Paper Mâché Bear

Academics and Entrepreneurialism

2012-01-30T17:15:00.003Z

If you listened to President Obama's recent State of the Union Address, you will have noticed his (expected) emphasis on job-creation through small business and entrepreneurialism. With the US economy struggling to its feet, politicians and policymakers on both sides of the aisle have been making regular political hay of the macroeconomic benefits of entrepreneurialism. Typically this means touting small businesses and the removal of regulatory 'red tape' without describing in any detail how exactly we can promote and foster entrepreneurialism. For example, our elected officials and policy leaders seem to have plenty of vague ideas about how to provide tax breaks and incentives for the promotion of already-existing small businesses, but don't seem to have any substantive sense of where those small businesses come from in the first place. What educational and professional background (yes, they do at least acknowledge that education gives one a significant advantage in starting a successful business), or what set of skills, leads to successful entrepreneurship? Though our politicians and policy wonks do have stock answers to these questions--it's generally and uncritically accepted that business and technology education is essentially all we need to pay any attention to if we want to train the next generation of job-producers)--we are, as usual, living in a political climate in which it's easier to latch onto a few popularly held assumptions and repeat them for political gain than to think entrepreneurially about entrepreneurialism itself.

One economic sector that is truly a powerhouse of entrepreneurial spirit and practice is academia, though the talking points of politicians, journalists, and the like would have use believe otherwise. Conventional 'wisdom' would have it that entrepreneurialism is anathema to academics. As in J.M. Coetzee's Diary of a Bad Year, in which the sensibilities of a curmudgeonly academic writer, Senior C, are contrasted with those of Alan, the young financial pragmatist, the academic man of belles lettres is portrayed as disconnected, unambitious, and sedentary, while the young businessman is always looking for ways to get paid (ethics aside). Such stereotypes even apply to academics who are viewed to be in more 'pragmatic' and widely encouraged fields, like the natural sciences: we don't look to the boffin the the white lab coat to start a company (like, I don't know, Genentech).

The truth, however, is that few professions, if any, are as fundamentally entrepreneurial as academia. Even in the study of subjects like, say, literature, which are less 'applied' in terms of their research output, one's livelihood depends directly and almost exclusively on one's ability to generate new, viable, and reasoned ideas, to articulate these ideas to several levels of audiences, to identify and/or create a market for these ideas, and to capitalize on them (literally, to translate ideas written on paper into real monetary gain). There are no teams, and rarely any collaborations for the majority of research output, which means that you live and die by your ability take an idea from its infancy to its marketability to your payday. If this sounds like a crude way of expressing the academic research process, consider yourself disabused of the dated stereotypes and silly fantasies you've been fed about life in the 'Ivory Tower.' If there's anyone who understands what it means to be an entrepreneur every day and in every step of his or her career, it's an academic; particularly an academic in a field for which there is little governmental or other institutional support and a hypercompetitive marketplace for ideas. No, this experience is not in itself identical to the experience of starting a company and managing a crop of employees from the ground up; but it is an outstanding exercise in realizing ideas from conception to viability to marketability to payoff, an exercise not unlike some of the earliest and most crucial phases of business entrepreneurship (likely for this reason, academics actually tend to be more likely than the average American to start a business of their own).

Beyond these aspects of entrepreneurialism, of course, it remains the case that in 'knowledge economies' academics are also tremendously important as educators. But, when policymakers are looking for new ideas and new sources of economic growth, they would do better to acknowledge the unacknowledged entrepreneurial resource that most of us presume falsely to be useless and idealistic by choice: the academics.

Why RyanAir Sucks

2012-01-19T10:24:00.006Z

PMB doesn't usually write about explicitly personal experiences, though this case warrants an exception. The personal issue at hand is what many would readily know and expect as typically poor treatment of this RyanAir customer by the Soviet-like machines that RyanAir trains as staff.

The broader issue is the extent to which we as consumers have been conditioned (or conditioned ourselves) to tolerate certain business practices that make absolutely no good sense whatsoever, and ought to be better 'punished' by the consumer market. I've been critical of the boycott as a means of governing, through market imperatives, our moral action in public life; but strictly as a capitalist I think it's necessary for consumers to be as informed and act as rationally as possible in our consumption choices for capitalism to run optimally. Admittedly, in one sense, capitalism is a self-sealing ideology: because it's meant to be maximally efficient in and of itself, any functions or results of capitalism, however unacceptable and truly and absurdly irrational, are deemed optimal, because the machine does not err. On a less utopian note, however, it's clear that many of the bases of capitalism in its original form--foremost the accountability that comes with looking someone in the face who's providing you a service that you genuinely want, and that person and his or her associates bearing some level of shame when they cheat you or screw something up--have been evacuated from the site of most transactions. Either a company conducts business from behind a wall or through subsidiaries, consultants, or hired agents with no actual ties to the company otherwise (and little stake in its success or failure), or it trains its own staff (usually in a call center somewhere) to dehumanize the entire process of exchanging goods and services for money, and to address any needs or problems with a kind of robiticism that makes you think, frankly, yeah, now I see how Soviet communism claimed so many casualties: by using the communist version of the capitalistic trick of training humans as automata. Consider the following commonplace business practices that we put up with, despite their absurdity:

1) Bank fees of the order of charging someone for using a debit card as a debit card, or for failing to use a credit card a minimum amount of times in a given month, etc.

2) Fine print on television advertisements that flashes by in seconds and is so small that it is objectively unreadable in the time it appears...and yet it also fundamentally alters or modifies the message of the advertisement and the terms of the service being offered (false advertising loophole).

3) Tipping (especially in the United States), a system by which a business gets consumers to pay directly not only for the service they purchase (the meal, which, typically, has labor and production costs built into its price) but for the wage of the employee (the waiter): restaurateurs typically pay their waiting and bar staff below minimum wage, but get away with it because the tipping expectation from consumers puts their total earnings above minimum wage and into legal territory. But why should a consumer pay directly the hourly wage of the business staff, especially after already paying for the associated costs of producing a meal built into the price of the meal itself? It's the employer's responsibility to pay its labor costs and set its prices accordingly, not the consumer's responsibility to pay for labor directly out of pocket per transaction.

Bearing all of this in mind, we come now to RyanAir.

By way of disclaimer, I've flown RyanAir many times, and I understand what it is, how it operates, etc. I know they look to charge customers for virtually anything they can find (I could recite to you a litany of such charges, and, for that matter, much of their entire service level agreement text); I know they're a cut-rate airline that pride themselves on getting you somewhere cheaply and on-time and nothing else (not at all an ignoble goal) (in fact, when they land you on time, which should be a given, a chime comes on the loudspeaker in the plane bragging about how they've landed on time and boast the highest on-time flight rate in Europe); I know they have strict policies and the strictness and ruthlessness of the way they carry out such policies is essentially their lifeblood as a business. I should also say that I don't expect even friendly service, not even a smile, no frills and no extras. I don't care about that stuff. I want basic, competent service that matches what was advertised to me and what I paid for it. I don't pay for smiles. I don't walk into a McDonald's expecting four-star restaurant service, and then complain when I don't get it.

But alas, RyanAir has finally failed me on the fundamentals. The troubles begin with the RyanAir website. If you haven't checked out the RyanAir website, it looks like what you'd expect to get if you accidentally clicked on a spam e-mail for male enhancement pills. But no, it's actually a prosperous and widely patronized European airline, operating out of offices in multiple countries, rather than some guy's mom's basement in central New Jersey. As I suggested, though, I'm not particularly moved by web aesthetics in this case; the real problem with the website is that it's clunky and suffers frequent errors that make it impossible at times to obtain certain basic services from the website. If one of those times and one of those certain services happens to be when you're trying to check in for your flight online and when you're trying to print out a boarding pass, the consequences of RyanAir web failure are dire, as I discovered.

After trying to check in and print out a boarding pass on two separate computers and two separate internet connections on two separate days, I was unable to do so. The RyanAir website does, helpfully, inform you when purchasing a ticket that failure to print out your boarding pass and bring it to the airport with you results in a 6 euro re-issuance fee (essentially for them to print your boarding pass at the airport). Knowing this, yet unable to access my boarding pass on their website to print it out before leaving for the airport, I figured I'd let them know that their website wouldn't give me access to my check in and boarding pass, and so I ought not to be charged. In the back of my mind I figured that, were I unsuccessful, I'd fork over the 6 euro.

The first RyanAir representative I spoke with listened to my 'story' for about 30 seconds before telling me, plainly, that I was lying. His exact words were 'You're lying, I'm done with you sir,' before sending me to the ticket counter to pay my fee.

The second RyanAir representative suggested first that there was no IT problem, then backed away and said that if I had an IT problem (ah, what an admission!) I should have contacted the IT department (for one euro per minute on the phone), but now they had to charge me. Curiously, the guy at the counter before me happened to have had the same problem as I did. Nonetheless, the clerk then proceeded to tell me that the surcharge for failing to check in and print out my boarding pass was not 6 euro, but 60 euro. When I asked how this was the case, pointing to the information I had on my ticket receipt, she said 'because it went up.' Thanks.

After arguing further with her and her supervisor up until the point at which I might miss my flight, I forked over the 60 euro, flew back to England, and obtained a form letter from the RyanAir desk in Birmingham for how to make official complaints to the airline (curiously, the staff in Birmingham, like at most airports, but unlike Dublin, a RyanAir headquarters where I started from, do not directly work for RyanAir; they're specially contracted to check people in and print boarding passes, but cannot receive complaints or grievances because they are not with RyanAir; no coincidence, of course).

Upon further investigation of the materials I received from RyanAir, an itinerary they sent me immediately after ticket purchase suggests that the check-in/boarding pass fee at the airport is 40 euro. This puts the information I have at the following: upon purchasing the ticket, the charge was 6 euro; at the airport, the charge (which I actually paid) was 60 euro ('it went up'); on my e-mailed itinerary it's 40 euro. I've since discovered that RyanAir, a while ago, upped this charge from 40 to 60 euro; but then why did my itinerary have the 'old' price? Does RyanAir even know it's own policies?

The point in all of this is that there's a difference between accepting that cut-rate business services like RyanAir aren't exactly luxurious and flexible, and drawing a line at blatantly poor, inconsistent, fraudulent, and predatory business practices. RyanAir does catch people off guard with little inconveniences that could have been avoided by measures within the control of its customers, like, for example, charging massive rates for even the slightest amount of excess baggage weight. A google search produces endless complaints about huge fees for bags that are fractions of a kilo over the weight limit. In these cases I'd say to the customer 'tough shit,' because the baggage policies are pretty explicitly there on the website (so long as the website is actually working).

In my case, however, RyanAir crossed a line. For one, it failed to take responsibility for the fact that its lousy website prevented a knowing customer (actually, in that little time window, at least TWO knowing customers; coincidence?) from executing the instructions it set out. Though the woman at the ticket desk repeatedly informed me that my printed receipt was not a boarding pass, and I repeatedly told her I fully understood that, and brought it to her to prove that I had indeed purchased a ticket in the first place, but couldn't get to my boarding pass because of website problems, there was no actual communication going on about how plausible and regular it is for people to have such problems with high-volume commercial websites, and how absurd it is to penalize someone with proof of purchase 60 euro for the trouble.

Notwithstanding having been called a liar by one of the RyanAir employees, the second way RyanAir crossed the line here was by sending me two different correspondences that indicate radically different fees for the same situation, and then charging me a third different fee, completely unadvertised and unmentioned in my receipts, itineraries, and their website, a fee which happened to be 20 euro more than the second fee they advertised and 54 euro more than the first, the one that appeared while I was making my decision to purchase my ticket. If a business doesn't give the customer the opportunity to factor these types of things into their decision, then they're not practicing fair business. At best they're predatory, at worst fraudulent. Were I aware that it would cost 60 euro to show up with no boarding pass; even that such a possibility existed; I would have made a series of very different decisions. For example, yes, I could have contacted the RyanAir IT department for 1 euro per minute on the phone; but since it was advertised to me that I'd pay 6 euro at the desk for failing to show up with a printed boarding pass, and it's likely that I'd be on the phone with IT for more than 6 minutes, why should I have called IT?

This is, ultimately, why RyanAir sucks: not because the staff are unfriendly and unprofessional; not because of baggage fees or sparse legroom in the cabin; not because they try to sell you everything under the sun that you don't want both while buying a ticket online and during the flight; but because they fail to provide with honesty the fundamental service that they advertise.

Is the Best Defense of Humanities an Attack on Humanities?

2011-11-10T12:45:00.005Z

The idea that the study of the humanities is unrigorous, or that humanities subjects are easier than social science or science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) subjects, is for proponents of the humanities one of the most insulting ideas around. The reason is threefold: one, because this idea is pervasive and at the same time demonstrably false; two, because it presupposes that the people who study humanities fields are unintelligent, or not intelligent enough to study STEM fields (i.e. that those trained in STEM are smarter); three, it leads to the related idea that many of the finest products of the human mind are not things to be taken seriously in any systematic way--not things to be studied, nor things we can learn anything from, nor things that play any role in human progress.

When pressed to it, very few people, however adamant they are as detractors from the humanities, or as so-called pragmatists or futurists or techies or transhumanists or plain, self-avowed philistines, will admit to thinking that things like literature and visual art do not enrich humanity, or are not important. In fact, it's often those who despise the study of the humanities the most--who find it the most useless--who actually embody the greatest love of the various products, 'technological' and otherwise, of human creativity, or the creative mind in action.

The problem, rather, is this idea that to study such 'creative objects' is both unrigorous, involving little more than subjective opinion-forming, and, as such, unproductive, because many of the questions raised by literature, art, history, and certain types of philosophy are unfalsifiable questions (applying the scientific method). In simple terms, when people think that studying the humanities is easy, or that anyone who can form an opinion can also, by virtue of that, partake of humanities study at high levels, they question the study of it altogether. Why should some professor tell the average opinion-former how to read a text? The blame for the pervasiveness of this suite of misguided ideas, and all of the false and misleading notions that attend it, lies squarely with those of us in the humanities. It is our fault.

As I've mentioned before, we have long since been at fault for failing to participate actively in the political processes that result in funding allocation, and, more importantly, we have failed to engage the lay public in the work we do, as well as the value of our work. This is a difficult task, to be sure--it's a lot harder to explain value that isn't easily quantified, or consolidated in a consumer product--but we can do much better. But where we've been most negligent, and perhaps most meaningfully negligent, is in our most important task as humanities scholars: our teaching. And it is through our failure in teaching and evaluating students in humanities courses that we invite suspicion at best, and outright confirmation at worst, of the malicious ideas surrounding the 'unrigorousness' of our subjects.

As a friend of mine pointed out recently, students often drop out of STEM courses in order to take humanities courses that they believe are easier. I find it difficult to argue with that perception. Whereas a professor of mathematics has reasonable and easily expressed cause to give a student a lower grade if s/he completes a proof or solves a problem incorrectly, a professor of literature typically has a much harder time explaining to a student why they deserve a C instead of an A-. There's no question that the evaluative process in literary study is partly subjective. There is no way to 'prove,' in the scientific sense, a particular reading or insight from a literary text. Literary texts raise questions, in other words, that are not falsifiable. While the evaluative process for literary texts--the practice of literary criticism--is not wholly subjective, as many believe it to be--which is to say, it's not just an exercise in unrigorous opinion-forming--the subjective element of literary criticism most certainly opens doors, in the teaching and evaluation of students in literature and other humanities courses, for very uncomfortable grading scenarios. As a consequence, students of literature, for example, develop the view that they are being graded on entirely subjective grounds (including whether or not the professor likes them), and that a grade is something attributed to them, rather than something they have earned through the quality of their work. Professors of literature, under pressure from both their institutions and from students' hovering parents, who expect that after paying so much in tuition, their child 'deserves' a good grade, tend to evaluate students' work less rigorously, and then to assign higher grades than the student has actually earned.

In so doing, we fail to properly educate students in the rigors of humanities scholarship, as well as the crucial differences between an argument from opinion (or from logical fallacy) and an argument from evidence (and attendant reason). Along with ethical concerns, these are among the most important things that come out of rigorous study in the humanities (one could of course argue that STEM and social science courses teach this too; they do; but it is precisely the ambiguity found in the objects of humanities study, not found to such an extent in objects of scientific study, that make such objects ideal for doing the difficult work of separating good arguments from poor ones). Yet instead of engaging students in this difficult work, and being prepared to stand up for the very analytical methods we stand behind, we humanities scholars retreat to the bureaucracy of higher education, abandoning our duty while blaming other institutions for encouraging grade inflation.

The result, then, is both sustained grade inflation (which happens less in STEM subjects, where greater objectivity in problem solving produces greater objectivity and clarity in evaluation of students) and, accordingly, a sense that humanities courses are actually easier, mere opportunities to bolster one's GPA, or avoid learning the subject matter at hand as thoroughly as might be required to do well in a biology class.

Of course, the study of a literary text, for example, is extremely rigorous. Part of that rigor comes with the fact that, because there is no way of arriving scientifically at one distinct conclusion through testing or experimentation, one must be extra diligent in crafting a clear, logical, and plausible argument, and supporting it with sound textual evidence, historical evidence, evidence from secondary scholarship, all with attention to some degree of linguistic accuracy (one can't simply decide that the word 'car' is 'symbolic' of consumer culture, for example; or that 'to throw the ball' really maens 'to jump the fence,' at least not without building a logical and plausible argument for such a reading, such that if the reading isn't valid, the argument, however elegant, is unlikely to stand up, to peer review or otherwise). Naturally, while no humanities scholar can claim to have proven or falsified a literary question in the scientific sense, it is also the case that no literary scholar has ever had the luxury of relying solely on an empirical fact as a justification in itself, without erecting (usually in painstaking fashion) the scaffolding of an argument. How much easier it would be, many of us would say, were we able to simply point to something and say 'look, it's proven,' and move on.

Making sound arguments with strong evidence is much easier said than done in humanities study. If students were actually given the grades that they earn in humanities courses, it's likely that we would not think the study of the humanities is so easy, or so unrigorous. It's more likely that a normal skill or performance distribution would emerge, akin to those in STEM fields, where grades are more properly earned, and success or failure are more readily demonstrated and communicated. A nicely written but sophistic argument shouldn't garner a B+, nor should an incoherently expressed notion with incisive potential. An elaborate argument about Sophocles in an assignment on Shakespeare misses the point--to learn and argue something valid about Shakespeare--and yet in too many cases this type of slippage is rewarded in humanities courses. It's as if we're all going out of our way, idealistically, to see potential for progress and liberation everywhere, including in lousy or intentionally deceptive student work.

