If you aren’t up to speed on Wikileaks news, try here and here and here, and watch this:
Now that you’re up to speed:
There is this goofy card game one of my brothers likes to play; to my knowledge, he invented it. The dealer (typically my brother!) passes out one face-down card to himself and one to each other player. At his signal, all players raise their cards to their foreheads facing out such that no one can see his or her own card, but everyone can see everybody else’s. The players then place bets as to how valuable they think their own cards are in comparison — a total guess, of course, but by this time everyone’s laughing from holding poker cards against their skin. After betting, the players reveal their cards, and the random results release laughter …
Here’s my version of the game, which so far exists only in my imagination. People find themselves seated at a dinner table, clutching their one card tightly to their chests, looking down at their stated worth — “7″ or “3″ or “10″ — a value that is calculated according to all the good and the bad they have caused in life, according to all the secrets they know, according to all the things they wish they hadn’t said or they wish they knew how to say.
At this imaginary table of mine the players are making small talk, some of it happy, some of it sad; all are nervous about their value, and what the other players would think if their card were seen. After all, this player Sue’s card reveals that she said to this player Bob that this other, wealthy player Jorge’s a jerk, and now that Bob and Jorge are pretty good friends, does Jorge know what Sue once said about him, and if so, how does that affect who’s gonna pick up the check?
The dealer — a voice from the sky? — suggests the players lay their cards down on the table, face-up, on condition that they all, unanimously, forgive one another and love one another regardless of the cards’ value. The players agree, make their promises, and lay the cards down face-up. Angry yelling (“Jorge has the hots for both Bob and Sue?”) soon turns to laughter (“Jorge has the hots for both Bob and Sue!”) as people discover everyone’s a mess inside …
Except what if the players at the table included polarizing figures such as (take your pick) Dick Cheney, Barack Obama, Julian Assange, or heck, even that driver yesterday who cut you off when you really needed to get over a lane? Would we the powers-that-aint agree to forgive they the powers-that-be permanently if they’d lay down their cards and their guns?
I would. I would, to get the cards on the table so everyone could be safe.
There are of course several things my card-game scenario doesn’t address. For instance, it seems radical transparency and privacy can come into conflict, and privacy is I presume often preferable: if you’re surveilled to death, your creativity is chilled (partly because honest creativity requires engaging in thoughtcrime) and also under surveillance you can’t experience as fully the fun premium privacy can add to events (e.g., sweet nothings can be more meaningful when expressed without others around). Further, logically there are possible worlds where security is unjustly threatened by radical transparency, and I am uncertain as to how such situations, when they do arise in this actual world, should be handled, although I am tempted to say, well, let the chips cards fall where they may, because 4000 years of trading our rights away to leaders whose trustworthiness is unproven in return for promises of security hasn’t worked out so well.
My fourth digest linking to what I’ve recently been reading online. First, the customary now-playing and now-reading: Computer Love by Kraftwerk, and actually, I’m between books at the moment; wifely Kate put Gone with the Wind on a reading list for me, so I think I’ll take up that one next.
There are approximately 230,000 people [in Japan] who almost constantly shut themselves in their rooms except to go to nearby convenience stores, according to a survey conducted by the Cabinet Office. [...] the statistics have raised questions about the future of Japan.
Hikikomori are defined as those who shut themselves in their homes for at least six months but are not involved in child care or housework even though they are not sick.
Problems involving shut-ins have been pointed out over the past 15 years, but only experts and nonprofit organizations have worked on the issue, with little public support.
Requisite rightwing lunacy: former Republican Colorado Representative Tom Tancredo, once a Republican presidential candidate who’s now stated his intention to run as the Constitution Party’s Colorado gubernatorial candidate, has advocated the impeachment of President Obama for “wanting to destroy the Constitution,” calling him “a more serious threat to America than al Qaeda” — that’s from his op-ed in the Washington Times, where he says:
[Obama's goals constitute] the utopian, or rather dystopian, reverie of a dedicated Marxist — a dedicated Marxist who lives in the White House.
