Dineen Hall is the new (since a few years ago) home of Syracuse University’s College of Law. I’ve been taking different routes to work this past week and it looked quite sharp in the morning light. I like this dark building, especially its colours, the contrast between brick texture and smooth glass, and the extrusions in some of the walls. Maybe I like it also because it’s so different from the classically inspired, vaguely authoritarian sandstone building that houses the School of Law at the University of Queensland. (I attended law school briefly before realizing I’d made a terrible mistake.)
Made an unscheduled stop at the Physics department on my way to the office this morning and encountered this fantastic sign. University campuses, like most places, are better with neon.
]]>Modern structure, multi-coloured glass and steel, against cloud-striped blue sky.
Corner view from below against a deeper blue morning sky.
]]>Imagine an excerpt from Kurt Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions…
I am going to make a wild guess now: I think that the end of the Civil War in my country frustrated the white people in the North, who won it, in a way which has never been acknowledged before. Their decedents inherited that frustration, I think, without ever knowing what it was.
The victors in that war were cheated out of the most desirable spoils of that war, which were human slaves.
…in the voice of John Malkovich. Because that is who performs the audio book version on Audible.
Review: .
]]>“Provocative columnist”† Andrew Bolt recently called Adam Goodes’ traditional war cry an act of “symbolic violence,” saying that the Sydney Swans player was sending an inflammatory message to the non-Indigenous members of the crowd. Goodes performed the dance after scoring during a game in the Australian Football League’s indigenous round last Saturday. But Bolt’s choice of terminology, about an event that took place during National Reconciliation Week, suggests that something quite different was going on.
Decades ago sociologist Pierre Bourdieu used the phrase symbolic violence to describe a type of social power used to control language and speech. This type of symbolic violence occurs when a dominant group in society uses cultural institutions (such as mass media) to decide what amounts to acceptable public speech, and to push certain kinds of ideas to the edges, especially critical thinking about the power relationships between different groups. By this definition, when Goodes asserted his Indigenous identity he was actually standing up to symbolic violence. He expressed himself in a way that doesn’t fit neatly within dominant narratives (e.g. that Australia is an Anglo-Celtic society into which other groups must assimilate).
The incentive to prevent acts such as Goodes’ is strong in post-colonial contexts where the settler society is vulnerable to having it’s legitimacy challenged by the Indigenous claim. For Bolt, Goodes “violated” the prohibition against thinking about and openly acknowledging cultural domination. Bolt is upset that Goodes broke the rule forbidding minorities, especially Aboriginal people, from referring to themselves as distinct from the dominant Anglo-Australian culture. Actually, he seems super upset to see an Indigenous man standing up to the cultural understanding of Australia as a white country. Commentator Waleed Aly says it better than me at around 1:00 in this video.
For many Indigenous people the meaning of Goodes’ action was an affirmation of their culture. It was an opportunity for Indigenous children to recognise one of their own people expressing identity in front of a large audience. It filled some with a sense of recognition and pride. Indigenous voices have, historically, been sidelined in public debates of this nature. Adam Goodes saw an opportunity to use his profile as a football player to move away from the sidelines. While there’s plenty of anger in the comments on various stories about Goodes right now, the IndigenousX Twitter account has been a wonderful source of Indigenous commentary on the matter.
As usual, Andrew Bolt has said his piece. For some other perspectives, give IndigenousX a try. They are a great and deadly mob.
Update: See also “Constitutional Recognition a ‘no brainer’ for Adam Goodes.”
With apologies to those already in the know, I feel the need to express my conviction that Iain (M.) Banks was a genius, and is, by those of us nerds who followed his work, greatly missed.
Here’s an example of machine brio: artificial intelligence, very far in the future, sassing a human commander in a world scarcely crazier than the one we’re in now. This was first published in 1990:
“Can I cuddle up with you when you sleep?”
Sma stopped, detached the creature from her shoulder with one hand and stared it in the face. “What?”
“Just for chumminess’ sake,” the little thing said, yawning wide and blinking. “I’m not being rude; it’s a good bonding procedure.”
Sma was aware of Skaffen-Amtiskaw glowing red just behind her. She brought the yellow and brown device closer to her face. “Listen, Xenophobe—”
“Xeny.”
“Xeny. You are a million-ton starship. A Torturer class Rapid Offensive Unit. Even—”
“But I’m demilitarized!”
“Even without your principle armament, I bet you could waste planets if you wanted to—”
“Aw, come on; any silly GCU can do that!”
“So what’s all this shit for?” She shook the furry little remote drone, quite hard. Its teeth chattered.
“It’s for a laugh!” it cried. “Sma, don’t you appreciate a joke?”