This is all to suggest that if teachers, professors, schools, and universities get serious about evaluating students properly in the humanities, without fear of the feeble arguments for 'a better grade' that students and parents too frequently launch without sufficient basis, we will not only be able to teach students better in these fields (and in their written and oral communication); we'll also do our part to work against the false impression that just because the evaluation of humanities work has been softer, the study of humanities objects themselves is somehow easier or less rigorous than that of other fields. This view lies at the heart of the so-called 'crisis in the humanities' today.

I look at my hands

2011-10-22T16:37:00.003Z

I'm working on a short deadline, on a talk I'm giving next week, and decided to take a break to read a little. In a New York Times essay by a mother whose infant son had been diagnosed with Tay-Sachs, and would die by the age of three, I read this line:

But today Ronan is alive and his breath smells like sweet rice.

Involuntarily I begin to hear myself breathing. I start huffing as my chest expands beyond the vertical plane of my downward-angled chin. My eyes become wet. I feel my lips pursing, my teeth locking, and my countenance turning sour. I pick up a hand, turning it over and back, studying it like foreign object, a baffling attribute: what sort of creature am I, are we? Why do I feel this?

I look up at Law, Labor, and Ideology in the Early American Republic, which is stacked on other books in my tiny office, and I am confused. This is the place where I come to work and to worry about matters pertaining to my future. The only thing I'm supposed to feel in here is crushing anxiety, profound self-centeredness, and the need to advance my professional career. And yet, despite how future-oriented I must be at this stage in my life, I have been moved by a story about a person who has no future at all.

In these moments I look at my hands, because they are the parts of me that I can see that remind me of my humanity. When I look at my hands I can also see my brother's hands when he was just born and, at three years old, I was deeply afraid of losing my relevance. And I can see my mother's hands, and my father's hands, my grandparents' hands, the hands of women I've loved; all the hands I've held in my hands. My favorite parts are the tops of the palms, just before the fingers take form, which are slightly puffy, and resemble pads or paws. I can look at my pads and see that this is precisely the type of creature I am: like every other creature that has once crawled: finite.

Fund My Study on Aliens?

2011-10-07T08:24:00.002Z

A fascinating op-ed by Notre Dame professor of philosophy Gary Gutting discusses a Penn State and NASA study about the potential outcomes--good, bad, or neutral--of making contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life forms. Gutting makes a good argument against such pursuits, noting the strong possibility (as he sees it) that extraterrestrials won't be the nice kind of aliens, but the nasty kind that may want to enslave us or use us, like lab rats, for research purposes. Gutting's essay prompts some important questions.

For one, what's the difference between doing a study on what aliens might be like and doing a study on what god might be like? Gutting draws the comparison between the question of the existence of a good or evil god and that of good or evil aliens, and frames the question of whether to pursue contact with aliens in terms of Pascal's wager about the existence and temperament of god. But the opening line of Gutting's essay is suspect, especially for a philosophy professor. He writes:

The probability that there is intelligent life somewhere other than earth increases as we discover more and more solar systems that seem capable of sustaining life.

Is this statement true? Whether it's god or aliens, to what extent can we calculate the probability of great unknowns? Within the sphere of human knowledge, which understands there to be certain conditions for producing life, knowing that there are worlds out there that could theoretically sustain life as we know it might convince us that this increases the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial life. But what if life exists other than we know it? Or, what exists out there that isn't life at all?

Tied to these questions is the smaller question of whether it makes sense to fund such studies that rely so substantially on things we already know enough to recognize as wild speculations. Would we fund a study aimed at determining whether we're watched over by a benevolent or evil god? Of course this comparison is flawed--while we have no evidence that would lead us to the existence of a supreme being of any sort, but do have some evidence that places beyond our planet could theoretically sustain life--the great leap from the mere existence of extraterrestrial life to assumption that such life would be not only particularly advanced, but also positively or negatively interested in humans, is not terribly different from leaping from the possibility of god (the question of god is unfalsifiable) to the notion that if there is a god, it would be an anthropomorphized one who has positive or negative interest in humans.

What is most interesting about Gutting's article, however, is the way he frames the relationship between technological advancement and cruelty. Gutting writes:

But we do know this: for the foreseeable future, contact with ETI would have to result from their coming here, which would in all likelihood mean that they far surpassed us technologically. They would be able to enslave us, hunt us as prey, torture us as objects of scientific experiments, or even exterminate us and leave no trace of our civilization. They would, in other words, be able to treat us as we treat animals — or as our technologically more advanced societies have often treated less advanced ones.

The argument here is difficult to deny: an observable characteristic of technological advancement is its ability to move us in various directions away from our humanity, whether in a transhumanist sense, or by replacing human labor with mechanized labor, or by replacing human contact with digital contact, or by replacing human reasoning with automated reasoning, etc. While technological advancement benefits humans in uncountable ways, it also comes with a potentially dark externality: a tendency to replace and sometimes overshadow humanity. Many argue rightly that we have the ability to humanize technology, rather than simply allowing technology to 'technologize' (cyborgify?) humanity; but as we progress technologically, will we be able to sustain our ability to retain humanity through technological advancement? This is a legitimate and important question. It raises the attendant question of whether, as the transhumanists have it, transcending our humanity somehow, or becoming something different, would be beneficial, or whether this would be the calamitous end of humanity as we know it.

One thing is sure: technological progress has no intrinsic ethics, and is only regulated by the ethical limitations we, as humans, impose upon it. Removing the human component from technological advancement means necessarily removing ethical guidance. From such a scenario, it is not at all difficult to understand why Gutting assumes that, because it would take a much more technologically advanced society to travel with facility between universes to make contact with humans on earth, and because technological advancement, conceived of in this extreme, bears no trace of what we understand as human ethical concerns, it's sensible to assume that such aliens would indeed be, in human terms, cruel, with a propensity to enslave us, hunt us, or use us experimentally to further their scientific and technological advancement beyond us. Though we possess, as humans, an understandable drive to transcend our human frailties, and see technology as a means of such transcendence, we should be careful about what we bargain for. Absent our humanity and the ethical concerns that come with it, we open ourselves up to the possibility of unthinkable worlds of suffering. What sense does it make to alienate our own species?

The Emptiness of 'Technology, Math, and Science'...and Poetry

2011-10-02T12:36:00.006Z

Yes, the title is deliberately provocative. The point of this essay is not to suggest that technology, math, and science are themselves empty (I'm not even sure what it would mean to suggest as much), but to note the sheer emptiness with which 'technology, math, and science' are invoked by politicians and media types as buzzwords and panaceas.

You get the sense that something must be wrong when the latest way to allay fears about unstable and failing economies, joblessness, social uprising, terrorist threats, and natural disasters is to deliver some kind of bromide about math and science. When Elmo appears on TV encouraging children to learn their math and science, or Obama pins the future of US global leadership on math and science, we're given the impression that math and science are kind of like comic-book superheroes, who, once adequately funded and foisted upon every child born in the naughties, will rid the world of all its problems, leading us into an enlightened future. Curiously, math and science are evoked by politicians with little more substance than the stating of the words themselves, such that these varied and complex fields of study have become the most trivial of talking points.

While math and science are popularly understood as panaceas for the world's problems, technology is understood more like a god, or a divine muse. Perhaps the dumbest article I've ever read appears in today's edition of the Independent. The ridiculous title, 'Facebook is Muse to Today's Young Poets,' draws a sweeping conclusion based on a single, uninformed quote from a woman named Judith Palmer, who the chair of something called the Poetry Society. Commenting on an increase in entries for a young persons' poetry contest sponsored by the Society, Palmer suggests offhandedly that...

Teenagers have always written poetry but I think there's something to do with the familiarity with Facebook and Twitter that gives a confidence in sharing your thoughts and feelings publicly.

Well, Judith, that's an interesting opinion. But if I were a decently responsible journalist interested in writing about something other than hideous platitudes, I wouldn't take such an uninformed opinion as a basis to assert, as the article's author Jonathan Owen has, that...

Modern technology, rather than literary history, is fueling an upsurge in poetry.

Nor would I be pleased if my editors took Palmer's offhanded comment to draw the entirely fallacious and unsupported conclusion, stated in the kicker, that...

Record number of entries to competition shows new generation finding inspiration in technology.

In fact, the 'record number of entries' could plausibly be the result of any number of things in addition to or instead of the existence of Facebook and Twitter, random proxies here for 'technology.'

What's going on here, of course, is that a journalist has decided to take an unsupported opinion and convert it into a mask of support for a causal link between an increase in applicants to a poetry contest and the 'muse' of technology. Why, I ask, would anyone draw such an arbitrary and absurd conclusion, and treat it as fact? Certainly it's possible that Facebook and Twitter could be making young people more comfortable with sharing their poetry (though I'm, not surprisingly, skeptical); but there is absolutely no demonstration in the article that this is true, no attempt whatsoever to demonstrate a link (as opposed to simply declaring one) between the increase in poetry submissions this year and Facebook and Twitter. Questions abound: why only an increase this year when Facebook and Twitter have been around for years? Is the quality of the submissions higher overall? What are the submission numbers over the last 10 years, and is this year an outlier? Beyond these, Owen's article happily cites 'only one' young poet who cites a 'classic poet' as a poetic inspiration (she cites John Donne, ha); yet Owen includes precisely zero quotes from young poets who entered the contest and cited Facebook or Twitter as their muses. If Facebook and Twitter have so revolutionized the poetry contest, surely Palmer and Owen could have found at least one or two quotes from contestants who were inspired by social media? No? So then, last I checked, my superb math and science education enables me to observe that 'only one' is actually a greater quantity than ZERO.

This is just another instance of a reflexive obsession with the likes of 'technology,' which stands in most pathetically for first-grade-level descriptors such as 'good' or 'nice.' Not only is this misleading, shoddy, irresponsible journalism; it's also an example of, in my estimation, one of the biggest contributions to our problems (and not a story about one of the solutions): people are so bad at basic literacy, textual analysis, and reasoning that we're happy to draw laughably false conclusions based on allusion, suggestion, and coincidence. For example, it's a wonderful coincidence that an article lauding the generalized, blanket greatness of technology--even in the arcane sphere of poetry--stands itself as an example of how not technology, but a better understanding of text would have solved the interpretive problem at hand. I need not get into the specifics, I hope, of the grave dangers of mis-or un-guided scientific or technological pursuit; but I will close with a warning: once something, however important, becomes reduced to a daily buzzword in the mouths of politicians and journalists, it's time to take a closer look between the lines.

Three Arguments Against The Death Penalty, Which Is An Abomination

2011-09-23T14:14:00.008Z

The death penalty figures to become a prominent issue in US national politics in the months to come, thanks to two events: the very probably wrongful execution of Troy Davis in Georgia (US), despite heaps of evidence that tarnishes the reliability of his conviction, and the boistrously positive (and highly publicized) reaction of a conservative audience to Texas Governor and leading Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry's boasting, during a debate, that his Texas under his governorship executed 234 people. Though some people will tell you that the death penalty has a deterrent effect on murder rates, and others will tell you it actually increases murder rates, there is a strong case to be made that these data are, in either direction, reliant upon too many assumptions to be conclusive. It makes sense, therefore, to consider other, more powerful reasons beyond the utilitarian reductionism of deterrence measurments. Below are a few arguments against the death penality, which is one of the most repulsive abominations of the modern world, and should be ended immediately, unequivocally, and without remorse.

1) Constitutional. Shortsighted people, including many judges, will often argue that there is not enough precedent available for us to understand the death penalty as a Federal issue. They argue instead that it's the right of states to decide whether to have the death penalty or not (hence, some do and some do not). Of course there is constitutional-law merit to this argument; but it's not the most valid argument, even along constitutional lines. For one, before any challenge to the constitutionality of a Federal law banning the death penality throughout the US, it's of course well within the constitutional remit of Congress to legislate such a law (which means constitutionality is already a weak excuse for Federal government inaction on this issue).

But beyond this, the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution does explicitly prohibit 'cruel and unusual punishment' (and the Supreme Court has subsequently ruled that this also applies to the states). The phrase 'cruel and unusual punishment, taken from the English Bill of Rights of 1689, has traditionally referred to brutal executions like disembowelment or boiling to death, for example. Today, we assume that execution by electric chair and lethal injection are neither cruel nor unusual. By medeival standards, that's a fair assumption. By contemporary standards, we have already begun to phase out the electric chair because of its brutality. Beyond this, however, lies the very legitimate question of whether 'cruel and unusual' ought only to apply to matters of physical or sensory pain. Is it not both cruel and unusual to systematically execute a human being, even (and perhaps especially) by subjecting them to the ultimate authority of the state, strapping them down to a bed, and pronouncing that they, in such a position, will be executed? Peter Moskos, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, has recently caused a stir by proffering the notion that, given the choice, one would be more likely to accept five lashes with a cane (a la Singapore) than to endure five years in prison. A fundamental aspect of this logic is that the most painful punishment is not necessarily the most cruel. Applied crossways to the logic that underpins our understanding of 'cruel and unusual' as a matter of physical pain, it would be hard for a reasonable person to deny two things: one, the cruelest punishment is death (hence, 'upon pain of death'); two, though a caning or a beating cause more physical pain, theoretically, than a lethal injection, the horrific nature of systematic execution--the pain of death--has as much to do with the fact of execution itself as the means by which the execution is carried out. If boiling to death is cruel and unusual because of the physical pain and duress it causes, it is also cruel and unusual because of the finality of that pain, as well as the anticipation that one's last living moments will be spent suffering. Simply because the physical pain is reduced in more 'humane' means of execution, should we then disregard the cruelty of the very act of putting to death?

2) Limitations on the powers of the state. By assuming that the state has the sovereignty to execute one of its citizens, we put more faith in the state and its competence than perhaps we'd like to believe. Conservatives frequently support the death penalty from 'tough on crime,' religious, or retributive justice standpoints; but how do conservatives square placing the ultimate authority--the authority to execute--in the hands of the state while denying that the state should have much authority otherwise? What does it mean to suggest that the state has the right to kill citizens, but not provide them with a health insurance option; to execute, but not to levy taxes on carbon emissions; to carry out 'final justice,' but not to regulate the corporate consumption of natural resources? If there's one power with which we ought not to entrust the government, it's the systematic execution of its citizens. Once execution happens, there is of course no turning back. And there are plenty of instances in which the government gets it wrong.

3) The function of the law. Some believe that the function of the law is to punish people. Others believe it is to carry out revenge or provide retribution (these first two beliefs often go hand in hand). Still others believe that the law can provide parameters for the rehabilitation of criminals. All of these positions are seriously flawed, and lead to significant problems in the criminal justice system. For one, the medieval-religious notion of punitive or retributive justice lends us to make emotional and irrational decisions about crime.

In the case of the death penalty, such views feed bloodlust and an archaic 'eye for an eye' mentality. We condemn these kinds of measures when they take place abroad, in countries we presume to be inferior and barbaric: how can death by stoning persist in Iran or Saudi Arabia, canings in Singapore, or torture in China? Yet, when we apprehend crime (especially violent crime) on our own soil, we direct our attention not to the suffering of the victims of crimes and their families, but to the desire that the criminal suffer as payback (instead of five lashes, five years of sanctioned beatings and rape in US prisons...but 'they deserve it,' we say). The same mentality drives the notion, commonly held by USonians, that if you take a life, you deserve to have your own life taken from you (or you 'forfeit your right to live')--an eye for an eye. This is sometimes self-righteous religiosity (Biblical or Sharia approaches to criminal justice), but it's also religious self-righteousness--the believe that we can and should be arbiters of justice.

The fact is, we are not arbiters of justice, but generally well meaning people who want to keep those who harm others off the streets and out of the way of those who abide by the law and play fair. When you strip away our emotional responses to crime, what's left is the general sentiment that we just don't want anyone to hurt us, steal from us, kill us, etc. We therefore create a justice system not to deliver final justice or judgment, nor to take retribution into the hands of the state on behalf of the wronged, but to keep one another safe by separating those who do criminal harm from those who do not. Taken this way, the death penalty, and all the costs it entails to make sure it's done with adequate due process (even though this is often not even enough to assure accuracy and rightful convictions), is not worth the cost of locking criminals up, making them work in the process to earn their keep until they've demonstrated an ability to rejoin broader society without criminally harming others.

The reasons for abolishing the death penalty are sensible and manifold, but they are not easy to digest when we take emotional and archaic approaches to criminal justice. We ought to be beyond such solutions as state-sponsored execution; and until we are, we fall well short of the degree of civilization whose lack we decry in our foreign enemies, and whose benefits we tout for ourselves as a supposed global exemplar.

Cut Now, Think Later: An Undiscussed Problem

2011-08-20T12:50:00.005Z

It's no secret that in a struggling or contracting economy, people want government to scale back on spending, and government responds, sometimes rightfully, with an assessment of which services and spending items are absolutely necessary and useful, and which are frivolous. In the present situation, in which government has balanced its budget irresponsibly, and racked up a not-so-healthy amount of debt in the process, calls for a no-frills assessment of spending and spending priorities are especially relevant. And on top of these circumstances, beyond the general, bipartisan understanding that the US government needs to do a better job of maintaining its finances, whether by reducing spending, closing tax loopholes and raising taxes, or some combination of the two, conservatives and Republicans have almost monolithically taken the 'tea party' position that we need to cut, cut, and cut some more. No tax increases, just cuts.

There are many, frequently discussed problems with this mentality: it's economically nonsensical, it directly contributes to job reduction, it places an unreasonable burden of 'sacrifice' on the lower and middle classes, and, given the unyielding nature of its proponents, it has put in jeopardy the full faith and credit of the US government. You might wholly disagree with PMB's assessments here, but you've certainly heard or read about these issues, and their surrounding debates.

What no one seems to be discussing, however, is a separate set of unforeseen consequences of a cut now, think later approach to spending cuts.

What PMB is talking about here, more explicitly, is crude valuation, the process by which we decide whether something is worth it or not. With a cut now, think later approach, we'll surely take a hasty, oversimplified approach to valuation. In higher education, this type of hasty approach takes the predictable turn of funding science, technology, math, and engineering programs (with each of these being construed in such blanket, general terms as to be entirely useless in the valuation process), and cutting the arts and humanities (incidentally, an unintended consequence of this policy in Britain has been an oversupply of workers in these fields, contributing to unemployment rates for many STEM-field graduates being higher than those of graduates in other fields). In fiscal policy, the equivalent of these hastily designated mainstays is perhaps defense spending, along with some science and medical institutes (the NIH, for example); but more or less everything else, for the rabid budget-cutters, is 'on the chopping block' (from large and expensive programs like social security and Medicare to tiny and inexpensive ones like NPR, the NEA, and the NEH).