Because of the power he wields over budgets, the judiciary, national defense and even health care, his regime and his program are not just about changing public policy in the conventional sense. When one considers the combination of his stop-at-nothing attitude, his contempt for limited government, his appointment of judges who want to create law rather than interpret it – all of these make this president today’s single greatest threat to the great experiment in freedom that is our republic.
“On the other side of the aisle,” as the phrase goes, Van Jones, former White House green jobs special advisor, tells the netroots — pretty much the progressive blogosphere — to quit beating up on Obama.
“I can’t stand it. President Obama volunteered to be the captain of the Titanic after it hit the iceberg,” Jones said at Netroots Nation [...]
“This is harder than it looks. Having spent six months in the White House, it’s a totally different experience when you’re sitting there and the missiles are coming over the horizon at you,” he said. [...]
Jones said the netroots need to realize they are up against an “epic” force with the conservative media movement, which is trying to “bury everything you fought for everything you believe in,” and comparing it to the Lord of the Rings.
Much as I wish for more progressive results, I have total sympathy for Van Jones’s view: it’s easy to backseat quarterback and complain when you don’t have the full view of entrenched interests and whatever other enemies Obama faces. On the other hand, acknowledging that can slippery-slope to a “just trust the President you like” position, and since that isn’t viable overall, government should be more transparent. And really, if you aren’t activist-ing in some way (e.g., How to Call Congress, How to Snailmail Congess), your cynicism probably isn’t getting anyone anywhere.
For his part, the President asked Netroots Nation via a video address to seriously credit his Administration for its accomplishments so far:
No? You don’t want to do anything for the mid-term elections because they’re not as dramatic as the Presidential ones? Here, read this CBS piece about Minnesota Republican Representative Michele Bachmann, who “said yesterday that if Republicans [win] the House in November, ‘all we should do’ is subpoena and investigate the Obama administration.” She’s also called for “100 percent repeal of ObamaCare” and the “big mother of all repeal bills.”
A College Board study ranks Texas as one of least educated states, with only 27% of Texans holding university degrees. Actually, that’s a higher figure than I would’ve guessed. No disrespect.
How nervous are liberals about the November election and how angry are they at conservatives? Plenty, to judge from this year’s Netroots Nation gathering of 2,000 liberal bloggers and activists.
General background on the Clarion West Writers Workshop can be found here. Check back with us in September for more information on next year’s instructors and on applying to attend the 2011 session.
An account of a military contractor’s corruption has made many rounds already, but it’s so offensive it bears linkage (NYT) and excerpting:
more than $6 million in personal expenses [were paid out] on behalf of [contractor] Mr. Brooks, covering items as expensive as luxury cars and as prosaic as party invitations, Ms. Schlegel testified.
Also included were university textbooks for his daughter, pornographic videos for his son, plastic surgery for his wife, a burial plot for his mother, prostitutes for his employees, and, for him, a $100,000 American-flag belt buckle encrusted with rubies, sapphires and diamonds.
many other ways to organize time exist in the world’s languages. In Mandarin, the future can be below and the past above. In Aymara, spoken in South America, the future is behind and the past in front.
In addition to space and time, languages also shape how we understand causality. For example, English likes to describe events in terms of agents doing things. [...]
if you change how people talk, that changes how they think. If people learn another language, they inadvertently also learn a new way of looking at the world. [...] if you take away people’s ability to use language in what should be a simple nonlinguistic task, their performance can change dramatically.
Research published in the British Medical Journal found that patients trained in Alexander technique, which teaches proper posture and everyday movement habits to reduce strain, experienced an average of 18 fewer days of back pain over four weeks
BlackBerry was operating “beyond the jurisdiction of national legislation,” the U.A.E.’s Telecommunications Regulatory Authority said in a statementi ssued on Sunday.
“As a result of how BlackBerry data is managed and stored, in their current form, Certain BlackBerry applications allow people to misuse the service, causing serious social, judicial and national security repercussions.”