“I don’t know. Do you appreciate being drop-kicked back to the accommodation area?”
“Ooh! What’s your problem, lady? Have you got something against small furry animals, or what?” Look Ms. Sma, I know very well I’m a ship, and I do everything I’m asked to do—including taking you to this frankly rather fuzzily specified destination—and do it very efficiently, too. If there was the slightest sniff of any real action, and I had to start acting like a warship, this construct in your hands would go lifeless and limp immediately, and I’d battle as ferociously and decisively as I’ve been trained to. Meanwhile, like my human colleagues, I amuse myself harmlessly. If you really hate my current appearance, all right; I’ll change it; I’ll be an ordinary drone, or just a disembodied voice, or talk to you through Skaffen-Amtiskaw here, or through your personal terminal. The last thing I want is to offend a guest.”
Sma pursed her lips. She patted the thing on its head and sighed. “Fair enough.”
“I can keep this shape?”
“By all means.”
“Oh goody!” It squirmed with pleasure, then opened its big eyes wide and looked hopefully at her. “Cuddle?”
“Cuddle.” Sma cuddled it, patted its back.
She turned to see Skaffen-Amtiskaw lying dramatically on its back in midair, its aura field flashing the lurid orange that was used to signal Sick Drone in Extreme Distress.
Excerpt from Use of Weapons (Orbit 2008, US edition, pp. 74–76). I got my copy from The Strand, where they have a good selection, but you can of course get it via The Book Marauder.†
† Though if you wait until next year you can probably get it on the Kindle Flex delivered by a Suburban class Rapid Consumption Unit drone to your iPhone’s current geographic location.
]]>Scott’s party perished in March of 1912 from exposure and malnutrition. Once lionised by the British for his team’s heroic efforts, Scott’s leadership and culpability have come under scrutiny in recent years. Eight months after they died a search party discovered the frozen bodies of Scott and his two remaining compatriots, just 11 miles from the supply depot. In their tent was 30 pounds of rock containing Glossopteris fossils.
The artifacts provided strong empirical evidence for the theory of continental drift, establishing that the same fern species was once present in Antarctica—as well as South America, Africa, India, and Australia—because the land masses were at one time interconnected.
Elizabeth Truswell recounted the story of Stopes and Scott on the Australian radio program Ockham’s Razor in 2011. Sister program The Science Show today celebrates its 39th birthday, re-running Truswell’s tale, and leading us to wonder about the poignant mix of scientific curiosity and human devotion that, whatever the personal failings of its subjects, uncovered the astonishing truth of Gondwana for later generations.
]]>The story of Bitcoin has a lot going for it: mysterious disappearing creator, libertarian ethos, elegant system design, treasure hunt, social unrest, hackers, technobabble, a recent crisis, and my favourite: a sense that despite all the punditry and hype the meaning of it all hangs just out of reach.† So I’m making a list of some resources on Bitcoin, organized from the more accessible to the more technical, as a way of keeping track and in case it’s interesting to you as well.
From the more factual and didactic:
To the more opinionated and speculative:
Searching for the father of Bitcoin. An alternative genealogy. [2014-03-10]
† Working hypothesis: popularity of Bitcoin could create a system capable of challenging government control, and corporate domination, of the Internet.
]]>Please use Mail > Provide Mail Feedback to ask the Mac OSX Team to restore “Show plain text alternative” as a menu item and via Command-Option-P in the Mavericks version of Mail.app.
I added it to a recent Apple Store survey for good measure.
Update – Feb. 25: See also: Mail improvements in OS X 10.9.2 by Joe Kissell.
]]>The Tohoku earthquake and tsunami struck northern Honshu on March 11, 2011. Eighteen days later, the photo above was taken in Iwate Prefecture by Canadian-born photographer Jason Hill, who wrote:
It is very hard right now. There is debris everywhere. Bodies are still being found. Food and water is still hard to come by. Everyday we try our best to help in some way. We donate, we give. We encourage. We hope. If we are religious, we pray. We work hard now, so that at some point, this scene will emerge. Among the wreckage, the bodies, the chaos, a small flower will bloom and signify that spring is here.
Last month, two years on from the tragedy that plunged the region and the country into crisis, writer and teacher Roger Pulvers wrote a column for The Japan Times called “Tohoku has been truly rent asunder for untold generations yet to be born.” On today’s episode of The Science Show you can hear Pulvers reading a modified version of the piece. It starts around 24:47. This excerpt begins at 29:46:
I’ve recently met several people who’ve sent their small children, not only out of the region, but out of the country to ensure their safety. The comparisons with Chernobyl are not only on levels of radiation. The secrecy with the Japanese government and TEPCO, the Tokyo Electric Power Company that are owners and operators of the Fukushima plant, the secrecy over personal losses, damage to the environment, decontamination costs and harm to the health of maintenance workers at the plant, rivals the cover-up by the former Soviet government.