The problem with making the same old assumptions about what's a staple and what isn't, or what's useful and what's not, especially when we have the economic gun pressed to our heads (or when we drum up that kind of hyperbolic reaction to our current economic difficulties), is that we can't predict what our future will hold, and what we'll need to address its challenges. We can't predict whether tearing down the National Endowment for the Humanities, perhaps the only organization with any Federal advocacy influence for nearly half of what we esteem as 'the liberal arts and sciences,' will deal a final blow to the teaching and learning of foreign languages in the US in an era of globalization. We can't predict whether de-funding NASA will deprive us of future morale-boosting (and residual-economic-benefit-producing) endeavors, like landing on the moon, or sending commercial aircraft beyond the atmosphere. These kinds of things can sound ridiculous, but, as Gregory Petsko, professor of biochemistry at Brandeis, has so convincingly argued, it also seemed ridiculous to continue funding virology programs after we figured out vaccines but before HIV came around, just at it seemed ridiculous to think that anyone would need to know anything about Arabic or cultures of the Middle East before September 11, 2001.

Time For Welfare

2011-08-16T10:11:00.005Z

There are strong arguments to be made for having a smaller government versus a larger one, but these arguments are rarely made, even, and perhaps especially, among Republicans who want smaller government.

Libertarians argue powerfully for the virtues of a small government that allows for the least possible interference in the lives of individual citizens going about their business freely. They argue that government is, as James Madison suggested ('If Men were Angels, no Government would be necessary'), a necessary evil, one that is best kept on as small a scale as possible, and only intervenes in the lives of citizens in order to protect the unbridled self-interest of one against that of another: to provide baseline order for the State of Nature such that individuals cannot trample upon the Natural Rights of others.

Republicans, on the other hand, typically skip the nuts and bolts of the libertarian argument in order to arrive at a general understanding that government is bad. This is manifested frequently in the talking point 'government ruins everything,' a sibling of 'the private sector does everything better than the government,' and 'when was the last time the government did something well' (you get the picture). As Milton Friedman once said, 'If you put the Federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in five years there'd be a shortage of sand.'

Republicans use this partially developed argument to justify a wider ideology, that which proclaims that because government is bad, less government is good. As you can see, this is blatantly tautological: the assumption that government is bad, that it's worse at solving certain problems than the private sector, and that it poses a greater threat to liberty than certain institutions within the private sector, is rarely substantiated. This assumption that government is bad is then taken by Republicans as the foundational reason for arguing that the absence of government is good. The tautology of this thinking is actually put into practice via the Republican political strategy of 'starving the beast': by fighting to cut government revenues and slash government funding, programs, and provisions, Republicans limit the effectiveness of the government in doing the jobs we assign it, thereby producing many of the very ill effects, inefficiencies, and inadequacies that constitute the Republican charge against government. This process is further complicated by the 'soft' but influential relationship between individuals in government and the private sector: the blame for problems created by and in the private sector can be easily deferred to the government, since the government is ultimately pushed (via lobbying and financial contributions) in many cases to do the bidding of powerful private-sector interests. Republicans can plausibly blame the mortgage crisis, for example, on government policies to get more Americans to own their own homes than was ever reasonable, despite the fact that such a policy was precisely what the private-sector real estate and lending lobbies asked for.

That background aside, the purpose of this article is to address another Republican strategy aimed at dismantling and discouraging the government's role in providing unemployment and welfare benefits to underserved (not undeserved) Americans.

When we engage in partisan debates about welfare, we hear two basic positions. Democrats argue that the government should play a leading role in providing for society's poor, given the lack of systematic, private-sector care for the poor. They argue that individual charitable contributions aren't enough, because individuals often don't donate their charity dollars efficiently or systematically. Republicans argue that private and faith-based charitable endeavors are not just adequate, but more effective than government welfare and social support programs. For Republicans, government handouts only breed laziness and dependence on more government handouts.

In a time of high unemployment and plenty of civil unrest, it's time to come to terms with a few things, and then reframe the welfare debate.

For one, we must realize that, while many things are indeed better handled by the private sector, some kinds of things are better left to government. These things usually involve systematizing something required on a large and relatively uniform scale. Regulating industries like air travel and food, for example, are jobs for which the profit incentive isn't always the most efficient way to ensure safety. Basic environmental protection (and resource protection), as well, is something that private companies will fail to do, such that government agencies are well positioned to provide guidelines and enforcement to make sure the water tables are toxin-free, or a company can't dump biohazardous materials in a local park. Government need not control all aspects of these endeavors; but government is the best entity to take the lead on safety and regulation where other entities fail to do so, to the detriment of the people.

Providing systematic welfare is another one of these tasks that is best led by government. The profit motive does not provide incentive to provide for those who, by the very definition of their neediness, have already fallen through the system. Further, a private-sector meritocracy is a fine way to distribute resources to a point; but it provides no guidelines whatsoever for tending to the baseline needs of individuals who, for lack of a better way of putting it, 'lose.' Because very few would be so callous as to suggest that the 'losers' in such a system should simply wither away and die--that they somehow deserve it because they are either incapable or lazy--it makes sense to develop systematic charitable solutions for the inevitable problem of caring for those who, for whatever circumstances, fail to care adequately for themselves. This is perhaps the sine qua non of a civilization, a civil society. And no matter how many church groups and individual philanthropists we have to help the needy and contribute charitable funds, such a slapdash method does not reach everyone. More importantly, however, it does not provide the framework for everyone who needs to be reach to gain clear-cut access to assistance. The Republican-hijacked virtue of self-reliance is jeopardized when needy individuals, without internet access or even a phone book (if they still make those), have no clear-cut, systematized, widely located place they can go for help in the first instance.

At the same time, we need to understand that government assistance doesn't have to come in the form of handouts. It's perfectly reasonable to require needy individuals who are physically and mentally capable to work for their welfare checks, for example, by cleaning up and organizing within their communities. And for those who are not capable--the mentally ill, the chronically sick, for example--how could anyone dare say that government provisions are only making these people 'lazy,' or that their dependence comes form government, rather than personal circumstances, disability, illness, etc.?

A crucial mark of a truly rich and advanced society is the ability to care for its poorest citizens. Anything less than that isn't civilization.

On 'Storytelling Science': How To Communicate Science To The Lay Public

2011-07-31T10:02:00.008Z

PMB has been fortunate to attend several talks in a series at Oxford University called 'Storytelling Science,' the premise of which is that scientists give 30-minute science talks, usually about an aspect of their own research, pitched to a general audience. After each talk, the audience is encouraged to ask questions from a variety of viewpoints (lay and specialist alike).

The series is great for a number of reasons, not least of which is that, even among those whose delivery or presentation is lacking, virtually every talk covers material that is absolutely fascinating. And, given the composition of the audience, the talks seem to be engaging for specialists who can relate to the material on a more sophisticated level, specialist academics in non-science fields, and generalists and nonacademics as well. Beyond the immediate benefits of the talks, communicating science concepts and research is important because...science concepts and research are often important (as is generating public interest in science, and encouraging youth to engage with science)! Further, when done well, the process of demystifying any kind of specialist knowledge for non-specialists is a rewarding exercise unto itself. For these reasons PMB is an avid supporter of the Storytelling Science series, and other endeavors like it.

Nonetheless, after hearing a number of 'generalist' science talks, PMB has a few observations, and some advice, for scientists engaged in public outreach projects like Storytelling Science.

Consider, firstly, the following phrases (as quoted), used recurrently by scientists at Storytelling Science talks, and beyond:

'Taking a skeptical view--because that's what scientists are, we're paid skeptics...'

'As a scientist I have an analytical mind.'

'And this part is quite technical--it's science, so it's quite difficult...'

'As a scientist it's often quite difficult to explain to people what I do.'

This is just a small sample of comments, the likes of which many of you will have heard before. Generally, comments of this nature presuppose several things about science and scientists, including: scientists, especially if not exclusively, are skeptical, analytical, work with more intrinsically difficult material than do non-scientists, and work with material that is inherently more difficult to explain than that of non-scientists.

There is considerable truth in all of these assumptions; however, all of these assumptions also contain a great deal of falsehood, and not without tinges of condescension and self-satisfied mystification. Put simply, when a scientist makes comments like those listed above, it's not without some genuine and wholly innocent sense that scientists are special people, and science is the work of the intellectual equivalent of the elect, work that is above and beyond non-scientists. Further complicating this innocent but not innocuous belief is the fact that it often takes the form of genuine self-deprecation. 'Nerd,' and, especially, 'geek,' are badges of honor, proudly and sometimes smugly worn, almost always self-assigned, yet proudly passed off as soft commentary on one's allegedly antisocial preoccupation with the the rigorously technical. A 'geek' interrupts your unscientific conversation with a snippet of specialized, peer-reviewed knowledge, then excuses himself as a geek, someone whose social awkwardness in the given moment is but a small price to pay for intellectual superiority (at least, that's the sine qua non of geekdom).

Sometimes, with respect to the complex economics of scientist identity, PMB protesteth too much, and he knows it. On one end of the scientist identity spectrum is certainly the simple sense that after amassing tons of detailed, technical knowledge, the task of teaching a non-specialist seems especially daunting. In the middle is the sense that without science there can be no skepticism, no questioning of the apparent and the given, and no use of 'scientific thinking' by non-scientists outside the realm of 'doing science.' On the extreme end of smugness is the belief that scientists are, as such, simply smarter than everyone else, and are, as such, humanity's last hope.

For the purposes of science communication, wherever one sits along this spectrum, the first step toward demystification of science research and concepts--the first step toward good communication to the lay audience--is a genuine belief that your audience is capable of understanding what it is you want to say. Thus, the most important thing for good science communication is the purging of one's mind of all of these myths about the supreme difficulty of science and the heightened understanding of scientists. PMB has seen excellent scientists do just this, opening up to a generalist audience aspects of fascinating scientific research that otherwise might not have seen the light of day (at least, beyond regular readers of specialist science journals).

The fact is, all specialist knowledge is difficult to explain to non-specialist audiences (the literary scholars reading this might well have experienced the difficulty of talking to a lay audience about a novel, even, and maybe even especially, if all members of the lay audience have read the novel). Just as well, of course, no one will be able to teach the sum of specialist understanding to a non-specialist in a 30-minute talk, whatever the subject matter. But the task of the specialist in non-specialist communication is not to understand such communication as 'dumbing down' and proceed from there, but to maintain in the talk a strong sense of the real complexity of the topic while framing that complexity in non-jargon or non-specialist terms--to communicate in clear and compelling metaphor, in other words. The best Storytelling Science talks use metaphor and analogy to bring the minute to the level of the general without losing too much complexity, just as the best literary generalist talks bring the esoteric and abstract to the level of the concrete without losing too much complexity. The material itself--be it a convoluted process at the intracellular level, or an explanation of why sometimes plagiarism isn't plagiarism--is not the thing. The thing is giving enough credit to your audience that you expect them to understand, and enough credit to yourself that you can understand your own research enough on a conceptual level to teach it without falling back on the specialisms--the jargon, the notation, etc.--that make what you do sound to the layperson a lot harder and more intimidating than it really is. This is absolutely central to the art of storytelling, which, despite its childhood connotations, ain't as easy as it sounds.

Addendum: It's a shame that colleagues in literature departments haven't come up with a parallel lecture series called something like 'Storytelling Stories,' given the difficulty and awkwardness with which most of us seem to discuss our work with non-specialists.

Why PMB Hates Corporations

2011-07-21T13:36:00.004Z

PMB hates corporations. Usually when someone says 'I hate corporations,' the presumption is that such hatred is fueled or animated by a problem with red-in-tooth-and-claw capitalism, or a distaste for profiteering, or some general, amorphous leftyish hippie sentimentalism of the sort you'd encounter at music festivals. Down with the man, man.

It's not unreasonable to criticize corporations--especially the largest and most unfeeling of them--for putting profit ahead of people, or for behaving in some cases like reckless authoritarians, or for purchasing intimate access to governors and policymakers that the rest of us can't afford. But surely these are primarily the faults of large corporations like Wal Mart and Google, not small businesses or medium-sized manufacturers who provide us with access to so many comforts and commodities.

But PMB doesn't just hate large corporations. PMB hates corporations in general. Because one of the greatest constants of corporations, large and small, domestic and international, for-profit and nonprofit virtually alike, is that they set the standards for workplace culture; and 'workplace culture' is really just a euphemism for 'controlling as much of your entire life as is humanly or legally possible.'

And this goes beyond the old 'we'll pay for your Blackberry!' (subtext: we expect you to check and respond to e-mail 24 hours/day); this includes inexcusably invasive policies even before they hire you. All of which is nothing, mind you, compared to the least-questioned and arguably most-oppressive facet of modern industrial society: the fact that working adults have to report to an office every day, remain there all day, and, regardless of productivity, rely on maybe two or three weeks in a given year during which we might be 'excused' by our in loco parentis employers to 'go on vacation' (the explicit purpose of which, mind you, is not so much to enjoy your life as it is to 'refresh' yourself for the work you have when you return).

The problem here isn't that societies require work and productivity to grow and provide for everyone; so the argument here is not necessarily that we should be able to work less. It's just that, when we become grownups, we should be able to work like grownups, on deadlines, but without being rounded up into a workplace whose 'culture' is primarily oppressive, stifling, Orwellian, insufferable, and, in many cases, completely unnecessary. With the technology that we have--cheap wireless networks, teleconferencing, the good ol' fashioned telephone, transportation devices like the subway, the bicycle, the bus, and the automobile, and the ever-important coffee shop, many of us don't need an office to report to in order to get our work done. And when we need to have meetings (as opposed to when a critical mass of people occupying an office, bored out of their minds, decides that its time to have a meeting because there's nothing better to do), can't we initiate and coordinate them ourselves, between ourselves and our colleagues? Shouldn't we just abandon this whole notion of reporting to the office like a child reports to homeroom every morning on a school day?

This isn't exactly a novel idea--Jason Fried, of a web-based company called 37signals, gave a TED talk about it. Probably most people reading this have thought, many times over, that if only they didn't have their day at the office compartmentalized into 30-minute bits, with people asking for this and that simply because they're there and you're there and this is how the 'workplace culture' works, they could actually get some work done. Certainly when corporations advertise jobs with statements indicating preference for 'motivated' individuals, 'self-starters,' with 'the ability to work independently,' etc., they're not envisioning an employee who needs a boss sipping coffee in the next room (or cubicle; or open space) to the left occasionally checking in, micromanaging, or simply working independently a few feet away from you...for what?

Yes, some people will argue that 'if I didn't have an office with set work hours, I wouldn't have separation between my work life and my life life.' To this PMB would say that if you honestly think about the idea of compartmentalizing your 'work life' and 'life life,' you'd be depressed to find out that your 'work life' takes up so much of the sum total of your life that sectioning off your 'life life' is just kind of pathetic. A better approach, as far as PMB is concerned, would be to admit that spending much of our lives working can actually be very natural and very fulfilling, just not under the conditions that presently constitute 'working' in a corporate or corporate-influenced environment. Time after time after time we report higher levels of satisfaction from doing our work in a self-directed manner, and, accordingly, feeling some sense of ownership over it. Rather than letting an employer decide for you how to compartmentalize your life and on what terms and in what environment to complete your work, why not control it yourself? On the surface, it might be easier to accept the readymade boundaries handed you, just as drawing new boundaries between work and leisure might be harder to do at first when the artifice of the workplace is taken away; but certainly we want more agency over our lives and our schedules, not less.

It seems what set out to be a screed against the corporate influence over workplace culture has turned out to be a general condemnation of workplace culture itself. Though we shouldn't forget that corporate interests are indeed pushing for greater control over employees' lives, even before they become employees. Imagine, for a moment, living in a society in which your government told you where to be at what time every day; that your government compiled files of your internet activity, text messages, and photos, and used them to evaluate your social worth; that your government required you to piss in a cup every month to screen you for drug use; that your government told you when you could and couldn't leave the country, go the beach, or spend a few hours in the afternoon in the park with your children; that your government controls who you buy health insurance from, and which doctors you're allowed to see. It's probably not too difficult to imagine, actually, if you simply replace the word 'government' with 'employer.'

When Did Conservatives Become So Thin-Skinned?

2011-07-03T16:30:00.004Z

I used to have a lot of respect for American conservatism. There was a time, in my lifetime, when it seemed like the thing that most riled a conservative was victimhood. Conservatives couldn't stand the idea of someone taking a welfare check instead of getting a job, someone claiming exceptional treatment because of their race or ethnicity, or someone wanting clemency for crimes committed. You didn't have to agree with the conservative take on these issues--that welfare 'handouts' only breed idleness, racial or ethnic discrimination is a thing of the past, and justice should be swift and retributive--in order to respect the basic worldview that underlies these positions: we should all take personal responsibility for ourselves, our wellbeing, and our actions.

And before my lifetime, when notable conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly railed against the Equal Rights Amendment out of fear that such a law might preclude our ability to 'deny a homosexual the right to teach in the schools, or to adopt children,'you could kind of respect conservatives for standing tall on their worldviews, however repulsive they sometimes were. Schlafly fought against equal rights for women with a force and vitality that make Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann look like PBS telethon hosts on a slow night. You get the sense that if Facebook were around in ol' Phyllis' heyday, her wall wouldn't exactly be filled with passive-aggressive and sometimes weepy e-scrawlings amounting to 'why is errybody always pickin on me (and Bristol).'

The fact is, at some point, conservatives started conceiving of themselves as that which they've always loathed: victims.

It was most notable for me as an undergraduate. At the university, the caucasian majority, regardless of political orientation, was generally bright and openminded, and, even if at times lacking in understanding of particular histories that might make certain kinds of jokes or comments inappropriate or even racist, was not a racist bunch. Our generation came of age in a political and legal environment that had long since granted equal rights and equal treatment under law to all people (except homosexuals), regardless of race or creed. So, I gather, it was often difficult for bunches of smart, mostly well meaning white kids who harbored no conscious prejudice to square the fact that in the university environment, there were special offices, clubs, resources, scholarships, etc. for seemingly everyone but them. Such were the preconditions for the conservative fight against multiculturalism: white conservatives felt simultaneously neglected and deracinated, and minority conservatives were rightfully sick and tired of being placed in identity boxes, or looked at askance, as though they only managed success in the admissions tournament because they got some kind of preferential treatment or racial boost as an historical corrective. Both groups of conservatives had reasonable claims against the multiculturalist agenda: no one likes to be blanco anymore than s/he likes to be reduced to any color at all. So a generation of young conservatives, mostly white, mostly of educated and privileged classes, began thinking of themselves as victims.

