whenever power is unchecked and unaccountable it almost inevitably leads to gross mistakes and abuses. That is part of human nature. In the absence of rigorous accountability, incompetence flourishes; dishonesty is encouraged and rewarded - it is human nature, whether for Republicans or Democrats, or people with any set of views.
...
Forty years have passed since the majority of Americans adopted television as their principal source of information. Its dominance has become so extensive that virtually all significant political communication now takes place within the confines of flickering 30-second television advertisements - and these are no Federalist Papers.
And the political economy supported by these short but expensive television ads is as different from the vibrant politics of America's first century as those politics were different from the feudalism which thrived on the ignorance of the masses of people in the Dark Ages. The constricted role of ideas in the American political system today has encouraged efforts by the Executive Branch to control the flow of information as a means of controlling the outcome of important decisions that still lie in the hands of the people.
...
Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of missiles poised to be launched against us and annihilate our country at a moment's notice? Is America in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march -- when our fathers fought and won two World Wars simultaneously?
It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they. Yet they faithfully protected our freedoms and now it is up to us to do the same."
January 11, 2006
Something old, something new...
Yay! Finally got a real domain and moved all of this stuff from my machine at Columbia.
In other major life news, in case you haven't heard: I'm getting married!. I launched my project on Google! Anya's book Generation Debt is coming out in February!
Ok, that's enough news for one post, I think. Even if it's a year's worth of news.
October 06, 2004
Cheney on the cost of AIDS
During the Vice Presidential debate tonight, Gwen Ifill asked: "Black women between the ages of 25 and 44 are 13 times more likely to die of the disease than their counterparts. What should the government‘s role be in helping to end the growth of this epidemic?"
CHENEY: Well, this is a great tragedy, Gwen, when you think about the enormous cost here in the United States and around the world of the AIDS epidemic—pandemic, really. Millions of lives lost, millions more infected and facing a very bleak future. In some parts of the world, we‘ve got the entire, sort of, productive generation has been eliminated as a result of AIDS, all except for old folks and kids—nobody to do the basic work that runs an economy.
This is a most incredible response to a question about AIDS. Here is a question about a health epidemic, and essentially about justice and equality in health care, and he answers in the language of money. In his mind, it's a great tragedy because of the "enormous cost". Now, I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he means human cost - pain and suffering. But he continues, pointing out that the "productive generation" has been eliminated in some countries, with "nobody left to do the basic work that runs an economy." While I agree that this is a major problem, I am horrified and fascinated by the way that all problems are viewed through the green lens of economic costs.
June 26, 2004
Politics is over.
At least, it's over according to Godwin's law, or what we usually mean when we say "Godwin's law", even though it's not exactly what Godwin meant.
The Bush and Kerry campaigns are embroiled in a flame war over the use of Nazi imagery in campaign ads. Since they apparently don't have anything meaningful to debate, like how to fix health care, education, Israel/Palestine, Iraq, North Korea, or social security, the obvious thing to do is to create TV ads that compare Bush to Hitler, then counter-ads that splice in above-mentioned Hitler footage with shots of Kerry, Gore, and Gephart, then emails that denounce the confusing above-mentioned spliced footage as "disgusting", then counter-emails that denounce above-mentioned email as, well, disgusting.
So now that the thread of political discourse has degenerated into a Hitler flame war, the ultimate destiny of all dessicated debate, we can finally unsubscribe and stop reading. This place was dead, anyway...
February 03, 2004
Reality Television
The "Dean Scream" was played in a loop, practically, for the few days after Iowa. I winced as I watched it live on CNN from our living room, somberly watching the results come in. It seemed so out of place, and a bit creepy. As a Dean supporter, I wanted him to say something to lift my spirits, but it was obvious that he was in a different world -- a raucous, desperate frenzy of mutual cheering. I thought, doesn't he know he's on TV?
The fact is that he *was* in a different world, at least a different place. I may have felt it entirely appropriate, or even uplifting, if I was in the room with him. A candidate should be sensitive to the larger audience, however. But isn't that exactly what makes the lifeless, predictable, formulaic politicians that we all know and hate?
One way of looking at the Scream is that it was a litmus test; people took it as evidence to support a deep-down feeling about him that they'd already been harboring.