The home ministry, which has time and again shared with DoT its concerns over the security agencies’ inability to de-crypt messages shared over BlackBerry, has now asked DoT to sound out Research in Motion (RIM), the Canadian firm that makes the BlackBerry device, that its services in India will face shutdown if its e-mail and other data services do not comply with formats that can be monitored by security and intelligence agencies.
Cory Doctorow’s novel Little Brother uses phone encryption in its plot a great deal.
The Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan, which will be administered either by a state or by the Department of Health and Human Services, will provide a new health coverage option for Americans who have been uninsured for at least six months, have been unable to get health coverage because of a health condition, and are a U.S. citizen or are residing in the United States legally.
Created under the Affordable Care Act, the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan is a transitional program until 2014, when insurers will be banned from discriminating against adults with pre-existing conditions, and individuals and small businesses will have access to more affordable private insurance choices through new competitive Exchanges. [...]
In order to give states the flexibility to best meet their needs, HHS provided states with the option of running the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan themselves or having HHS run the plan. Twenty-one states have elected to have HHS administer the plans, while 29 states and the District of Columbia have chosen to run their own programs.
Starting today, the national Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan will be open to applicants in the 21 states where HHS is operating the program. [...]
The Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan will cover a broad range of health benefits, including primary and specialty care, hospital care, and prescription drugs. The Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan does not base eligibility on income and does not charge a higher premium because of a medical condition. Participants will pay a premium that is not more than the standard individual health insurance premium in their state for insurance that covers major medical and prescription drug expenses with some cost-sharing.
Business Insider discusses the destruction of the American middle class; the article has an anti-global perspective I don’t like (because building walls around yourself isn’t a long-term answer), but the article’s worth the scary read:
no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker ten times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. [...] the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new “global” labor pool. [...]
The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. [...]
36 percent of Americans say that they don’t contribute anything to retirement savings. [...]
Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975. [...]
For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together. [...]
More than 40% of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying. [...]
The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
That’s all I can manage for today; for the news I’m a few days behind, but hopefully this digest will let you catch up on some good items you might have missed. Tschuss for now!
[Illegal immigration apprehension numbers along the Arizona border] are sharply down, according to the Border Patrol — by more than sixty per cent since 2000 [...] Illegal immigration, although hard to measure, has clearly been declining. [...]
The problem of illegal immigration isn’t a matter of violent criminals storming the walls of our peaceful towns and cities. It’s a matter of what to do about the estimated eleven million unauthorized residents who are already here. The mass-deportation fantasies of some restrictionists notwithstanding, the great majority of “illegals” are here to stay. That is a good thing, since they are, for a start, essential to large sectors of the economy, beginning with the food supply — the Department of Labor calculates that more than half the crop pickers in the United States are undocumented. National business leaders have no illusions about these basic facts of economic life.
There are reasons to be uneasy about illegal immigration. In some industries, dirt-poor newcomers lower wages. State and local budgets suffer when workers are paid under the table. The fact that people lack legal status is itself disturbing. [...] Yet anti-immigrant backlashes don’t always track closely with actual immigration. They track with unemployment, popular anxiety, and a fear of displacement by strangers. They depend on woeful narratives of national decline, of which there is lately no shortage. Scaremongering works. [...]
Projections show white Americans becoming a USA demographic minority in the 2040s. Anyone got an idea what, with present voting trends, that’d do to current Republicans? I think that has a lot to do with the rightwing’s anti-illegal immigration position.
At Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow mentions a £1,000-prize fiction-writing contest that insisted, for the alleged betterment of humankind, that contestants handwrite their entries and avoid science fiction. Nobody entered the contest.
INCEPTION is, in microcosm, the state of much current [science fiction]. It is so complex and self-referential that much time is spent figuring out what is happening, rather than inhabiting what is happening. Is this good or bad? I guess that depends why you like stories. [...] If you want them to be reflections of human experience, then INCEPTION is still good but not as good as it could have been [...] judging from the enthusiastic audience reaction last night, puzzles are what is wanted. People applauded at the end.