On top of this notion of 'white victimhood' that arose in large part, as I see it, as a reaction to the rise of multiculturalism, conservatives came to understand, with some validity, that, at least in the academy, in Hollywood, and in the establishment media, their politics were also out of fashion (owning Wall Street, the Chamber of Commerce, and most of the Supreme Court apparently wasn't enough). Left-leaning professors challenged the assumed supremacy of neocapitalism, the idea of American exceptionalism, the myth of the 'welfare queen,' and the profit motive in healthcare. Movies and sitcoms mocked Reaganites as stodgy, dorky, and sexually inept. And the major media outlets--network news and big urban papers like the New York Times--were crawling with skinny-tied sophisticates who thought and ridiculed liberally. So conservatives took a page out of the liberals' playbook, further playing up their marginalization, their victimhood.

Today, conservatives are perhaps our whiniest victims. Over at Brainstorm, Naomi Schaefer Riley succumbs to verbal hyperventilation over the fact that the liberal Rebecca Mead--for Riley, representing 'the attitude of the establishment' [!!!!!!!!]--had the nerve to write snidely about Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton for buying up a bunch of American art and displaying it in Arkansas. Riley's problem boils down to the fact that the patriotic Alice Walton, who has 'never...considered collecting anything but American art,' might vaguely stand in for conservatism, and the 'establishment' liberal Mead (nevermind Riley's Harvard education) has taken a mild shot at Walton and the company she represents. So what? Aside: between Rebecca Mead--whom you've probably never heard of--and Wal-Mart, who represents the establishment, again?

Meanwhile, as congressional conservatives fight to maintain a series of corporate tax loopholes, among them one that enables tax breaks for the corporate use of private jets, the apparent victimization of those who occupy the world of corporate private jetting has interrupted discussions about how the country might try to pull itself out from under its crushing debt.

And let's not forget about new author of Not Afraid of Life, Bristol Palin, who fell victim recently to a Bill Maher joke about her prudish explanation of how she 'accidentally' got black-out drunk on wine coolers (which she didn't know contained alcohol) and conceived a child with her boyfriend. Bristol, who is evidently mature enough to have a sexual relationship and a child and a memoir, is so much the victim that Fox News brought on a psychiatrist to remote-analyze Maher for mental illness.

Arguably, today's conservative worldview necessarily comes with an orientation toward victimhood, or the feeling of being constantly embattled. The Phyllis Schlaflys and Richard Nixons--the types that weren't too prudish to grab you by the balls and squeeze if it meant winning the issue--have been replaced by a bunch of big softies. It's as if they're compensating for something when they take photo ops with large rifles. It's as if the world is continually moving on, and the progress has got them down.

Maid in Manhattan: How PMB Would Turn the Tables on DSK

2011-07-02T10:23:00.004Z

By now we all know about former IMF head and leading French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn's alleged sexual assault of a New York hotel maid. Predictably, DSK's defense team has begun to dig up information about the maid's past that is designed to call her credibility (and, transitively, the credibility of her accusation) into question. In this disheartening article in the NYTimes, which details the apparent 'collapse' of the prosecution's case against DSK, the maid and alleged victim of sexual assault is accused of having a drug-dealer boyfriend, being connected with charges of money laundering and drug dealing, and discussing with a criminal the potential remunerative benefits of pursuing a case against DSK the day after the incident between DSK and the maid took place (that a sexual encounter took place between the two is not in dispute; the nature of that encounter is). Among other things, these bits of information would, indeed, seem to endanger the maid's case against her alleged assailant, striking at the heart of her credibility.

Well, actually, not really.

The fact is, this case is about more than the conventional problem of he said/she said in cases of rape and sexual assault. This case is a prime example of one of the most prevalent and under-acknowledged injustices in the US and similarly developed countries: the widespread exploitation, sexual and otherwise, of female asylum seekers, illegal or conditional immigrants, etc. And the under-acknowledgement of this problem is so systematically ingrained that what would be its starkest manifestation in the internationally prominent DSK case--the fact that the accuser is a documented Guinean asylum-seeker in the US--has been used by DSK's defense team, and not the prosecution, to damage the maid's credibility. The NYTimes' coverage of this aspect of the story plays right into the hands of DSK's defense, treating information about the maid's asylum application as a blow to her credibility (in light of inconsistencies between the text of her application and subsequent comments she made to police after the DSK affair about her asylum bid). Instead, both the prosecution and the media need to acknowledge the very real circumstances of disenfranchisement faced by female asylum seekers and trafficked and illegal immigrants.

We know that DSK's accuser may have lied about some of the details of her past and her asylum bid to authorities, may affiliate with a drug dealer, and may have actually tried to benefit financially from her accusation against DSK.

We also know, however, that many women seeking asylum, a better life, etc. in countries like the US come from places where police and other authorities are corrupt and untrustworthy. Many women facing harsh circumstances in their former countries, many of them places where women are systematically raped, tortured, sold, enslaved, disenfranchised, etc., will lie and withhold information in order to avoid being deported back to harsh circumstances.

Likewise, many such women have dark pasts and drug-dealer boyfriends, and will have latched onto powerful and exploitative figures thinking it a means to get out or get away (as many places in the world are largely controlled by people like drug dealers). Many will have tolerated and endured sexual abuse from the men who traffic them, bring them to the US, keep them, look after them, etc. Many will have been willing to go through hell for the prospect of a new life.

And many women who have been systematically disenfranchised, both home and abroad in the US--women who have had to live and survive by their wiles and sometimes by their bodies--will certainly turn to opportunism when they are exploited by rich and powerful men. Would you blame them?

The point here is that, even if not much or all of this applies directly to DSK's maid (though, from what we do know about her, an asylum seeker, she fits the profile pretty damn well), the kind of behavior that journalists and defense attorneys are calling damaging to the maid's credibility is actually very common and very justifiable behavior for women in like circumstances of disenfranchisement, or existence outside the protection of the law. When such women have their circumstances of poverty and desperation leveraged against them for sex by exploitative men, the lying, equivocation, unsavory liaisons, and even opportunism are all not just predictable, but justifiable pasts and modes of behavior. Rather than treating this reality like a character assessment in a vacuum, we need to consider it within the broader context of the systematic and widespread exploitation and sexual abuse of women in harsh circumstances by predatory men who know that their victims would rather endure abuse in the US than seek legal recourse, risking deportation, imprisonment, further threats and abuse, etc.

And this is something the 'near-collapsing' prosecution needs to take into serious account.

'Your an Idiot': Why Literacy Standards Need To Change

2011-05-30T12:41:00.003Z

After receiving the link from several friends, PMB has had the pleasure of viewing this, a depressing but hilarious blog that archives Facebook responses to articles from The Onion from people who are apparently taking the Onion articles as real news. The most prevalent example is a series of Facebook posts calling for Americans to repent, lamenting the fake Onion headline 'Planned Parenthood Opens $8 Billon Abortionplex' (one of these includes a further lamentation over the comic material in the Onion article: 'They will give pedicures to the moms after their abortion! Federally funded and all! So sad!!!!').

Most of the people PMB comes across--people who are generally very educated, well informed, and operate with high levels of literacy--react the same way to the (it must be said again) absolutely hilarious inability of the Facebook posters to comprehend that The Onion is a comic publication for entertainment purposes, and its 'news' is not real news, but satirical fiction about news. We tend to laugh at first, and then, after a little reflection, deem this misapprehension a very sad phenomenon. We think it's generally sad that there are 'stupid people' out there; that, in the abstract sense, 'people are stupid.' We might blame failed education systems, or the peurility of popular culture, or socioeconomic disparity, or, crudely, some 'inherent' inequality of aptitude among humans. In any case, there's something depressing about the fact that these people didn't get the joke.

What not getting the joke boils down to in this case, however, is not necessarily individual aptitude, pop culture, or lack of educational opportunity, but rather a misplaced educational focus, along with a horrifically dated understanding of what literacy really means in the 21st-century, industrialized world.

It's not that we're not aware of multiple layers and types of literacy. That someone could read an Onion article as a serious news peice shows potential deficits in several of these layers and types. Assuming a baseline ability to read--to undestand an alphabet, to have a sizeable vocabulary, and to make reasonably accurate meaning of the symbols on the page--it would also take some degree of cultural literacy to make it easy to properly comprehend the Onion article: it would certainly help to know what The Onion is, what kind of articles it produces, what kind of audience it writes for, etc. As a subset of this kind of cultural literacy, it would certainly aid comprehension to have some political literacy--to know that, for example, Planned Parenthood has recently been under attack by conservative politicians. This would give helpful context to what might appear to be exaggerations of actual claims made recently by politicians in the actual news. And to gain some sense of what constitutes exaggeration, or hyperbole, or metaphor, or satirical tone, a certain level of (for lack of a better term) 'literary' literacy is necessary for good comprehension.

One would think that such an awkward phrase as 'literary literacy' is silly and redundant, but, in fact, attention to literary devices and effects--subtle ways of producing meaning--has lately been minimized in favor of information design and information management skills that align more ostensibly with the needs and features of the so-called Information Age. Here again is a prime site for the divergence of information from meaning, the consequences of which produce the kinds of hilarious but also sad misapprehensions featured on the 'Literally Unbelievable' blog.

The point here is that, after the vast, vast majority of people in the developed and industrialized world gained literacy in its most basic, narrow, and traditional sense--the baseline-functional ability to read and write--we've begun to take literacy for granted. We've lost track of what a meaningful, up-tp-date definition of literacy would be for our present situation. And we've failed one another in so doing. PMB (and the majority of his readers) loves to have a good laugh, from a position of extreme educational privilege, at these 'idiots' who really think that Kansas is building a multi-billion-dollar abortion megaplex where women can get pedicures after their abortions, but we should consider that these kinds of misreadings are far more widespread, and occur in more serious contexts (Obama is a secret muslim who faked his US birth certificate; the Qur'an says women should be covered from head to toe) than we'd like to admit.

We love to obsess over technological advancement and pretend like our societies, filled with people who can read and write, have evolved beyond the need for serious consideration of literacy, rhetoric, etc. We like to claim that such advancements have democratized information and education. But we'll struggle in myriad ways until we update our understanding of what it means to be literate, and shape our curricula accordingly. Because, strange as it may sound, true literacy today remains a relatively elite prerogative.

An Aimless Rant

2011-05-28T13:37:00.002Z

Hey cyclist who thinks that, just because she's not operating a car, things like traffic lights do not apply to her. Shouldn't it have occurred to you that the nature of the very means of transportation that apparently justifies your exceptionality is also what makes it very probable that, should you encounter one of those larger, heavier metal objects in the wrong sort of way as a result of your inability to follow traffic laws, it's you who will end up dead?

When you use a shared or public toilet, do you enjoy forcing your hand up into the toilet paper dispenser to fish out the end of the roll because some asshole who was in there before you carlessly tugged the paper from the bottom, causing it to break off from up inside the dispenser? Assuming the answer is no, why do you leave it that way for other people?

Do you think you're adept at walking and texting at the same time? Because you're not.

If you're walking along the sidewalk (pavement) abreast with two or more people, and I'm walking toward you, it's incumbent upon one or more of you to move out of my way by tucking behind one another in single file. Why? Because we both have the same right to the shared space, whereas you and your friends have no right to monopolize it by walking side-by-side. I understand that sometimes, unthinkingly, you expect me to step out into the road to get hit by a cyclist so you can all pass by. And that's why, when I didn't move, you ran into my shoulder, winced, and thought I was the one being an asshole.

If you don't satisfy any of the following conditions, you have no business wearing a New York Yankees hat: 1) You live or lived in the Bronx. 2) Your friend, partner, spouse, or family member plays or played for the Yankees. 3) You play or played for the Yankees.

Have you noticed how academics, you know, sort of, come up with our own sort of verbal fillers to replace 'like' and 'um,' which we roundly despise in the speech of others?

I don't like cake. For the love of god, stop offering me cake.

Double-wide baby strollers should be illegal. People who carelessly thrust their single-infant-occupied strollers out in front of you as a way of forcing themselves through a crowd are obnoxious enough; the double-stroller pushers should be shamed off the sidewalk (pavement) and relegated to the cycle lane until we can pass due legislation, an international ban.

If you accuse me of spending my time 'figuring out what the author menas,' I write you off as an idiot then and there.

If you represent a corporation or a society of people interested in joining or representing corporations, don't ask me for favors. Ever. Once I asked my boss if I could, like, have something for nothing, and she said that's not how corporations work. Well, that's not how I work either.

Too many people go around feeling smug about all they do to save and improve lives. Too few of them have ever stopped to think about what makes lives worth saving and improving.

Tenure-Track/Partner-Track: What Law Firms Can Learn From Academics' Mistakes

2011-05-26T13:56:00.002Z

There has been much talk lately of what is euphemistically called a 'restructuring' of law-firm labor: the growth of full-time lawyer positions that are off the 'partner-track,' or for which there is no expectation that one be considered for partnership at the firm. As the recent NY Times article explains, non-partner-track lawyers are paid significantly less (around 60K/year) than their partner-track colleagues, largely for the same amount and type of work.

Those who would favor this two-track system argue that the non-partner-track allows more flexibility for those who aren't sure if they want to dedicate 8 years of their lives to the long and arduous slog toward partnership at a big law firm.

What proponents of the two-track system are missing, however, is that, beyond the lower salary, the podunk work locations, and the contingency of the labor (a non-partner-track attorney will certainly have less job security and would be easier to replace on shorter notice), such a system will create an especially nasty effect: non-partner-track lawyers will become a kind of legal underclass, looked down upon (and sometimes pitied) by their partner-track colleagues, abused by those in positions of managerial and budget-setting power, and, ultimatly, multiplied to create a growing army of lower-paid lawyers with fewer benefits that will become the standard of the profession, rather than the exception. Why does PMB think this?

Just look at academia.

When managerial and administrative types in higher education figured out that it's cheaper to take advantage of the market glut of competent people vying to work in academia--and the concomitant 'price' inelasticity of demand for academic work--by hiring adjunct, non-tenure-track faculty to carry the burden of university teaching, instead of hiring tenure-track faculty (who, unlike adjuncts, actually get health and retirement benefits), the number of adjunct professors has risen dramatically while the number of tenure-track faculty has declined dramatically.

The effects of this shift in academic labor are manifold. For one, adjuncts are often taken advantage of, and treated like an underclass by tenured professors. Two, their abundance in relation to tenured professors, combined with their lack of jub security and high degree of expendibility, means that large numbers of faculty in a given department can disappear at any given time (not so great for students, or for building a better department, without continuity). Three, the dignity of the profession, and the quality of higher education as a whole, have taken a serious hit. The holy grail of tenure is virtually the last aspect of the profession that attracts the brightest and best people to choose to make less money as educators and pass up more lucrative jobs in industry; and that last incentive is rapidly eroding.

What would it mean for our economy, our political discourse, our ability to compete with other countries, and to preserve our knowledge and traditions and ways of life, if, as with primary and secondary school teaching (at which we are, on a global scale, pretty awful), the brightest and best were scared off to do something else?

The answer to this question is tied in many ways with the legal profession. It, too, is one of our most important institutions. And we can't afford to gut it from the inside out the way we've already begun to gut academia. Lawyers need to be incentivized and rewarded properly for their high-skilled and (cynics turn away!) crucial labor. Building a poorly compensated underclass of lawyers to replace what has been for so long one of our most dignified and desirable professions won't just harm lawyers--it will have negative consequences for broader society.

Astute consumers of what is loosly and perilously called 'culture,' and what is tellingly called 'history,' will recognize that when budgets are tight and economic times are tough, the short-sighted instincts of managerial types point to budgetary slicing and dicing and cost-cutting all over the place. Some things, however, need to be preserved through the tough times. Just because savvy law firms have figured out how to keep up their profits by 'restructuring' their labor doesn't mean this is good for the profession long-term. Lawyers, take it from an academic: fight for what you deserve before it's too late.

Cronon Affair Not About Academic Freedom, But Political Persecution

2011-03-30T14:33:00.005Z

By now you might have heard about the latest national media mini-sensation, the sticky situation over University of Wisconsin-Madison history professor William Cronon's work e-mail.

In case you need a synopsis, the Wisconsin Republican Party has filed a standard Freedom of Information Act request to obtain e-mails that include any of a set of keywords from Professor Cronon's university e-mail account. They did this after Cronon started blogging and writing op-ed pieces critical of Gov. Scott Walker and Wisconsin Republicans. They did this because they want to know if Cronon, as a sort-of-public employee in his capacity as a professor at a public university that receives 20 percent of its total funding from public sources, might have been in violation of the University IT policy on "commercial, political, and non-university activities," which is as follows:

Persons may not use University IT resources to sell or solicit sales for any goods, services or contributions unless such use conforms to UW-Madison rules and regulations governing the use of University resources. University employees may not use these resources to support the nomination of any person for political office or to influence a vote in any election or referendum. No one may use University IT resources to represent the interests of any non-University group or organization unless authorized by an appropriate University department.

Cronon's supporters claim the FOIA request amounts to a witch-hunt and potentially a violation of academic freedom, while other pundits, mostly conservative, argue correctly that the FOIA request is legally sound.

The FOIA request is legally sound, and academic freedom is a pretty sketchy defense against such a request. For the record, academic freedom would be a relevant defense should the fruits of the FOIA request place Cronon's job in jeopardy on account of his political views. But we're not even there yet, and I doubt we'll get there either.

More importantly, however, this whole affair is not so much about academic freedom or the legality of the FOIA request, but rather the purpose and implications of this request. The government of the state of Wisconsin, which is more or less overrun at this point by the Republican party, has some recourse to oversight in matters of publicly funded institutions; however, it's abundantly clear in this case that Professor Cronon is only being targeted because he has expressed in public, as is his right, some political views that the Republican investigators don't like.

Though they have legal recourse, technically, to request Cronon's e-mails, the Republican investigators in this case aren't actually worried about the possibility that Cronon is somehow operating a vast and secret and well-funded political machine out of his University e-mail account, or that he's in any way abusing his position as a history professor at a public university (civic engagement with contemporary political issues is explicitly part of the job description of a university professor of history). Rather, Republicans are going after Cronon because his personal political views are different than theirs. The Republican investigation of Cronon is an attempt to penalize someone for espousing an opposing ideology, and, accordingly, to make political hay about the fact that Professor Cronon is all at once an academic, a public employee, and a liberal--all things that Wisconsin Republicans can't stand.

What we should take away from this episode is not that there's some erosion of academic freedom going on, or that Cronon is a "tenured radical" for having political views that Republicans wouldn't support, but that American politics has undertaken a considerable shift in the last several years. Though we remain a two-party country, our opposing parties are no longer comprised of what could be called "liberals" and "conservatives," left and right.

What we have now is pluralists and singularists.