The people who made their livelihoods in the contaminated regions of Tohoku were abducted by both their government and an energy industry that deceived them into thinking that nuclear energy was 100% safe in a land plagued by earthquakes and tsunami. The very fact that the present government of Japan, under the leadership of Prime Minister Abe, is intent on reconstituting the nuclear power industry, is not only an insult to those victims of radioactive contamination in Fukushima Prefecture, but an attack of monumental proportions on all people living in Japan.
As in Taro, the town where the seawalls did not protect the people, it is the assumption of safety that leads to complacency. It was complacency and a false sense of security that lead to deaths in the town. And no amount of clichéd assurance will prevent the multitude of deaths that are likely to occur in the event of a nuclear accident in the future.
Is there any difference, I wonder, in this official deception and the one we have seen since the end of Word War II? In the nearly seven decades since the end of the war, half-hearted apologies have been made to the victims of Japan’s aggression. But as with war responsibility, so it is with the responsibility to come to terms with the oversights and crimes in Fukushima. The not-so-hidden agenda is: don’t ask, don’t tell, and wait it out until all the victims are dead.
Not all enemies of a country come from the outside. A nuclearized Japan is the greatest terror facing its people. If this terror persists, then the only flowers that will bloom, will be those on the graves of children living now, and in generations to come.
I stayed in Japan for a few months in 1997, and I have several close friends there. The worry about the fate of Tokyo was a creeping horror in those first days and weeks after the catastrophe when everyone was uncertain whether prevailing winds would shift and send radioactive gusts over one of the most heavily populated areas on the planet. But nowadays that anxiety is largely confined to memory, as against the ongoing devastation of survivors who will never be able to return to their homes.
In the same episode, not long before Pulvers’ essay (around 10:25 for those interested), nuclear engineer Richard Lester explains why he thinks it’s so unlikely that our energy needs can be met without nuclear power generation, while at the same time reducing carbon emissions to the extent required to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
I have heard many arguments on either side of the debate over nuclear power that was restored to prominence by the Fukushima disaster, and I’m still unable to form an opinion one way or the other. (A search for nuclear power and climate change provides ample reading.) Though proponents on either side talk with conviction in their voices I wonder how sure they are in their hearts, or whether it’s even possible to know. How can anyone weigh a nuclear disaster in one hand and runaway climate change in the other and come to a sane assessment?
Either way, there’s one thing that is clear: the only way of addressing this problem democratically is to radically increase government transparency surrounding the political economy of nuclear power, and I don’t know of a single government that is showing adequate leadership in this regard. So we should pressure our elected officials over that, if nothing else.
]]>Poignant Lydia.
The pictures from South America aren’t as good as my other work. I have two excuses: the camera had focus issues, and so did I. I was distracted and heartbroken. You could say the 60D’s problem was more mechanical but my stupid little brain is just another compromised molecular structure, isn’t it?
Read the post, and check out the pictures:
Regarding Centerplan’s proposal to Wesleyan for a new bookstore on Washington Street:
Major retail stores or restaurants at this location would make traffic worse throughout much of the North End, not just at the proposed site. Because this section of road is so congested, the addition would probably increase traffic cutting through the North End via Prospect, Spring, High and Grand. The volume of traffic that does this to avoid the Washington-Main intersection is already very high. Adding another blockage on Washington will make it worse. Cars not stopping at stop signs, and driving too fast on these streets, is already a problem, and our neighborhood has a lot of children, students and other pedestrians.
As for national chains, it doesn’t really matter what they are, the reason they want to be there is because the road is busy and the rent is cheaper, otherwise they’d be headed to Main Street. It’s a car-centric business opportunity and that’s not necessarily in the best interests of Wesleyan or Middletown.
Regarding the Wesleyan Bookstore itself, I’m with Ed and Karen.
You can’t fight progress, but at least you can blog about it.
Update (Dec. 2016): This story had a surprisingly good outcome.
]]>You have to listen for it each year, but if you’re lucky, during fall in New England, there comes a brief time when you can hear the sound of leaves drifting from the trees and hitting the ground cover below. It’s a rustling sound, but not as dry as you might imagine. The bright shapes still have some suppleness to them as they reach the floor.
This morning I saw maples, yellow in the oblique morning light, quietly releasing their cargo, making for a soft pattering that could be heard in the longer moments between passing cars on the nearby bridge. If I could record this sound for you it would no doubt be inaudible, or insensible, like trying to capture a subtle sunset with a mediocre camera.