Kate and I haven’t seen it yet. Despite Roger Ebert and William Gibson complimenting the movie — those two would make a great movie-reviewing duo — we might not get around to seeing this one at all. And, I have to say that right now I’m really enjoying the Kress novel Beggars in Spain.
The Washington Post publishes its two-year project exposing the Top Secret America surveillance and intelligence industry. In case you’ve forgotten about it, here’s the Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I started submitting stories for publication when I was about 15, but it was many years before I sold anything. I don’t make my living writing science fiction so in that sense I’m still not a pro. Writing for publication was always my goal, but making a living writing science fiction wasn’t. [...]
Science fiction is very well suited to asking philosophical questions; questions about the nature of reality, what it means to be human, how do we know the things that we think we know. When philosophers propose thought experiments as a way of analyzing certain questions, their thought experiments often sound a lot like science fiction.
My Clarion West’08 classmate Carlton Mellick III and the rest of the Bizarro writer army make The Guardian and Boing Boing. Carlton was a fun guy, extremely talented, and extremely sincere in a way that was still informed — not dewy-eyed.
A Boing Boing post discusses The Bechdel Test, a few quick questions that help evaluate the representation of women in any movie.
At GalleyCat, novelist Bret Easton Ellis says writers will make more money due to eBooks, not less, in part because of the decreased costs of producton allowing for higher royalties.
In addition to snail-mailing Congress, I’ve telephoned elected officials (in both cases, I activist-ed in favor of a genuine public option for health care — er, health insurance reform!).
For me, calling Congress was an intimidating task at first. Maybe you know about the infamous Milgram experiment where research participants were asked to administer increasingly severe electric shocks to others — to actors pretending to be learners; the shocks were fake, but the participants didn’t know that.
Despite the screaming and the heart-pain complaints from the actors, despite the actors banging on the divider wall and pleading, most participants allowed the technician-coat experimenter to goad them into pressing not just the extreme intensity shock and Danger: Severe Shock buttons, but finally the XXX button that resulted in the actors’ silence. (Several participants laughed nervously or cried throughout; the experiment has been repeated with the same results as recently as 2009; researchers have used a real-life puppy, too, wondering if perhaps the participants figured out the shockee was an actor — no, all participants in that one killed the puppy.) Stanley Milgram explained these results in terms of conformity and fearful obedience to authority; I think whatever the reasons are, they lie behind patients’ fear of asking doctors questions (for example), and also my initial fear of phoning Congress!
Anyway. Calling Congress members became easier after I did it a few times. Aides answer (rarely do Congress members), and without exception I found them friendly, if rushed. They want you to get to the point, and you should. Though there are scripts online for various causes, I wrote out a paragraph for what I’d say, so that I wouldn’t sound like an astroturfer‘s employee. Each paragraph matched the structure of my letters: 1) who I am (including occupations & city) and what I wish from the Congress member; 2) One or at most two sentences of reasoning — including poll statistics or actual quotes from the Congress member; 3) Reiteration of what I wish from the Congress member and a friendly thank you.
And actually, unlike what might well be the case with snailmail, no aides seemed to mind when I was called from out of their members’ constituencies (I did call my own representatives at times), specifically since the issue (health reform) was national and especially when I mentioned nationwide donations (such as through ActBlue). Some aides asked for my ZIP — I’ve received a few mailings — and when the aides themselves seemed especially pleased with my perspective, I could hear it in their voices. A bad-result call ended with an aide saying, basically, “Thanks, bye”; a good-result call ended with an “I’ll be sure to pass along your comments to the Senator/Representative, thanks so much!”
Sometimes I opened with a compliment regarding something the Congress member did that I appreciated (easy to find from his or her website, or from the search strategies discussed in this post), and sometimes I simply called to say nothing more than thanks for a specific quote the Congress member gave the press or whomever; these aides and Congress members typically get angry phone calls, so it’s nice for them to receive gratitude every once in a while.