Some Americans, pluralists, believe that freedom includes the permission of dissent and the toleration of ideological diversity. For the pluralists, it's not OK to go after someone for espousing views with which you might disagree. For the pluralists, the very core of American history and the American experience is polyvocality, grown out of this mishmash of people from all ends of the world. Pluralists are more likely to find commonalities in what America is than instances of what America is not.

Some Americans, singularists, believe that freedom is the privilege only of a specific group of people--Americans--who think a certain way about what America is and what specifically constitutes American values. Singularists are willing to use financial, legal, and military means to enforce their ideological position on what's best for America and Americans. Singularists are more likely to understand diversity and dissent as instances of anti-Americanism and antagonism than as part and parcel of the American experience.

The Republican attack on Cronon is a singularist attack, waged by people who are, at the very least, uncomfortable with the idea of a professor at a state university publicly owning a political position that is critical of their party in general, and its state leader specifically.

In Defense of Play: A Person's Manifesto

2011-03-28T10:16:00.007Z

Bears know more about people than people know about themselves, because bears are quite happy to be bears, while people struggle endlessly to dehumanize themselves. While people indulge this peculiar blend of human insecurity and human arrogance, bears observe with the placid bewilderment of creatures that still understand play.

Consider Richard Dawkins.

Richard Dawkins is a leader among a vast and variegated group of people who generally believe that anyone who believes in a god or practices a religion accordingly is an idiot. The basis for Dawkins' belief is science. For Dawkins and people of a similar persuasion, any human behavior that is not driven by scientific knowledge is irrational and may lead to idiocy. What frustrates, enervates, motivates, and ultimately compensates the likes of Richard Dawkins is the tendency of humans to behave in certain ways that do not comport with scientific knowledge.

Were the Dawkinses suddenly and ironically imbued with godly powers, they would undoubtedly order the universe precisely as it is, changing only humans. Instead of making humans human, the Dawkinses would make humans into scientific beings who apprehend with perfect accuracy and adroitness the empirical truth of the world. These Dawkinsian humans would know everything knowable, and lack any desire to know anything more; indeed, the concept of the unknowable would be entirely foreign to these humans, a non-concept. A rigid scientific curiosity for the unknown points toward its own obsolescence, which culminates in Dawkinsian humans. These humans would not have an imagination, for they would have no need for one. They could stand on the shoreline and look out into the sea, and what would they see: a taxonomic cornucopia spread out over a visual field of 2.9 miles or 2.52 nautical miles (depending on the height of the person and the clarity of the sky in the given moment). Dawkinsian humans would not practice religion or believe in gods, as they know all that is knowable. They would never fight or disagree over concepts, as all empirical truths would be evident to all Dawkinsian humans, and no concepts that are not empirical truths would exist. That being the case, there would be no intellectual or ideological diversity among them, which means there would be no ideological wars between them. Instead, their wars would be fought over things that contemporary humans find deeply immoral and disturbing: observations of phenotypical difference, racial difference, and disparities in physical strength or natural fitness. Indeed, all conflicts among Dawkinsian humans would be the result of, as contemporary humans would put it, racists and bigots. Without the ability to espouse differences in what Martin Luther King, Jr. would call "the content of one's character," Dawkinsian humans, red in tooth and claw as all humans, nay all creatures are, would fight, oppress, and enslave those who were, in and of themselves, through and through, empirically different looking (as no character content differences would exist). Dawkinsian humans would be ruthlessly hierarchical, for empirical differentiation necessitates hierarchies (we may not know whether Joe Montana was a better quarterback than Dan Marino, but, given a common set of metrics across-the-board, we know with certainty that David Lekuta Rudisha, the new 800m world record holder, is a faster 800m runner than former world record holder Wilson Kipketer, and is thus higher on the records list).

You may find these assumptions and extrapolations about Dawkinsian humans unlikely or unsubstantiated, in large part because, as a non-Dawkinsian human, your powers of empirical knowing are quite limited. In fact, before scientists began to pretend that the word "empirical" means "evidence-based" and not "based on human sensory perception"--that is, before contemporary humans brought about this clever shift in the etymology of the word "emprical"--human sensory perception was perceived as enough to produce reliable evidence. Now, however, the Dawkinses scorn and ridicule flawed human perception. This is why "empirical" must now mean "evidence-based" instead of "based on human sensory perception": because the transhumanist Dawkinses must elide any traces of human frailty and subjectivity that must necessarily (but unspeakably) be involved in the processes of rendering scientific evidence. In other words, the problem of humans being such unscientific beings--which, for the Dawkinses, produces so many of our disgustingly human problems--is why we need to evolve into as close approximations of Dawkinsian humans as we can. For the Dawkinses, human subjectivity is a stain best rubbed out by striving for scientific objectivity.

This is in large part what is meant by "scientific progress." More practically, "scientific progress" means the patronage of society by scientists, who scoff at any judgment that is not "empirically" derived. Our scientific patrons provide (or consume mounds of resources trying to provide) contemporary humans with various comforts and amenities, from the life-ameliorating (nicer televisions, longer-lasting batteries, etc.) to the life-changing (semiconductors, electronic networks, etc.) to the life-saving (biomedical technologies, vaccines, etc.). These amenities are crucial to "scientific progress," because while scientists are busy providing us with nice things, many are also busy theorizing the complete suffusion of all human qualities and variabilities with scientific knowledge. To put it economically: have this mechanical heart, so that you may live to see the day when we make a computer that writes better than Nabokov.

In case it hasn't become clear by now, there are two ends to scientific progress. One is the forfeiture of human intellectual diversity, creativity, and play; the other is the embarrassing realization that despite all that humans have tried to do to deny, transcend, and forfeit their humanity, it was all a big ruse, a god delusion.

To say nothing of their ethical implications, both of these outcomes sound pretty fucking boring.

By this point in the manifesto the Dawkinses are feeling attacked. The scientists who wouldn't align themselves with the Dawkinses are feeling ill-used and victimized. The armies who daily make disparaging remarks about the arts and humanities from their own positions of societal and academic privilege are incensed about the possibility that their evidence may be of an insufficient standard to convince not gods, not religious nuts, not politicians, but mainstream humans that we should all lie down for this iteration of progress. You who have become oppressors of humanity (and the humanities), who have conditioned yourselves to receive all criticisms of your scientific telos as idiocy, ignorance, anti-scientific ideology, or even an attempted resuscitation of the days when the arts, religion, and philosophy unjustly presided over the kingdom of knowledge, are modern clergy. You boffins, it's no longer you who are marginalized. The victim is yours, and the victim is play.

Claim your bits and pieces of this manifesto as you inevitably will, human as you are. But here PMB affirmeth nothing but play, that delight in endless variability and purposelessness which is the hallmark of all creatures great and small.

Fixing Student Ghettos

2011-03-27T12:38:00.004Z

A good bit of news lately has touched on the increasingly visible issue of the student ghetto, like this piece on the ghettos in Albany, NY. What is a student ghetto?

It's more or less exactly what it sounds like. In college towns, where students constitute a large enough population relative to the total population, civilian residents generally prefer not to live next to or immediately around students. The reason for this is simple and understandable: student lifestyles typically mean late nights, loud parties, raucous behavior, loud music, irregular waking hours, and other fun things that most non-students would rather not subject themselves or their children to indirectly by living nearby. Once a "student" section of town emerges, other factors contribute toward the deterioration of student neighborhoods and the properties students occupy.

For one, students typically require cheap housing, which gives landlords the opportunity to treat student housing in the same hands-off manner as they might an urban slum. Two, student partying, excessive drinking, and general immaturity contribute to property damage, littering, and abundant housing code violations in student housing sections, making student housing even more slum-like, and the landlords even less likely to enforce code or repair damage year after year, as new students come in and wreck things anew. Three, the partying and code violations attracts police officers, many of whom will have come from an entirely different socioeconomic background than the privileged college students--or at least as much is often presumed by both police and students alike. The combination of all of these things creates, quite literally, a ghetto in the student housing section: low property value, unregulated and neglected destruction of the neighborhood, bad behavior, and an antagonistic relationship between law enforcement and the residents of the student ghetto.

PMB lived in a student ghetto for the better part of 5 years, which was long enough to witness a shocking deterioration of an otherwise fine part of town at the hands of a predominately affluent and intelligent student population. Recalling his experiences in the student ghetto, PMB offers the following suggestions for improving student ghettos, restoring college neighborhoods, and healing town-gown relations:

1) A friendlier approach to policing. Frustrated with rampant drug-dealing on every corner of his district, a station commander in the HBO series The Wire decides to round up all the corner boys and junkies and transport them to one of three sections of town where police will monitor violence, but otherwise turn a blind eye to the drug trade. At first these ghetto zones look disastrous, until community volunteers and public safety workers intervene to pass out clean needles and contraception, and police and volunteers help children organize basketball and boxing groups. Police begin to interact with drug dealers and addicts like human beings, rather than simply going around looking to knock heads.

Because the student ghetto is by definition a self-contained area of student housing, and because students will drink and party regardless of what police do to try and stop them, police would do better to take a friendlier and more realistic approach to policing the student ghetto. Running into and searching every house with a party, often without a complaint call and sometimes in clear violation of constitutional rights, and bashing the heads of drunk and belligerent students has proven widely ineffective. Instead, were police officers to patrol student areas with an eye out for violence, destruction, or brazen violations (public urination, etc.), rather than storming houses, students would likely become more cooperative, and learn to respect their boundaries.

2) Crack down on absentee landlords. When responsible students can't get their landlords to fix basic problems with the house, like a faulty heater or a leaky faucet, students rapidly develop the attitude that because the landlord doesn't care about them or the property, they ought not to bother with keeping it clean and keeping damage to a minimum. The result is usually an accumulation of little damages and a few large ones over the years, all of which go unfixed by the landlord, who lives on the other side of the country and only shows up once a year to collect rent money from the local agency he employs to "look after" his properties in the area. If landlords will live remotely, as they have every right to do, students need better resources and support from both the municipalities and the universities to crack down on landlord violations and slumlord practices. It's a lot easier to trash a property that's long since been in the process of being trashed, and about which nobody seems to care.

3) Affordable university housing. One answer universities have provided to deal with student ghettos is building more university owned and regulated housing for students. The problem: this kind of housing is typically of the revenue-generating mold, meaning they're expensive and aimed at the richest students. Universities then justify the high cost of such accommodations by packing them with amenities like gyms, commercial food courts, expensive cable television plans, and redundant computer labs. Low-income students who might otherwise live in university accommodation end up saving hundreds of dollars per month in rent by living in the student ghetto. The price disparity between university housing and private housing in the ghetto diffuses any sense of competition for the business of large groups of students, which means that university housing can continue to be overpriced (taking money from rich students who can pay) and ghetto landlords continue without any pressure to make their properties more attractive to students by cleaning them up.

4) Enforce basic housing code policies during the day. Rather than tussling with drunk students at night, send police vans around during the day. If houses have indoor couches on the porches and on the roofs, remove them. If a student's front lawn is strewn with beer cans so thick you have to kick them away to reach the front door, fine the house. If the residents ignore the fines, arrest them and bring them to court. Few students will take resistance far enough to get cuffed and dragged out of their house unexpectedly during a game of Madden.

5) Don't conspire with the university. Work with it. In PMB's student ghetto, a common police trick went as follows: university police, who had no jurisdiction outside of university property, would ride by off-campus houses in the student ghetto and hear parties. Since they had no jurisdiction, they would phone in a fake noise complaint to the municipal police who did have jurisdiction, so the municipal police could come in and bash heads. Once students were cited with municipal violations, and punished accordingly by the municipality, that information was shared with the university. The university would then level a second punishment, effectively doubling-up the punishment for what was a non-violation in the first place.

Instead of practicing these kinds of bullying tactics, universities and municipalities should get together and determine in what ways the university can compel (or require) students to complete community projects as part of their studies. PMB was fortunate enough to partake of one such project, a work-study internship with the local (you might have guessed it) housing code administrator. Learning about the inner workings of community building and community policing can be illuminating experiences for students, who too often fail to grasp the notion that they live in a community beyond that of the university.

End The Humanities Now, Keep Future Bill Gateses In School

2011-03-24T14:15:00.005Z

Were PMB looking for advice on higher education, he probably wouldn't ask two college dropouts, no matter how rich they are. But that's just PMB. The reason? It's not that PMB looks down on the likes of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs (is that even possible?) because they didn't complete their undergraduate degrees. It's not that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs aren't incredibly intelligent and productive individuals. It's not that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs aren't world-changers of the highest caliber. The reason PMB wouldn't ask these two about higher education should be obvious: neither one of them saw much value in higher education relative to what they might accomplish without it.

Sure, if Reed College trashed its whole (exceptionally loose) curriculum and means of student evaluation and catered to the needs and whims of teenaged Steve Jobs--i.e., if Reed College valued Jobs' opinion of what higher education should be when he was a college student--he might not have dropped out. And if Harvard would have just given Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg what they wanted to become genius world-altering billionaire technological innovators--whatever that might have been--they might have stuck around for a measly bachelor's degree. But the fact of the matter is that none of these people was ever actually interested in higher education, and their ends, not to mention their means, always have been fundamentally different than those of a higher education institution. Put simply: while Bill Gates would prefer that colleges and universities focus their curricula on job training and job creation, this is not the mission of a college or university. If people like Gates want job-training and job-creation centers, they certainly have the means to do what Gates has already begun to do: fund their own institutions that satisfy those core missions. For the rest of us: well, maybe we're not all convinced that entrepreneurship is the only civic virtue (or that there are no such things as human virtues that might be cultivated in the academy).

So PMB repeats: if you want to learn something about how to change higher education for the better, don't ask people just because they're rich and successful. Ask people who actually have a stake in higher education. Ask journalists, professors, small business leaders, engineers, maybe even grad. students. Don't ask someone who never saw much value at all in the answer to that question, or the institutions to which the answer most pertains.

Ask PMB, and this is what he'll tell you:

We need to end the humanities and focus on job creation. The first departments to go will have to be the English departments. Does English create jobs? No. English does not create jobs. Most people already know how to read and write English, like these people:

“It is my job to ensure proper process deployment activities take place to support process institutionalization and sustainment. Business process management is the core deliverable of my role, which requires that I identify process competency gaps and fill those gaps.”

If you are reading this then you know how to read English, which means we don't need English departments, which are redundant, which are redundant.

The next departments to go will be the foreign language departments. Do foreign languages create jobs? No. Foreign languages do not create jobs. You might say, "but PMB, aren't Arabic and Mandarin foreign languages?' No, Arabic and Mandarin are not foreign languages. Arabic and Mandarin are business codes, like Python and C++. Business codes, like all business things, create jobs. Foreign languages do not.

The next departments to go will be the religion departments. If you believe in a religion you can go to church. If you are an atheist you can go to England. If you are an atheist and I am an evangelical, you can go to hell. But neither religion departments, atheism, or the devil create jobs. Therefore we should not have religion departments, which are redundant, which are redundant.

Speaking of which, we no longer need philosophy departments, where logic is taught. Logic does not create jobs, and jobs are not created by logic, therefore we do not need philosophy departments.

The next departments to go should be classics departments, which do not create jobs. Think about it: if we called Greek and Roman antiquity the subject of "the classics" 200 years ago, then our classics education is 200 years behind. Presumably, since Rome declined in the 5th century CE, our "classics" departments should have been updated to cover the period 200 years after the fall of the Roman empire, which is right in the middle of a period called "The Dark Ages." Studying the Dark Ages would have been much more relevant to contemporary efforts at job creation; but classics departments have failed to relate, innovate, synergate, and put food on my DINNER PLATE. So classics departments have to go.

The next departments that have to go are the law departments. Do law departments create jobs? Well, ok, maybe sometimes they do. But does the LAW create jobs? No, the law prevents jobs. PMB proposes that we keep the lawyers and law school departments, which generate revenue and create jobs, and get rid of THE LAW, which DESTROYS JOBS.

Finally, once we've scrapped all of these departments, we need to get rid of history departments. History departments do not create jobs. But they do remind us of when job creation fails at job creation. We must eliminate all backward-looking history departments effective immediately, lest we bear witness to all we've just dumped in the shredder, the entire history of humanity.

Lessons from Knut

2011-03-23T02:00:00.002Z

When something happens in the world that strikes PMB as so fundamentally wrong, the bear becomes philosophical. As Japan picks up the pieces of pre-disaster life from post-disaster rubble and war breaks out in Libya, what moves you? As Uganda's parliament considers a bill to legalize the execution of homosexuals, and systematic rape rages on in Sudan, what moves you? When women are stoned to death in the Middle East and prisoners held without due process on Guantanamo Bay, what shocks you?

What moves PMB about the premature and unexpected death of a 4-year-old Polar Bear is not merely species affinity, but a deep and burrowing sense of sadness. The root of this sadness is tragedy: humanity thinks it knows tragedy; but when tragedy happens on a nonhuman scale, humans fail to comprehend non-humanly. Humans should know the depth of tragedy, its layers, its multitudes. Humans should know that tragedy begins small and discreet. It brings a little wave over fiddler crab, turning it on its back; then it brings a big wave and we name it tragedy. It puts a wounded calf in a wolves' den, then it puts a girl neck-deep in a stoning pit, and we name it tragedy. It takes the life of a photogenic polar creature before its time, then it takes the life of someone from your tribe, your kind. And then you name it tragedy. These things are not equivalent, but they are related.

Lessons from Knut (Maxims and Barbs):

1) Before you name them, there are seeds of tragedy all around.

2) All humans understand of death is distorted through the jagged lens of (human) life.

3) A bear will eat you if he's hungry enough, but your humanity he will find indigestable.

4) Your brain doesn't forestall the possibility of play, but your job does.

5) We all have claws: some for tearing flesh, some for digging holes, some for scratching surfaces.

6) If you have the courage to love across boundaries, you can be your own god; life imitates art.

7) Fur warms the body, but connection warms the heart.

8) Mind your foundation, for you stand on ice and the sun is out.

9) Forgetting is the process by which memories are internalized.

10) Be good to bear, for bear has brought you joy.

We Will Miss You, Knut

2011-03-19T18:29:00.002Z

Today PMB mourns the loss of a fellow bear, the Berlin Zoo's world-famous Knut the Polar Bear. As this report suggests, Knut, who was a healthy, four-year-old cub, passed away suddenly and unexpectedly.

Humans come and go, and, with the capacity to experience suffering in such a panoply of ways, largely fail and disappoint, as 'elevated' creatures, to reduce suffering in the world. When such an embodiment of human joy as our beloved polar bear cub succumbs to death so young, the tragedy is almost too much to bear. PMB is a most melancholy creature today. In what kind of fucked up world does such a thing happen?