Snow has a sound, it’s true, but the tone of leaves falling in autumn is somehow more surprising.
]]>The best Aussie films list is about to turn 6. I’ve updated it to include a total of 68 titles, and another 58 contenders. That’s 68 recommended films since 1991 so far—over three good Australian movies every year. And that doesn’t include the ones I haven’t reviewed for the list yet.
This is easily the most popular thing I’ve written, and probably counts for about 80% of the traffic to my site in the past year (the page gets roughly 2,600 hits a month).† Since so many people are interested in Australian movies, many of whom had left comments and suggestions, the least that I could do is sit on my couch and watch some flicks.
So that’s what I’ve been doing. I also combed through the comments, adding suggestions that people had made over many months (and explained why I had to reject a few of them). You may not like them all, but I think they are all worth your time. That’s the main thing I consider when deciding whether to move one from Contenders to the list proper: is this film worth 90–120 minutes of someone’s time? If the answer is yes, then up they go.
Check out the best Australian films since 1991 when you have a moment, and enjoy!
† The top countries visiting this site are, in order: USA, Australia, UK, Canada, India, Ireland, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, France, Sweden, Philippines, Spain, Denmark, Brazil, Japan, Malaysia and Belgium.
]]>On September 14 the BBC reported on the protest by Haitans against MINUSTAH (the U.N. mission) in Port-au-Prince, saying:
The UN peacekeeping force was first deployed in Haiti in 2004 to restore order following the overthrow of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
Its mandate was extended after the devastating earthquake in January 2010, and its strength was increased to around 12,000.
Minustah has helped post-earthquake recovery efforts and supervised this year’s presidential election.
But it has also drawn controversy, including allegations of excessive use of force.
Some Haitians regard it as an occupying force.
No kidding. U.N. troops brought a cholera epidemic to Haiti, and recently it came to light that several of them gang-raped an 18 year old Haitian man in July. And that’s lately. This force has been installed in Haiti since 2004.
Good that the BBC covered this story at all, but if you really want to know what’s going on with the U.N. in Haiti check out Ansel Herz’s Mediahacker or follow him on Twitter.
]]>Tottenham is in the London borough of Haringey:
From April 2011 – June 2011, 6,894 people were stopped by the police in Haringey. 6,807 were innocent. Black people were 26 times more likely to be stopped than white people nationally, but no more likely to be guilty of a crime.
Then on Friday, August 5, 2011 the police shot and killed Mark Duggan, and said that he fired a gun at them when he didn’t. Duggan was a father of three, who had hoped to marry his partner Semone Wilson and move out of Tottenham with his family.
Not long after some residents started burning vehicles and buildings, and other residents allege that the police allowed this to happen without intervening. People’s homes were destroyed.
Prime Minister David Cameron addressed the British Parliament on August 11 saying:
It is simply preposterous for anyone to suggest that people looting in Tottenham at the weekend, still less three days later Salford, were in any way doing so because of the death of Mark Duggan.
The following week, Paul Gilroy talked about how dealing with these problems involves understanding the “interconnecting parts:”
]]>When I talk about the poverty of the imagination, I mean that we are thinking like people who approach these things through the lens of a privatized world. We only think of these things as individuals, and we don’t see them as connected. The last week has been an amazing class, a primer, to give us the opportunity to understand how these things function today.
Yesterday marked the one hundredth anniversary of the garment factory fire in New York City that killed 146 workers, the majority of whom were women. Democracy Now! devoted the whole March 25th episode to this story. They played an excerpt of Amy Goodman’s interview from 1986 (the 75th anniversary) with the fire’s last survivor. The workers who died had been active in the labour movement in the lead-up to the tragedy. The deceased were largely blamed for their own deaths in the ensuing court case. Their compensation for working at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory was roughly $3 per hour, in today’s money.
On December 14th last year a Bangladesh factory at Hameem caught fire, killing twenty-nine workers and injuring over one hundred. The rate of pay there is $0.28 per hour. Labels that produce clothes at this plant include Gap, Phillips-Van Heusen, JCPenney, Abercrombie & Fitch and Target.
Something to think about.
]]>From the Facebook Developer blog last week:
Starting Friday, March 18th, you will no longer be able to create new FBML apps and Pages will no longer be able to add the Static FBML app. While all existing apps on Pages using FBML or the Static FBML app will continue to work, we strongly recommend that these apps transition to
iframes
as soon as possible. Lastly, we want to be clear that our deprecation of FBML does not impact XFBML, such as the tags that support social plugins.
One’s instructions have been stale since Pages were updated in February with design changes and a new admin identity model. So it goes.
]]>