But it seems to me that another view is just as valid -- that the media makes opinion as much as reports it, and the commercial news sources that feed us today are more interested in a hot story than in accurate reporting -- and Howard Dean suffered for it. And since I believe Dean is an inspiring and thoughtful man who would make an excellent President, the whole country may have suffered for it.
For an interesting take on the Scream, and a rare sort of apology from the networks, take a look at this piece by Diane Sawyer: http://abclocal.go.com/wjrt/news/012904_NW_r2_group_deanscream.html
January 27, 2004
CBS can't avoid controversy
Here's a letter I sent to the NY times, regarding CBS's refusal to run MoveOn's superbowl ad:
If you can't even buy "free" speech for $1.6M, then how much does it cost?
Go to MoveOn to see the ad.
If you can't even buy "free" speech for $1.6M, then how much does it cost?
CBS won't run the MoveOn-sponsored issue ad, which criticizes the Bush administration's $1 trillion budget deficit, because it's "too controversial". But even Bill O'Reilly of Fox, not exactly known for being an enemy of the Bush administration, said that "It's not offensive, (it) makes a legitimate point politically."
If CBS seeks to avoid controversy, they better stop broadcasting. We are a sharply divided nation, and despite the proliferation of media sources, television is still an extremely influential outlet. Both sides will strive to make their voices heard on television, as is their right.
Go to MoveOn to see the ad.
November 18, 2003
Freedom vs Control
I went to hear Eben Moglen speak at Columbia last week. He has the magic tongue of a truly gifted lawyer. I'm just glad he's on the right side. I jotted down some memorable moments as best I could:
"The Net is the condition of society of everyone being connected to everyone else without human intermediaries."
"The politics of the 21st century is about who makes the rules in the switches." (Addressing an audience of computer scientists:) "It is no longer a non-political subject to know the stuff you know."
"Mr. Eisner needs the military occupation of the Internet"
"Guys running for president are all members of the same lobotomized tribe, who can only think about one thing: getting to be president".
Instead of figuring out which is the best candidate, to find out which one gets it, he suggests, "Instead, talk to them, make them get it". Better to influence them all, than spend your time figuring out which one is best. I like that a lot.
July 17, 2003
A dose of their own medicine
Ryan McKinley at the media lab has launched his new project, Government Information Awareness. A play on "Total/Terrorism Information Awareness", the citizen-surveillance tool proposed (and just killed) by the government, GIA is a system that automatically monitors the web and news media, collecting information about the government's activities. The results are available to us citizens. As the site says, it's an effort to restore the balance between the government's ability to monitor its citizens, and vice-versa.
http://opengov.media.mit.edu/ (A lot of things are broken, but it's early.)
This is what (information age) democracy looks like!
June 27, 2003
Reclaim the public domain
I just sent this to congressman Nadler, the representative for my district:
I encourage you to vote for the Eldred bill that clarifies copyright law, reclaiming some of the works that ought to be in the public domain but were snatched back into copyright by the megaforces of Disney & co (via the Sonny Bono Copyright extension act).
There is a nice petition on the topic at:
http://www.petitiononline.com/eldred/petition.html
in case you haven't seen it.
May 31, 2003
California bound
"Don't worry, hey, don't get yourself down,
God willing we are California bound."
-Frank Black Actually I have already bounded, and here I am in San Francisco for the summer. I'll probably be getting a place near Google in Mountain View, where I'm interning for the summer. yay! Some pix are up from the trip. Anya's are still to come. My favorite so far:
God willing we are California bound."
-Frank Black Actually I have already bounded, and here I am in San Francisco for the summer. I'll probably be getting a place near Google in Mountain View, where I'm interning for the summer. yay! Some pix are up from the trip. Anya's are still to come. My favorite so far:
May 12, 2003
Politics of the airwaves
This is not a very sexy issue, but I believe it is extremely important. Basically, the FCC is on
the verge of changing media ownership laws that will allow giant media companies to get even
bigger. Explicit censorship is not the only threat to a free press, which is the backbone of
democracy. Just as surely, unchecked media consolidation can silence the diversity of voices that
comprise this backbone. The big media outlets are being very quiet about this, so it's important
to get the word out otherwise. Send a note to your representatives about it:
http://www.moveon.org/stopthefcc/
http://www.moveon.org/stopthefcc/
My blog is dead. long live my blog!