Some people went out of their way to tell me this type of activism is worthless, saying the aides’ phones must be perpetually busy. Well they’re not. I had a little trouble getting through the final day or two before the health reform legislation passed — but generally I had no trouble.
Phone numbers for elected officials can be found at USA.gov here. Definitely check out my preceding post for more stratagem. I think people neglect a whole lot of good activities — such as calling Congress — simply because the transaction costs, the totals of the effort and the irritation that must be endured to do the good deed, are too high. Activists should lower them, with info and otherwise.
Several times during Kate and I’s wedding & honeymoon trip, I asked taxicab drivers in NYC and DC for marriage advice — partly because, like Perot & Obama both, I’m all ears for suggestions; also, partly for the sake of amateur anthropology and since I simply like talking with people. The more unusual the person, the better. The more you feel you understand things well, the more you have to cultivate the attitude that other people might actually outsmart you; and, strangers are often the ones who give you best insights.
However, I don’t think I’ll be taking this one taxicab driver’s advice, which he gave as I stepped out of his cab: that Kate and I need to have children immediately. I replied that we were considering maybe one or two children sometime about five to seven years from now, and he hollered that Kate and I need to output one within a year. It focuses things, he shouted, driving off.
When I rode from St. Mark’s Bookshop (I purchased the rest of Paul Park‘s Roumania Quartet, but wisely left Jung‘s awesome and awesomely expensive Red Book to peruse at local libraries; also, St. Mark’s had a great poster that graphed USA economic inequality — this too I refrained from purchasing, partly because such a purchase seemed ironic splurging) — when I rode from St. Mark’s Bookstore toward Cafe Lalo, where Kate was waiting, a Senegalese taxicab driver poured all sorts of advice into the backseat. “Put water in your mouth!” he advised. “If you are angry, if you are about to speak hastily, put water in your mouth instead! Hold the water in your mouth until it cools your anger!”
Citing the numinous wifely wisdom that causes husbands to tremble, he also said Kate was always right about everything. On this I respectfully disagree. =)
But I do agree with his misleadingly callous-sounding comment that spouses shouldn’t have too high expectations of one another. Because no spouse can fulfill every need for the other; if one spouse isn’t into, say, heavy metal or shoes, the other can share that passion with his or her own friends instead. Plus, if the one spouse does check out a metal band or scrutinize some shoes, it’s a bonus for the other, not the fulfillment of some needy requirement the other has. And that way, with a good marriage, each constantly receives bonuses instead of feeling disappointment at failures to meet unreasonable expectations.
In DC (where we honeymooned) the taxicab drivers were tenser, less prone to talk, and busy listening to political news. The diverse taxicab experiences in both places, however, made me hope even more to be able to approach the world someday such that I genuinely feel that everyone, even the most problematic (mean-spirited, or obnoxious, or …) person has something to teach me.
Kate and I married in NYC on Saturday 29 May 2010 at the Brooklyn Heights Promenade. Six guests attended: our four parents, her sister, and my best friend. Supporting personnel included LDF Floral and Event Design, the estimable Eileen Regan as officiant, and the very effective Katje Hempel as photographer; all three worked perfectly. (The photograph above is Katje’s, as is the pair below. You can see a few more photographs on Katje’s blog.)
Our short service included a reading from (and this was Kate’s idea!) Theodore Sturgeon’s novel Godbody:
This is the answer!
The answer is not in getting and keeping, but in getting and giving.
The answer is not in saving and preserving, but in growing and changing.
The answer is not in making things stop, but in making things go.
The answer is not in thinking, but in feeling.
The answer is not death, but love.
Kate and I stayed at the On the Ave hotel in NYC between Wednesday 26 May and Monday 31 May; we honeymooned in DC from Monday 31 May to Sunday 6 June, staying at The Jefferson hotel, an amazingly nice place. In DC, among other sites, we really enjoyed visiting the Smithsonian American History Museum (Julia Child’s kitchen!) and the Lincoln Memorial at night. In both cities, we shared some fantastic meals.
Soon I’ll post more about our adventures … and the loquacious taxicab drivers’ marriage advice.