Let us hope that the speculation of Peter Trophimof in Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard applies to bears: 'Perhaps [bear] has a hundred senses, and when he dies the five senses that we know perish with him, and the other ninety-five remain alive...'

We will miss you dearly, Knut.

Why Consumer Boycotting Sends The Wrong Message

2011-03-08T18:35:00.005Z

PMB observes a variety of consumer boycotting behaviors, almost always practiced by people who have good intentions and a strong commitment to cause. Boycotts range from the short-term and particular (as when someone avoids purchasing Dior products until they can the guy who made anti-Semitic remarks) to the long-term and sweeping (as when someone makes her own clothing to avoid patronizing companies that use sweatshop labor). Even food choices, like vegetarianism or veganism, are sometimes (but not always) made based upon the principles of the boycott (as when someone refuses to eat meat in order to attenuate and ultimately overturn the animal-rights-unfriendly agro-business model).

Indeed, keeping with the vegetarianism/veganism example, the best book PMB has come across on animal rights, Peter Singer's Animal Liberation, takes a utilitarian ethical position, ultimately encouraging readers to address the problem of animal mistreatment by becoming vegetarian or vegan. The thrust of Singer's political message is that through boycotting something that leads to a negative outcome, we could collectively reduce the outcome.

While PMB is sympathetic to a number of causes that call for boycotts, there remains a disturbing and legitimately dangerous logic that underpins the act of boycotting.

When we choose boycotting as a means of individual and/or collective action as consumers, what we're really saying is that the responsibility to make ethical judgments, and then to do the right thing, lies only with us consumers. In taking on the brunt of this responsibility, the boycotter demonstrates to the producers--of meat, clothing, etc.--that we've chosen the market as our primary weapon against their ethical shortcomings. In boycotting, we tell corporations that as long as they can get by selling unsavory things to enough of us, they can survive without changing their behavior.

The explicit problem with boycotting, then, is that it's a strategy that aims to take on producers at their own game: marketing to as many people as possible an image of the company as providing not only a product you want, but by a means with which you can be satisfied. The boycotting efforts of righteous individuals--and righteous groups of individuals--are easily co-opted by large and unscrupulous corporations and industries. In fact, in many cases, as with the tobacco industry, companies actually market controlled versions of counterculture to their adversaries and critics, with much success. Boycotting is a game that, very often, boycotters are already set up to lose.

The implicit and more insidious problem with boycotting, however, is that it plays into corporate hands in a much more profound way. By taking the market as the primary instrument of ethical critique, boycotters implicitly give primacy to the market as a means of ethical regulation. In a move that's meant to be pragmatic--an acknowledgment that because money talks so loudly, the most effective attack is a blow to the pocketbook--boycotters actually undercut their very raison d'etre as boycotters: to introduce ethics into a system that fails to produce ethical standards for itself. Boycotting, in other words, is an admission that the market rules the day, and that the only (or best) way to effect change is by and through the market itself. Boycotting absolves corporations of their responsibility to anything but the bottom line.

The obvious alternative to boycotting, however, is throwing the same political effort behind industry regulation. Why boycott BP, a prominent example of corporate ethical lapse, when you can appeal to an elected government for better regulation of the entire industry? Why go vegan instead of campaigning for reforms of the entire farming industry, including where even veggies are loaded with growth hormones? Why take individual responsibility for something that is more properly the responsibility of a whole society?

PMB is aware that unapologetic free-marketers and some kinds of libertarians will take umbrage with the idea that citizens might appeal to an elected government, rather than the market itself, to impose industry regulations; however, the reasonably successful history of governments imposing industry regulations to account for gross ethical problems not solved by the 'invisible hand'--such as anti-trust legislation, or the laws and inspections that prevent any old schmuck from opening a restaurant that serves you rat feces sandwiches--should be enough to placate most of you.

In the end, it's easy enough to wash your own hands of corporate malfeasance; but what should we do when an entire economy needs a bath?

Lady Gaga and Amateur Cultural Criticism

2011-03-04T16:24:00.002Z

Upon release of the 10-plus minute "Telephone" video, featuring Lady Gaga and Beyonce, amateur cultural critics began to recognize and draw attention to the video's various moments of allusion, parody, etc. Articles like this one demonstrate how people of various interests and professional backgrounds have been compelled to "close read" Gaga's video for cultural meaning; and these analyses, deployed with varying degrees of adeptness or incompetence, come off with varying degrees of success.

The phenomenon repeats itself with the launch of Gaga's latest art-house-style video, "Born This Way." MTV chimes in with this and this, a pair of lists attempting to detail all of the video's "allusions." Some are clear, while others seem wholly contrived, over-read. Take this gem from the MTV "Part 2" list:

Michelangelo's "Last Judgment": Massive fresco inside the Sistine Chapel, it depicts the second coming of Christ and the apocalypse. Several readers noticed the similarities between the painting and the "Born This Way" scene where the "evil" child is born, as the souls of humans trapped below rise toward their Mother Monster for judgment.

What's most curious about this behavior is that even though the acts of criticism, reading, hermeneutics, and "cultural analysis" are typically thought to belong to the high-minded and disconnected, and applicable only to "great works" of art and literature, the most puerile pop-cultural medium in existence, MTV, can't help but attempt to draw connections between cultural products in attempts to produce meaning. And they like it. They really, really like it.

(De)meaning Information

2011-02-25T16:17:00.002Z

Not long ago, PMB wrote a short post on bullshit. Part of what could reasonably be described as the Bullshit Revolution of the 21st century has been the rise of the cheap database, and the concomitant desirability of mining such databases for information relatively cheaply and easily.

For example, every time you shop for a book or a DVD on Amazon.com, Amazon automatically compiles databases of information about what you search for and what you purchase, taking this information as a proxy for recommending to you other items that you may be likely to purchase too. Most of us are familiar enough by now with "Web 2.0," by which users (or, in business terms, patrons) generate content and fill huge information databases for the very services they patronize. "Web 3.0," then, is vaguely characterized as a system in which, based often on prior user-generated information, we can produce computer-generated information that merges with real-time activity in our daily lives.

We seem to value information today as we always have, but with one very significant difference. Today, information means something very different than what it used to.

As this fascinating review explains, there came a point at which it was understood that information could be deployed more effectively were it understood as independent from meaning--what seminal information theorist and applied mathematician Claude Shannon understood as a mathematical abstraction instead:

The enormous success of information theory came from Shannon’s decision to separate information from meaning. His central dogma, “Meaning is irrelevant,” declared that information could be handled with greater freedom if it was treated as a mathematical abstraction independent of meaning.

This understanding still largely informs our means of compiling, distributing, and transferring information today. Our information is largely automated and industrialized, its "democratization" frequently just a democratization of the labor cost of generating information itself.

What each of us no doubt finds in our daily lives, however, is that despite all the information we have, and how easy and cheap it is to get it, we also trust our information less and less. While we continue to place tremendously high value on "information" writ large--information as abstraction--the material value of information is rather low. On any number of political websites, for example, one can read scores of patently false information masquerading as truth. Three people can reach a series of economic conclusions by looking at the same chart. The foods we're supposed to load up on and those we're supposed to stay away from seem to switch off and on every three years. And because information is so deeply and systematically commodified, false advertising and deliberately, meticulously, scientifically misleading information are the norm. This state of things has long since been called "information overload," among other names; but "overload" isn't the only problem. This is what happens when information "evolves" beyond meaning.

Much of this problem has to do with information's response to hypercapitalist demands. Quantifying all normative judgments is cheap and efficient, and quite often very accurate. Just like a processing line of tin cans on a conveyor belt can get filled with tomato soup faster and cheaper than by hand, quantitatively analyzing huge databases of information can mass-produce meaning, or at least a proxy for meaning. Causal relationships can be theorized or brought within a statistically acceptable margin of error. Meaning can come cheap and fast.

Right?

It's worth considering, on the contrary, that what we get from this mode of industrialized processing of mass information isn't actually meaning at all, in any traditional sense of the word. What we get is, simply, more information--a simulacrum of meaning that can be deployed toward innumerable ends, but hardly ever trusted for itself. In this sense, quantification of value, which was always supposed to debunk and render obsolete the unreliable prejudices of subjective judgment, has actually become the most powerful enabler of unrigorous subjectivity. Literally anyone can find "scientific information" to back up a subjective claim without doing the work--and taking the oh-so-expensive time--of applying themselves to reason, skepticism, and careful observation.

Labor Unions are Part of Capitalism

2011-02-18T01:06:00.002Z

Because a cowboy governor in Wisconsin is attempting to eliminate collective bargaining for Wisconsin's public employees, and because Speaker John Boehner thinks it's better for America to eliminate a hypothetical 200,000 jobs if those happen to be Federal jobs, the US has witnessed a small labor rights resurgence. Conservative politicians continue to rail against the idea of workers' rights and labor unions as they more or less always have; but now we have some newsworthy examples.

So now would be a good time to inform conservatives that labor unions and collective bargaining are part of capitalism, not ancillary to it.

Conservatives love market competition, except when market competition provides challenges to corporate interests.

When corporations see an opportunity to gain an advantage over a competitor, they take it. Or at least, says Capitalism, they should. This is one reason why larger corporations sometimes merge with or overtake smaller corporations: sometimes acquiring a greater market share, or a more nimble production process, or a novel idea through a merger or acquisition can yeild a competitive advantage. By the same token, corporations don't like it when mergers between competitors freeze them out or set them at a disadvantage. When these things happen in business--when winners and losers emerge from tactical business decisions--it's not always about who has the best and cheapest product, or who produces the greatest demand; it's also about who controls the means of production, and who has the capital and the organization to deliver on novel ideas or products.

One kind of capital is human capital, or labor. Just like a paper company pays a price for the trees it turns into paper and the machines that process the trees, it also pays a price for the people it employs to run the machines that turn the trees into paper. If there's a scarcity of trees, the paper company pays a higher price for trees. If there's a scarcity of labor, the paper company pays higher wages for labor.

Well, strategically speaking, if people want to earn a higher price--a higher wage--for their labor, they can develop ways of making labor scarce, or of inflating the cost of labor: they can unionize and collectively bargain, threatening to refuse their services if their price isn't met.

Businesses do the same thing with each other. When a business has something that lots of people want, it raises the price. When a competitor produces something similar that lots of people also want, both prices come down. That's when businesses buy up or merge with competitors to expand market share and drive prices back up. Or, that's when businesses employ any number of other strategic means of outwitting their competitors. This is competition.

But when workers employ strategies to achieve common or collective employment rights goals, pro-business conservatives don't like to call it competition. They prefer to let businesses compete, but not workers, blaming labor unions for creating the same kinds of market inefficiencies that businesses create every day by the same basic practices.

This is called hypocrisy.

Speculations on Teaching and Studying 'Literature' Part II

2011-02-14T15:48:00.003Z

PMB's not particularly well written Part I argued two basic points:

1) Many of those who study literature lack a foward-looking or future-oriented mentality when it comes to approaching the study of literature.

2) As a result, as the world moves on in various ways, literature scholars will have to respond to accusations of obsolescence with innovation within the field.

PMB recognizes that these two formulations sound more like the jargon of one of the greatest enemies of progress in any endeavor: corporatization. So, to add substance to the arguments roughly outlined in Part I, PMB proposes Part II, an elaboration on what is meant by 'innovation':

In Part I, PMB suggested that the last real innovation in literary study was the post-structuralist intervention of the 1970s-80s. Post-structuralism was itself a major structural break in the study of literature. Whereas before the post-structuralist intervention, literary scholars mainly addressed aesthetic questions (what is the form of this piece of writing?; is this a work of art?; what is being communicated in this art form?; how is this work related to other works in its period?, etc.), after this intervention literary scholars began to address layers of meaning not just within, but beyond a piece of writing as 'work of art.' Put simply, this was a major innovation because it conceived of literature not just as art to be studied as art, but as a kind of social-historical document that says something about how we live, what we think, what's going on in the world, and how we relate to the goings-on.

In this sense, innovation is not just a creative way of thinking about a particular piece of writing (no doubt scholars have been doing this since the post-structuralist intervention), but a systematic change in the methods and perceived purpose of the field. Post-structuralism, which hailed primarily from a number of French scholars occupying fields called 'the human sciences,' shifted the scholarly emphasis from literature-as-art to literature-as-document, thus shifting our scholarly purpose from being or becoming experts on literary taste to being or becoming experts on the written word as a record and a driver of human behavior.

In some ways, this innovation of the 1970s-1980s hasn't even fully sunk in, and has been resisted both from within and from beyond the field. Today, for example, the term 'literary criticism' still prevails.

'Literary criticism' is an obsolete term, and a misleading term as a result. Unlike art critics or food critics, those who study literature--generally mislabeled 'literary critics'--are not necessarily purveyors of taste. The purpose of literary study is not to provide people with a sense of which books are 'good' or 'great,' or even to assess the artistic or aesthetic value of a literary text. True, those who study literature are generally best equipped to make assessments of the artistic or aesthetic value of literature, and they often do just that; but this is occupational hazard for the literature scholar--a corollary activity that markets demand and sometimes even pay (modestly) for. Reviewing a book in order to give the 'lay' reader a sense of its artistic or aesthetic value--what literary critics have in the past (in the times of literary criticism proper) termed its 'literary value'--is a side activity to the core function of literary study, analogous to what the production of better television technologies has been to the core work of plasma physicists. In other words, the most publicly visible function of a given pursuit is not necessarily its only or even most important function; and this is certainly the case for those who study literature. While there remains an abundance of people who still believe that what matters most about a book is whether it is 'good literature,' the work of telling people, via arguments from authority, what they ought to think is 'good' and what they ought to think is trash is not work PMB is prepared to hang his hat upon.

What we call 'criticism'--literary criticism, art criticism, food criticism, film criticism, and all other formulations of taste-making industry--is not and has never been about transcendent value, but contingent value, as Barbara H. Smith suggested in 1988. These forms of criticism respond to broader economies of value--markets for taste--and not some transcendent greatness. This is a truth that all contemporary 'literary critics' know very well--or at least have been taught very well--but are frequently happy to ignore if it means holding onto that sliver of broader political and economic influence: the ability to speak and write with authority about the undeniable ability of literature to mesmerize us all, and attribute that mesmerizing effect to some mythical aesthetic quality or great complexity that economists, political scientists, sociologists, physicists, biologists, neurologists, etc. have repeatedly failed to grasp.

In short, 'literary critics' have relied for too long on their ability to say interesting and compelling things as critics, or purveyors of taste. PMB finds it far more interesting and compelling to approach the relationship between literature and people in a vastly different way, not about what people and history tell us about literature, but what literature tells us about people and history. The first thing to be said about literary criticism, then, is that 'literary criticism' is both the wrong term and the wrong approach to the study of literature.

PMB will explain further in Part III, forthcoming.

Speculations On Teaching and Studying 'Literature' Part I

2011-02-05T16:43:00.003Z

A phenomenon: when a scientist applies for a research grant, s/he often has much of the groundwork completed for the proposed project. Why? Because science researchers often spend around half of the duration of a funded project gathering data for the current project, and the other half working toward the next project. Of course this isn't always the case, but it happens, and it's sort of cool.

One of the very cool things about scientific research is that it's generally very forward-thinking and future-oriented. Accordingly, you wouldn't fault a scientist today for having not yet cured a disease or invented a way to travel from Australia to Mexico in an hour. On the contrary, the value of scientific possibility is precisely what commands funding for research.

When it comes to the study of literature, however, the idea of future-orientation is usually taken as a joke, not just by people who think there's no such thing as non-scientific innovation, but from literature scholars themselves. There are plenty of exceptions to this rule, of course; but what passes for 'innovation' in literature scholarship and in disciplinary organization today is generally about reclaiming something lost, rather than positioning for something new. PMB is more than sympathetic with a number of ideas about the extent to which literature is undervalued in today's world; but there's a lot more to this picture.

Arguably the last significant innovation in literary scholarship--an innovation which, incidentally, rendered English departments the perceived intellectual powerhouses of the university at the time--was the rise of French post-structuralism in the late 1970s. Heavily derided (Derridaed?) today, the post-structuralist turn nonetheless represented an important break in the intellectual history of literary study. It blurred disciplinary boundaries between literature, philosophy, and the social sciences, allowing literary scholars to look beyond tired approaches to a weary set of canonical 'literary works.' Today, many would look back on this moment as the beginning of the end of literary study, blaming it for all subsequent funding and public-relations problems of English departments. In some ways, those people are correct. But what we should take from this last major point of disciplinary innovation is not that 'there is nothing outside the text,' or any of the cryptic aphorisms of this intellectual movement, or that post-structuralism was the death of literary study, but that it's important, and maybe even beneficial, for disciplines to develop over time, rather than let themselves stagnate as relics of a bygone era. Because that's what they're saying about the study of literature, in case you haven't heard:

Obsolete.

Useless.

If a bunch of idle, rich bohemians want to laze around reading books all day while the rest of us get on with the business of life in the 21st century, let them be (but don't expect us to pay for it).

Sure, there's no point in letting go of some of the legitimately undervalued aspects of literary study that have long since been central to the profession. There's no point in capitulating to the arguments of the naysayers, nor in allowing the debate to be framed only in the naysayers' terms. But this doesn't mean, either, that we'll find all the answers to our problems by looking backward, or by attempting a glorious return to a mythical time when a literature professor was like Tom Hanks' Robert Langdon, Harvard Professor of 'Symbology,' gallivanting about the globe saving the world with ancient knowledge.

What's the next move, then?

Teaching Students How To Bullshit

2011-02-04T16:15:00.002Z

In his essay-turned-bestseller "On Bullshit," philosopher Harry Frankfurt argues that bullshit is actually "a greater enemy of the truth than lies are," because, whereas a liar conceals a known truth, a bullshitter attempts to advance or persuade without any regard for the truth whatsoever.

One unlikely thing we can take from this theory of bullshit: if bullshit is a prime enemy of truth, bullshitting must be a very valuable skill.

You can choose to understand this in very different ways. If you are something of a utilitarian who cares less about the ethics of process and more about outcomes, you might say that teaching someone how to bullshit is excellent preparation for success in many a career. If, on the other hand, you have an ethical concern with the idea of self-advancement at the expense of truth, you might take Frankfurt's position that bullshit is the enemy.

Either way, there's a case to be made for the value of teaching students how to bullshit. In one sense you would be imparting a skill that most everyone successful will tell you off-the-record is something of a requirement. In the other sense you can expose the sly rhetorical tactics and signposts of bullshittery by showing students what a bullshit proposition looks like from the inside out.

Indeed, the ability to take something of seemingly no value and convince others of the hidden value within it is a skill one first needs to master before one understands how to counteract.