After a typing accident that wiped out /var, I lost the blog database a few weeks ago. i still had the html, but i couldnt make any changes or rebuild. finally I got it together to reconstruct the entries from the html (yay perl).
March 30, 2003
Pix from the protests
My favorite. This cop is in shock. Or is it awe?
March 27, 2003
Groan..
I just discovered that the version of mpg123 on the latest Redhat, which is what I use to decode mpegs into .wav, is actually not mpg123 but a link to mpg321, which silently ignores the options i give it telling to downsample by 2 and convert to mono. So all the pfiles (and hence the .htk files) are twice as big as they should be.
The annoying thing is that I'm not quite sure whether the anchor nets were trained on these files, or on files that were correctly downsampled. It looks OK: the nets are dated July 31 2002, which means they were trained at NEC. I looked there, and those pfiles (dated from that July as well) are OK, ie. half as small as they ones I have now on blush.
March 22, 2003
Free Airtime Campaign
On this day of protest in New York City, I'd like to point out an alternative for those who didn't march, either out of support for the aims of the war, or ambivalence, or you just couldn't get here. The problems with our government can be traced back, in a large part, to the influence of corporate money in politics. We won't have a truly representative democracy until candidates without multimillion dollar corporate-backed campaigns are put on even footing with those who do have them. The message below describes the problem, and proposed legislation that addresses it.
The PIRG (public interest research group) has a website that makes it easy to email your senators
supporting the bill. Go for it.
http://pirg.org/alerts/route.asp?id=22&id4=ES
Also the website for the "Free Air Time" campaign:
http://freeairtime.org/
March 20, 2003
Behind Enemy Lines
Back when this all started (for me), that is of course 9/11, I carried a sign into Union Square that asked "What is the root cause of terrorism?". I thought it was important to ask a question rather than shout a polemic, because the attack had shown me how we were, as a nation, both blind to world politics yet inextricably immersed in it. It seemed clear that if twenty men were eager to give their lives to make a statement about our nation's wrongdoing, then no amount of military power would protect us. The only road to safety was understanding.
February 18, 2003
CNN censorship? probly just mistake
My friend forwarded me this email, blowing the whistle on CNN censorship of Hans Blix's report to the UN.
From what I can see, it looks like an editing error more than "blatant censorship".
Ugh
If you need any more proof that the US democracy has broken down, read this:
From the NYT article http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/18/international/18CND-PREX.html
Bush said that the size of the protests against a possible U.S.-led war against Iraq was irrelevant.
"Size of protest, it's like deciding, 'Well I'm going to decide policy based up on a focus group.' The role of a leader is to decide policy based upon the security -- in this case -- security of the people."
Letter to the times
Anya and I summarized our belief about the war in the following letter to the Times, which didn't get printed, so I'll include it here:
Why moderates should march: the rebuttal
My friend John Evans sent me a thoughtful and informed rebuttal to my argument "Why moderates should march". I'm including it (with my own counter-comments!) because a thoughtful debate is exactly what I wanted to encourage.
To summarize my counterargument (for those who have better things to do than read my pontifications): You may believe war is a necessary evil, but I hope you believe it's an evil! So march anyway! Bring a sign that says "True democracy would have prevented this necessary evil" or something.
Continue reading "Why moderates should march: the rebuttal" »
February 11, 2003
Why Moderates (Like Me) Should March
"He is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins." --Frederick Douglass
I am going to march on the United Nations on Saturday to protest the war, as I have done in Washington and in New York twice before. I invite you to join me.
January 19, 2003
What i did on vacation
by adam berenzweig
this winter vacation I had a really really fun time. I went skiing in the mountains. I fixed my stereo by replacing the output stage transistors. I redid my web site. I started reading "Lies My Teacher Told Me", a book that every American must read. It was the funnest vacation ever.
January 16, 2003
the outpouring of my soul
my soul is in twisting agony, writhing and slithering beneath the skin of my skin. for how can i go on, with the knowledge that no one is reading this blog, and that no one ever will?? oh the pain is like knives, like arrows, like acid!!
won't somebody please play with me/
Holy Shnikeys!
this is so frickin cool. i'm so excited to have a blog. i'm the coolest kid i know now. holy cow wait till they find out about this in SCHOOL, MAN!!!