Sick of Justifying the Humanities

2011-02-02T22:39:00.002Z

Over at CHE-Brainstorm there's another one of these discussions about how or whether to argue for the generalized social value of the humanities. Most of these kinds of discussions are framed as follows:

1) The humanities are radically different from the sciences (C.P. Snow). And
2) the sciences are thought to be useful and the humanities are not. And
3) people have a general sense that the humanities are good somehow, but don't know how. Therefore
4) the argument is made to justify the use-value and/or goodness of the humanities. So
5) the humanities are either useful because they make us better citizens and teach us important skills (Nussbaum) or
6) the humanities are good because they are beautiful and magical and transcendent.

Some of these arguments are good and some are bad. Some are helpful for humanities scholars and some are not. Some are more convincing to non-humanities scholars (i.e. scientists) than others. If you've read PMB on these issues in the past, you'd know that he generally favors Item 5 above against Item 6, largely rejects Item 1, sympathizes with Item 2 but finds it flatly unjustified, treats Item 3 with less attention than he should, engages avidly in behaviors pertaining to Item 4 (as perhaps now).

Ultimately, though, these arguments are getting stale. All of them, really. And beyond that, it just doesn't look all that great for Team Humanities that we've somehow allowed ourselves to begin negotiations from a largely self-imposed disadvantage, rather than from even ground. What PMB means by this is that most in the humanities--the ones who are really supposed to know why this stuff is supposed to be so great--are themselves the first to begin arguing from the defensive.

Frankly, in no radical departure from the empiricist tradition, if people want to understand the value of the humanities, they ought to just pick up their heads from these tired arguments and look around with their own eyes. The government funding isn't exactly rolling in, but that political problem doesn't negate the observable fact that the world is full of examples of people crediting the humanities for their success, using humanities products as ways of explaining or relating problems to a broad populace, successfully extending their humanities training, talents, and skill-sets in the worlds of science and finance themselves, or, simply, just sitting and reading on a park bench with a level of literacy that goes beyond absolute baseline comprehension. Sure, PMB can make (and has made) more sophisticated arguments tailored to address particular popular criticisms of the humanities that put humanities advocates on the immediate defensive; but perhaps a better place to start--a better place to have started all along--is with the very kinds of empiricism and democratization of information that the world so seems to crave.

One side of this approach, then, is to be open about what the humanities (and the people who study them) do each and every day (and marvel at the range of impressive things that these people do each and every day). Stop condensing all fields to a self-sealing cost-benefit ratio of tuition in/salary out, and recognize that people take all sorts of paths to productive employment and successful careers, and that tying these outcomes to a particular disciplinary type is a really messy business.

The other side, of course, is recognizing exactly what the sciences are, and what science people do every day. This means taking account of, in addition to all the wonderful and laudable things we hear about in the news, all of the waste, the exploitation of labor, the unethical practices, the failures, the dead ends, the corporate and monetary drivers, the fudging and distortion of data...do I leave anything out?

I suppose the point here is that once you get sick of being on the defensive, you might consider going on the attack. Make no mistake about it: PMB does not advocate academic warfare and/or unwarranted disrespect of other longstanding and legitimate fields of inquiry. But if you live in world in which you're constantly being demeaned, ridiculed, marginalized, and bullied--and oh yeah, they're taking your lunch money too--is it always wrong to swing back?

Democracy: So What?

2011-01-29T15:26:00.002Z

As protests rage in Cairo against a government that has ruled by "emergency law" and enforced a suspension of constitutional rights since 1967, you will soon undoubtedly hear a great many talking heads go on about "the necessity of democracy," how to get Egypt to implement "democratic reforms," and the general value of "spreading democracy." In short, we have yet another opportunity to continue a longstanding trend toward enshrining democracy as the ultimate political goal for every country in the world that hasn't yet been blessed with such a system.

Consider, however, a contemporaneous political event in another African country, Uganda: yesterday, a few months after a Ugandan newspaper published a front-page article that publicized pictures, names, addresses, etc. of Uganda's "Top Homos," with a tag that read "hang them," prominent gay rights activist David Kato was bludgeoned to death with a hammer. This disgusting act of vigilantism follows from the Ugandan government's current consideration of MP David Bahati's "Anti Homosexuality Bill," which would make being gay and engaging in same-sex acts illegal, and punishable by death in many cases.

Uganda is, of course, a democracy. It has a democratically elected and term-limited president, a democratically elected National Assembly of 332 members, many of which are ex-officio members nominated by interest groups, and a president-appointed Prime Minister.

In fact, now that this democratic government seems to have gotten behind a piece of legislation--not a dictatorial decree, but a piece of legislation--that not only relegates gays to second-class status, but considers it the duty and prerogative of the government to put them to death, the rest of the world has looked on with interest and with horror. And what do Ugandan officials say when American or European officials and media personalities speak out against this bill, this gross and incredible human rights violation?

Naturally, they say: but we're a democracy. This is the will of our people. This is not your business.

And, at least in a sense, they're absolutely right.

While no citizen of Uganda deserves to be discriminated against for their sexual orientation, or threatened with sanctions (or with their lives) for either being gay, supporting gay rights, or simply refusing to report or turn-in someone known or thought to be in violation of this Anti Homosexuality Bill, the moral dilemma (for lack of a better descriptor) that Europe and North America face in trying to deal with this situation is exactly what we deserve.

For years we've been pushing the idea of democracy uncritically, as though it's a panacea for the world's problems, both in global political discourse and in real terms (military enforcement of democracy abroad). Hypocritically, we've made friends with dictators in order to position ourselves strategically for democracy-building ventures in other, more advantageous or more lucrative parts of the world. We've made democracy the world's most visible empty signifier.

How could we not account for the distinct possibility that groups of people--especially groups who have been influenced in profound and devastating ways by colonialism and intervention for decades or centuries--could democratically arrive at absolutely horrific decisions? And is the irony lost on the Christian West that an African country with no evangelical Christian roots until British occupation in the late 19th century is now using the Christian "God's law" to justify the extermination of homosexuals, to the chagrin and horror of the liberal, industrialized, "developed" West?

It's long past the time to think more critically about democracy, how it's implemented, and what it means. While government by consent of the people is undoubtedly better than autocracy, theocracy, etc., democracy on its own is not enough. It must be accompanied by a baseline understanding of and respect for human rights. And such a respect for human rights must precede democracy, not the other way around. So while the ever-expanding population of technocrat world-savers, NGO managers, political action organizations--in short, what PMB likes to call the "global development set"--is so fond of talking about how to install democracy, what we need to be talking about first and foremost is how to achieve a global human rights baseline. From there, we need to understand that democracy is nothing without a system of checks and balances that can enforce such a human rights baseline, and protect a democratic society from democracy itself.

Brief Notes on Political Ideology

2011-01-18T14:24:00.003Z

PMB has observed that exchanges of political ideology often play out like a contortion of the Hegelian thesis, antithesis, synthesis paradigm. A better way of putting it: political ideology is transmitted between opponents in the manner of a tennis match with no enforceable boundaries.

Take, for example, a political conservative who supports the right of corporations to offer unpaid internships:

A conservative in the first instance espouses an ideology that supports personal responsibility and industriousness, and holds that these (and hard work) are justly rewarded in an economy of unregulated or un-refereed actors (the serve is in).

A liberal's ideological retort is that unregulated commerce produces over-powerful conglomerates (corporations) that can leverage accumulated power and capital over and against individuals, producing conditions for exploitation (the return is in, but just on the line).

Our conservative volleys back with the assertion that such corporations are the ultimate manifestation of the fruits of individual responsibility, industriousness, and the conditions of unregulation that enable just reward for these pursuits (the volley is out of bounds, but the actors play on).

Our liberal returns with the assertion that, on the contrary, such corporations are the paradigm of unfettered greed and exploitation, grown under the untenable conditions of unregulation (the return is further out of bounds on the other side, but the actors play on).

Our conservative arrives at the ideological position that corporations and their rights and liberties must be supported at all costs against a liberal opposition that hates corporations (the return is up in the stands somewhere by the pressbox, but the actors miraculously play on).

Our liberal arrives at the ideological position that the rights of individuals must be protected at all costs from ruthless corporations, and from a conservative opposition that cares nothing for exploited individuals...

And the actors play on endlessly, smashing the ball carelessly and recklessly in the general direction of their opponent without any regard for the boundaries of the court itself.

What we end up with is a conservative whose underlying ideological principles of just market rewards for the hard work of industrious individuals has become subordinated to a crude and unthinking pro-business ideology, derived oppositionally from a boundless struggle with a liberal opponent. This conservative has undermined the foundational principles of his conservative identity by taking an ideological position against the right of an industrious individual to be compensated for labor in a free market.

And what of our liberal? By the time he gets through with the conservative, he's arguing for the very types of individualisms that constitute the core of his opponent's conservative thought.

This is how American politics can have swaths of Tea Party activists who hate elitist New-England liberals but love the Founding Fathers (a bunch of elitist New-England liberals). This is how we can have swaths of free-market capitalist investment bankers making arguments for government bailouts of failed private firms. This is how a constitutional right to bear arms can turn into a constitutional justification for a psychotic obsession with guns themselves.

A strange world, this.

Myths about Literature Scholars Dispelled (for Holiday Encounters)

2010-12-08T16:59:00.002Z

PMB figures you should bear a few things in mind that will make dealing with your resident literature scholar a more endurable, even pleasant experience this holiday season. After all, your token scholar will likely return home (family), attend an office holiday party (colleagues), or ask you to please move at the bookstore (random encounters!), so read up and prepare to deal with them. They can get grumpy over the holidays because of the inflated ratio of consumerism to personal wealth that a lit. scholar typically experiences at this time of year.

The Myths In No Particular Order:

1) A book is always a good gift.

There are so many reasons why a book is quite often not a good gift. The main reason is that any book is a reminder to a lit. scholar of how many books are on the impossible to-read list, which is comparable in volume to Borges' Library of Babel. Accordingly, unless the lit. scholar specifies a book or type of book, s/he probably won't have time to read the book you've gifted anytime this decade. Feelings of guilt--both personal and professional--will compound exponentially for every day the gifted book goes unread.

It's also true that, despite common misconceptions, lit. scholars actually don't fetishize books as much as they sometimes lead you to believe. Often it's worthwhile for a lit. scholar to pretend that s/he loves books that much, and feels the need to pop a handful of aspirin upon a Kindle sighting just to avoid having a brain hemorrhage, in order not to have to spend 20 minutes explaining to you the difference between a scholar trained to think of a weekend trip to Victoria's Secret as 'a narrative' and a the two-for-one-bra-sale sign as 'a text,' and a book collector.

2) Lit. scholars have holidays.

No. Even though two weeks of vacation time in a calendar year is scant enough to be a legitimate human rights concern (and a crime against humanity), at the very least your boss probably gives you that. Not so for the lit. scholar, who has no vacation, ever. And just to underscore that fact, many of the largest literature conferences occur in late December/early January. And when do you think that conference paper is going to get written? Merry Christmas, happy Chanukah, and all that...

3) Lit. scholars enjoy talking about books...with you.

Suppose you're at a holiday party, and you've just been introduced to your friend's fiancee, whom you're told is a particle physicist by trade. Would you ask him what his favorite subatomic particle is? Do you suppose he prefers bosons to leptons?

If that scenario sounds ridiculous, you should then understand why 'what is your favorite book' is the worst question you could possibly ask a lit. scholar. And, to clarify, the reason for this is not 'because there are just sooooo many great books!' The reason for this is because for lit. scholars, books are objects of study just like bosons are for particle physicists. Accordingly, no lit. scholar wants to have a conversation with you about books that would be the particle physics equivalent of 'so, do you enjoy the electron neutrino? Because I always found it sort of dry.' The wonderful thing about particle physics is that most people rightly understand that they don't know anything about particle physics. The awful thing about literature scholarship is that most people don't understand that they don't know anything about literature scholarship, but assume that because they can speak and read English they can carry on a worthwhile conversation about it. Wrong. Possible conversational alternatives: 'How's the weather in (where you live)?'; 'What are your thoughts on tax cuts?'; 'What is your favorite type of dumpling?'; 'Do you like sports?'; 'Do you remember when Sheetz sold fried macaroni and cheese bites, which was awesome? Do you think the FDA shut that down?'

4) Lit. scholars are drunks and philanderers.

Despite what Hollywood would lead you to believe, it's not true. But lit. scholars are happy that Hollywood pays attention to them. Given the film treatment, it's no wonder why this image of the lazy, underworked, oversexed, Dionysian literature professor persists; but it's a fallacy to assume that simply because people do a lot of work on fiction, they live fictive lives.

5) Lit. scholars want to become writers.

If 'what is your favorite book' is the worst question, 'do you want to become a writer' is the second-worst. Again, it would be absurd to ask your friend's physicist fiancee if he wants to become a quark; so why would someone who studies literature want to become a writer? Or, to put it more fairly, even if someone both studies literature and wants to become a writer, why should the one beget the other? I suppose an apple and an orange are both roughly spherical objects, and both mosquitos and airplanes fly, and both clouds and q-tips are white and fluffy; but commonalities (like being on opposite ends of the literary production process) don't always bespeak a larger relationship. If you want to become a writer, quite possibly the worst thing you can do is become a lit. scholar first.

There you have it. Tread lightly this holiday season!

Mathematics Will Destroy The Universe

2010-11-03T12:50:00.003Z

The October 2, 2010 issue of The New Scientist features an article called ‘Countdown to Oblivion,’ which explains the research of physicist Ben Freivogel and his team at UC Berkeley. Freivogel and colleague Raphael Buosso work on theories of eternal inflation, best (over)simplified as the notion that ‘different parts of space can undergo dramatic growth spurts, essentially ballooning into separate universes with their own physical properties.’ Further, ‘the process happens an infinite number of times, creating an infinite number of universes, called the multiverse’ (quoted from the article).

As the article explains, ‘the infinities involved mean that anything that can happen does happen—an infinite number of times,’ such that defining probabilities according to our typical means of doing so becomes hugely problematic. Accordingly, physicists take a slice—a ‘cut-off’—of the multiverse as a sample; ‘however, doing this inevitably slices through individual universes on the edge of the sample,’ leading to flawed probabilities…

…UNLESS (!), as Freivogel contends, ‘the mathematical cut-offs somehow have real and dire consequences for the places they intersect.’

In other words, as PMB understands it, the argument here is that because of an inexplicable hitch in a self-sealing mathematical method of making ‘cosmological predictions,’ the physicists involved are prepared to assume not that their method of understanding the cosmos is limited, but that a mathematical aporia can actually manifest itself in the physical destruction of the universe and the end of time.

The most striking quotes come from the scientists who are trying to negotiate the problem:

“‘We’re stuck between a rock and a hard place,’ says Buosso, ‘if you don’t like the cut-off, then you have no way of making predictions and deciding what’s possible in eternal inflation.’”

If you 'don't like' the cut-off?!?

PMB translation: if it doesn’t make sense to you how the existence of a mathematical problem can not merely signify, but actively create the destruction of the universe, then it may be better to just pretend like this is the case so that we can continue to run our simulations, unfettered.

And then:

“‘If we do have the end of time, then that’s a strange situation, but at least it solves this paradox,’ says Olum.’”

PMB translation: look, since solving this paradox is obviously more important to us than the continuation of time, we’re happy to accept this theory as soon as we can find a way to prove it.

PMB isn’t interested in commenting on the validity of Freivogel’s research or the solution to this paradox, nor is he qualified to do so. He flagged this article as an excellent example of how the supercilious Cult of Doing Science can actually undermine good scientific thinking. These physicists openly admit that their properly derived doubt about their conclusions is directly affected by the fact that such doubt could undermine the very method by which they do their work. Here what the public is led to believe is 'scientific,' hence bulletproof, by the Cult of Doing Science, is actually a good representation of much of what doing science actually entails: speculation, assumption, doubt, failure, readjustment.

(And before the scientists find a way to get self-righteous about this portrayal of science as rather difficult work, let PMB remind you that science disciplines aren't the only ones who experience this amid the rigors of their work; same is true for everyone else).

The real rock and hard place are these: if the scientific community focuses on doing good science above its pursuit of monopolizing knowledge itself, it will necessarily have to open up the public to the same kinds of doubts about science that any scientist faces every day; and if it opens up the public to that truth, the public may cease to drink the kool aid.

Jean Baudrillard, representative par excellence of the sort of literary and cultural theory that famed physicist Alan Sokal pilloried in 1996, argued in Simulacra and Simulation (1981) that we've reached a point of references without referents, where simulations become the new reality, taking precedence over any perceived notion of the real.

Now PMB is starting to think that the cultural theorists are having the last laugh...

This Is A University

2010-10-12T12:47:00.003Z

A university is this. You don't have to agree with every aspect of the Wikipedia entry, but it's a solid starting point. A university is an institution of higher education. Universities have professors and students. Research happens at universities because research is part of higher education. That is, research is something fundamental to the process of educating students at universities.

This is not a university. The Max Planck Institutes undoubtedly educate people, but only as a residual function of their primary purpose: to conduct research.

If you've spent time at a major research university, however, you can certainly be pardoned for thinking that there really isn't much of a meaningful difference between a university as you know it and an independent research institution like those of the Max Planck Society. Particularly if you're used to UK and European institutions of higher education--which are almost exclusively research universities--and have never set foot on a liberal arts campus, where the primary aim of the institution is to teach undergraduates--this idea that a university is not primarily a research institution might seem disconcertingly foreign to you.

In fact, in places like the UK, and with few exceptions, academics, higher education administrators, and politicians are all essentially lying to themselves and others by continuing to think of the UK's leading universities as, well, universities. It's no secret that, but for resource-intensive undergraduate curricula at places like Oxford and Cambridge, teaching is really an afterthought at UK universities. And at the end of the day, when government cuts have to be made, the loudest voices in UK higher education are those who head the top research universities and fear that taking away elite-research money and giving it to more teaching-centered post-92 universities will be the end of UK higher education as we know it. The idea of the university as a research institution first (and a teaching institution second, if at all) rules the day in the UK, and has done so for a while now.

The implications of this attitude that universities are primarily for research are startling, especially at a time when budget cuts mean universities have to be even more explicit about what they aim to do and how they aim to do it. What many in UK higher education are proposing, perhaps unwittingly, is the end of the university. In other words, if the most compelling argument for higher education funding is that such funding will produce top-flight, globally competitive research products, everything non-research about the university, plus every university research pursuit (e.g. in the humanities) whose main purpose is to bolster teaching efforts, rather than to stand alone as a marketable research product in itself, will falter. Effectively, what higher education leaders and politicians are currently asking for is funding to become independent research institutes like the Max Planck. That they're using the longstanding legitimacy and social cache of the idea of the university--a place of learning, hence a place of teaching--as a cover for abolishing that very thing, however, is nothing short of appalling to old curmudgeons like PMB.

Many independent research institutions and research-producing corporations do very well, both by themselves and by the broader societies for whom they produce research. But the end of the university is not just the end of our primary means of higher-level teaching and instruction, in both vocational and non-vocational terms, for centuries; it's also the end of the professional study and teaching of whole fields of inquiry and bodies of knowledge. Many fields, like literature, philosophy, classics, religion, history, anthropology, law, etc., don't produce--and don't aim to produce--standalone research products with direct or immediate social impact. A peer-reviewed journal article on a novel about Middle-Eastern trade, read by a small handful of other scholars interested in the given field, will not have much, if any, societal impact. The same article, read by another scholar, taught to a classroom of students, and internalized by a couple of them who later go off into policy work on the Middle East may confer a real benefit, the deep understanding of that particular history (to give a convoluted example, as they always are). By contrast, if a chemical engineer develops a way of making better televisions, however trivial the benefit of having a marginally better television may be, it's nonetheless a direct benefit--a standalone research product that makes an immediate impact. If the playing field is tilted in favor of research or the standalone research product as the primary aim of the university, both teaching and the types of research that principally aid teaching will fall by the wayside. The university as a place of learning and instruction, a place with professors and students, will become instead an independent research institution that students will no longer pay to attend, serving only a research elite for very narrow purposes.

Addendum: Almost every day PMB engages in discussions about the relative values of various fields of research. While most are carrying on about how their brilliant research aims to cure cancer or AIDS or Malaria, or produces 'crucial' medical technologies, or even produces better televisions, the idea that the central benefit of some research is actually teaching and educating young students, and preparing them for a range of careers and experiences, simply never registers. At an independent research institute, this wouldn't be a problem. At a so-called university, it's an abomination.

Down With College Football

2010-09-17T13:46:00.004Z

Now is a special time in America. The UVA and Michigan grads working in finance flock to the bars in their college colors on crisp fall Saturdays pretending to some solidarity with the young men who do gridiron battle on college's behalf each week. Perhaps more importantly, the spectators, who, unlike the spectated, were forced more or less to attend class as a precondition of collegiate success, can claim solidarity with one another over the weekly toils of their modern-day Spartans, at once revering and celebrating the godlike players for their athletic prowess and exploiting them for the fanfare they generate. It's college football season, baby!

Emerging from the background on occasion at this time of year are the Andy Katzenmoyer stories: tales of college football gods who were drafted to the NFL only to suffer career ending injuries, prompting the fabled 'what the fuck now' moments that come when someone who was enrolled in courses such as 'Golf,' 'AIDS Awareness,' and 'Music' at Ohio State University all of a sudden can't rely on his body to earn him a livable income any longer. The sports pundits had a great laugh about Andy Katzenmoyer's course-load (after which he was barely academically eligible to compete in football), just as they did when reporters discovered that University of Georgia head basketball coach Jim Herrick had enrolled his athletes in a course for credit at UGA called 'Basketball 101,' taught by Herrick himself, whose exams consisted of questions like 'how many points does a 3-point field goal account for in a basketball game?' But this stuff isn't really funny, is it? Should we be laughing at Andy Katzenmoyer, a kid who was told that his only purpose in college was to play football, allowed to slide on everything else, and had is only waking purpose taken away from him in the blink of an eye? What about these Georgia kids enrolled in Basketball 101? Is this the kind of education they deserve? Is basketball all they're good for? And what about the non-athlete students at University of Georgia? Is this what their degree is really worth? How many points does a 3-point field goal account for?

'I see here you're a Georgia grad. Go Bulldogs! But sorry, you need an accredited degree to get a job here.'

It's easy for an educated bear to be snarky about these things, just as it's easy for the sports nuts to have a good laugh about them, and then go back to their frantic coverage of bigtime collegiate sports, as if the guy running a personal training studio in god-knows-where Ohio is just a joke or an aside, nothing to do with the industry that made him. But being snarky isn't really the point.

In its present condition, college football is a bad thing.

The idea of collegiate sports, like a range of other extracurriculars that can build skills and character, and can generally enrich someone's college experience, is a great thing. But the multi-billion dollar industry that is college football is not an extracurricular; so we should stop pretending like that's all it is. While some 'student-athletes' undoubtedly do go to college foremost for an education, and take their *college* responsibilities seriously, it's a widely accepted fact that most bigtime college athletes are on 'scholarship' for football (or basketball) first, and scholarship second. In many cases, these athletes are there for football *only*, and scholarship *never*. Instead of being treated like every other student, they're treated differently, in some ways advantageously, in others disastrously.

Proponents of the current system say bigtime college athletes are given tremendous opportunities that others might not have, like a free college education, for example. They say many of these kids are first-generation college students, and/or come from difficult personal backgrounds. They're usually right. And the idea of giving a disadvantaged, first-generation college student a free education is a fantastic one. Except that this isn't what really happens. There is no education. There is only football.

Proponents of the current system say that far from being exploited, these kids are treated like campus and hometown gods. They live like local celebrities, and in some cases national and international celebrities. They get all the advantages in the world, while Joe Average majoring in math and playing the tuba in the pep band gets nothing of the sort. Again, they're right. Except that the respect and dignity with which these players are treated is wholly contingent upon their athletic success; it rarely encourages strong performance in the classroom; and it rarely lasts beyond college for those who don't go on to play professional sports. Sure, there are success stories, too. The NCAA makes a point in its advertisements to find successful former student-athletes who 'went pro' in something other than sports; but what about the majority at a range of universities in innumerable bigtime sports programs who fail to even graduate?

College football also largely fails to benefit the university that houses the program, and in many cases actually harms the university. After all, it's the university that enables the college football industry to have athletes who generate billions of dollars in merchandise, TV contract, and ticket-sales revenue *work for free*. In fact, it's the governing body of collegiate sports, the NCAA, which specifically places strict limitations on the earning potential of college athletes, making sure they can't legally cash in on their talents and abilities. Sorry Reggie. And where does all the revenue go, if not to the athletes? Well, in many cases college coaches make more than the president of the university. In others state-of-the-art spectator stadiums and company boxes are installed for local supporters and alumni to watch the games luxuriously. In others the athletes themselves are flown from coast to coast for competitions and given professional-caliber training facilities, not so that they can be the best college students they can be, but so they can be the best college football players. Where does the money *not* go? It does *not* go toward hiring top faculty and building better teaching facilities. Nor toward research grants or scholarships for non-football-playing, academic 'stars.' Nor toward libraries or campus-wide WiFi or even nicer dormitories. It usually stays in athletic-department coffers to be spent on the primary expenses of the athletic department: the football and basketball teams.

In this scenario, the bigtime college football industry needs the university to furnish it with a default loyal fanbase and a team full of super-talented athletes who generate massive amounts of money *for free*; yet two or three assistant football coaches will undoubtedly make higher salaries than the most accomplished professor of classics or engineering at a given university, and the academic side (ha!) of the university will be looked upon by coaches and athletic department personnel as a mere nuisance that detracts from their mission of providing the wider world with a great football team.

Here's what needs to be done about this mess:

If a college football program surpasses a set revenue limit, it should be forced to choose between three options. The revenue limit would be like an eligibility clause of the sort imposed on the athletes for their non-acceptance of compensation for their efforts. Options:

A) Forfeit all profit to the university, whose panel of faculty and administrators will decide how much the football team should get, with the vast majority of revenue going back into the university and earmarked specifically for educational pursuits foremost, and then infrastructural improvements secondarily. Adhere to university demands that student-athletes actually be students first. And let these demands be properly enforced.

B) Scale back the program and its assets such that it does not surpass the set revenue limit in the following year.

C) Break off from the university altogether, at which point the program has to fund itself completely, procure its own facilities, and find its own athletes willing to play either for free or for whatever the program can offer them. Athletes will have to choose whether to remain enrolled at the university and not play for the disaffiliated team or to forfeit their place at the university to remain a member of the team. Those who choose to stay on at the university and leave the team would retain their scholarships.

Then, without the university propping up and legitimizing the industry that hangs upon it like a parasite, we would perhaps see how many athletes are willing to work for free, and how many programs are actually serious about this whole student-athlete thing.

Ailing America: Race, Ethnicity, and American Identity

2010-09-07T18:16:00.014Z

Philip Roth's The Counterlife features a type of conflict that, however prominent in today's geopolitics, never really takes on in its distilled form the tabloid luster of certain Americans' little wars with Islam in certain parts of Manhattan. One of Roth's characters is an ethnically Jewish, non-religious American dentist from New Jersey who decides at midlife to leave his family and move to a desert settlement in Israel to take up the cause of militant Zionism. The conflict that emerges between Roth's born-again Zionist and his older brother, also American-born and non-religious, and very happy to stay that way, is profound: for the Zionist brother, it is impossible to be an authentic Jew in America, or anywhere else outside of Israel; a diaspora Jew is no Jew at all. For the older brother, the battle for Jewish consciousness and Jewish identity can be just as real in America as it is for the Zionist in war-torn Israel; and the preferred victor in both regards is the tolerant, pluralist, nonviolent American Jew, rather than the Zionist Jew who understands the very core of Jewishness as as a bloody struggle against Arabs and other Gentile forms for a specifically Jewish state. At the heart of such a conflict is the question of whether American pluralism can adequately protect historically persecuted groups like the Jews, the question of whether a tolerant and pluralist society is really possible in a balkanized and conflict-ridden world. The question can be put more succinctly: is collective identity possible?

To pretend that America's ongoing conflict with militant Islam--and the ways in which such a conflict seeps into our personal and political dealings with non-militant Islam--has nothing to do with America's geopolitical relationship with Israel, and bears no analogical relationship to militant Zionism, is a seeming impossibility. Yet this is what we do, what our politicians do, what our media do, day after day. Make no mistake about it, however: the battle that rages in the Middle East between militant Arabs and militant Jews--a battle whose residue seeps into the personal and political dealings with non-militant Arabs and non-militant Jews in the Middle East--has everything to do with the interest of Islamic militants in the destruction of America, the American wars in the Middle East, and, in no small way, the series of racial and ethnic conflicts in America that are tearing at America from all ends. Here in America, as there in the Middle East, it is pointless and outright bigoted to blame the Arabs or the Jews. If you seek a culprit for all of this material and symbolic destruction and misery, that culprit lies somewhere along the fault line of this great conflict between collective and singular identity.

For the most part, Americans may not be throwing stones from tenement buildings at each others' cars, or policing the Mason-Dixon line with loaded assault rifles. There is no missile mounted in Tempe and pre-programed for Guadalajara, and there isn't likely to be one. But two things inflame this American struggle between collective and singular identity, and have been doing so for a long time now.

From the American left we have a crude, racialized brand of identity politics that virtually ignores ethnic distinctions and places the most prominent American races (white, Hispanic, black, Asian) in opposition to one another (and to the exclusion of all others). It then places 'whites' and 'minorities' in opposition to one another. As a consequence, the meaningful ethnic values and experiences of all Americans are generally subordinated to vague racial categories that are over-vulnerable to crude stereotypical definition and racial in-fighting. While these racial categories afford high levels of solidarity and political agency in some cases, in others they force people to sacrifice important aspects of their ethnic cultural background and upbringing in exchange for political visibility.

Though 'white' political visibility is justifiably less important than minority political visibilities because of the historical, and in many senses enduring, privileges of those Americans constituted as a 'white' majority, 'whiteness' is not immune from identity crisis under such a system. While 'white' identity is largely conceived of as contemporary Anglo-Protestant identity (see the bestselling 'Stuff White People Like,' based on the blog), first-, second- and third-generation 'white' Americans hailing from the massive waves of Irish, Italian, Polish, German, etc. immigrants to America in the 20th century are no more comfortable being thought of as 'the same' as would be a Korean-American presumed Japanese or an Afro-Caribbean American presumed Sudanese. As we've seen recently, a number of fearful, often under-educated 'white' Americans have lashed out against 'Muslims,' 'foreigners,' 'Mexicans,' 'illegal aliens,' 'anchor babies,' etc. in racially charged ways, prompting media commentators to consider the possibility that this tide of fear and aggression has something to do with the election of a 'black' president, a symbol of 'nonwhite' power during a time in which American racial and ethnic demographics are shifting. If there is anything to such a theory, it's quite possible that those 'whites' who are either flatly bigoted or simply ill-equipped to make sense of pluralist values and to understand racial, ethnic, and religious difference are feeling particularly embattled about their constitution as ethnically mislabled or non-labeled, blank, blanco, and are adopting a particular (and particularly xenophobic) 'American' identity in opposition to the racialized minority. To put it simply, many 'white' Americans don't know what they hell they are or are supposed to be within this prevailing system of racializing Americans, so are deciding that to be white is to be American, to be American is to be white. Now this twisted indignation wells up in anti-historical, sentimentalist rants about the 'loss of America,' the 'end of our country,' the horror of 'Obama's America,' held in opposition to 'my America,' 'my ['white'] America.' 'I'll take my guns, money, religion, and freedom, and you can keep the 'change.''

Now we begin to understand the challenge to American pluralism launched from the American right: American history is revised such that 'America' has always been a particular thing not entirely different from the Zionist Jewish utopia...only the Protestant Christian version. 'American' values therefore proceed from a narrow set of Anglo-Protestant ethnic values. An 'American' is not a Muslim or a Jew or a homosexual or even a Catholic. 'American' governance is based on the pull-yourself-up-by-the-boot-straps Protestant ethic, hence social welfare programs are 'un-American.' 'American' governments are to be as small as possible, but may become large and sprawling to defend the 'American' interest abroad in military conflict. 'America' is a nation under [Protestant] God; and because God gave 'Americans' animals to eat and oil to burn, concerning oneself with the rights of animals that don't bark or meow or the reduction of un-clean energy use for the sake of the environment and/or the climate are also 'un-American.' This is a crude picture, yes. But each of these positions, typically taken by the American right, center on a distinct sense of 'Americanness,' a very particular understanding of what America is. And PMB didn't paint this picture; he merely copied it.

The historical record of America proves otherwise, however. As PMB has written elsewhere, the success of America stems primarily from its pluralist tradition, or its remarkable history of accepting a plurality of types into the American fold. Certainly such acceptance hasn't come at a cost, or gone over without serious periods of difficulty, exploitation, and violence. After Jewish, Italian, and Irish immigrants arrived, before they were all considered 'white,' they had their bloody battles and their ghetto mentalities, but eventually they learned to get along, to think of each other as equally American. After the Alien and Sedition Acts, the abject practice of slavery, Japanese internment, and the McCarthy-era inquisitions, Americans have chosen liberal democracy over theocracy, openness over insularity, pluralism over zealotry. Today, one hopes, Americans will choose Mosques in Manhattan over bigotry and fear, and ethnic difference over racial conflict. To do so will be to prolong a great tradition that stands as proof of the ability of collective identity to function with and incorporate a multitude of singular, overlapping, not unchanging or uncomplicated identities shaded and flourishing under its expansive wingspan. Roth's Zionist character ultimately has it wrong: he can't see a path to his ethnic self-realization within a pluralist society, so he chooses an exclusionary society, a society that understands difference as a war imperative rather than an opportunity for strengthening and growth.

Lawyers and Carpenters

2010-09-01T17:07:00.004Z

Camille Paglia had this to say about 'the defining idea of the coming decade' in higher education: re-valorize the trades! PMB hopes that this idea does flourish in the years to come, but for reasons slightly different than Paglia's.

For Paglia and many others, higher education should be devoted to vocational training and preparation first and foremost. They argue that since nowadays jobs are no longer guaranteed (as though they ever were) to newly minted college graduates, since the marketplace is globalized and hypercompetitive, and since the price tag of a college education is becoming almost preventatively steep, colleges and universities need to rethink the grandiose 'liberal arts' model and get more serious about preparing students with 'job skills' to make them more competitive and employable. This is the kind of reasoning that underlies Paglia's call for the partnering of liberal arts colleges and research universities with vocational-technical institutions; the call, in other words, to re-valorize the trade vocations.

Paglia and others rightly identify a problem--the increasing difficulty college graduates face in finding gainful employment--but seem to miss entirely the causal roots of this predicament. Similarly, while encouraging young people to consider trade vocations is an excellent solution, it's only a partial solution.

The heart of the problem is not that colleges and universities fail to prepare graduates for the job market or 'the real world,' or fail to impart the necessary skills, experiences, and modes of acculturation for young job-seekers. As PMB has written elsewhere, anyone who's ever worked even a highly competitive corporate job understands that actually very few transferable skills (and very basic ones at that) are required to succeed in these kinds of jobs. In terms of 'skills,' the average college graduate is overprepared, not underprepared, for most jobs that appear on the job-seeking radar of a college graduate.

The heart of the problem, rather, is that, much like the housing market, the higher education market is experiencing a bubble that can't be sustained without significant changes to the way business is done in higher education. Much like the way public policy and popular opinion pushed people into buying homes that they couldn't afford by giving the impression that home ownership is a necessity and an unconditional public good, we have too many students pursuing a specific kind of higher education, one-size-fits-all, for which they are underprepared, undermotivated, and in many cases under-competent. The far-and-away most influential reason for this crippling problem is the idea, sold to millions like a laced methamphetamine, that the purpose of a college education is to get you a better job. In a roundabout way, then, it is precisely the vocationalization of higher education--the get-you-a-job focus--that is responsible for the failure of a college education to help graduates secure jobs. And the more we emphasize 'job skills' and vocational aims in higher education, as we do now, the worse the situation will get.

A strong solution to this problem is to use vocational aims to de-emphasize vocational aims. In other words, provide room in higher education for overtly vocational pursuits in order to take unwarranted and counterproductive pressure off of academic disciplines to supplant primary content with nondescript 'job skills training.'

Because deflating the higher education bubble means doing a better job of matching the skills and interests of young people with the appropriate avenues to develop those skills and pursue those interests (as opposed to shuttling everyone into a traditional 4-year college with a primarily academic core curriculum under the impression that no college degree = no fulfilling job), we should, as Paglia suggests in a light way, try partnering vocational programs with academic programs at universities. This could give students who have no interest in (or aptitude for) academic pursuits the option to enroll after high school in an apprentice-style vocational trade program (carpentry, plumbing, electrician, computers, etc.) without wholly abandoning ties to an academic university should the student want to take distributive courses in academic disciplines along the way, or decide later to transfer into academia altogether. In fact, the possibility of a joint program with a core academic curriculum (humanities, civics, finance and economics) and trade certification would be exciting. Likewise, joint programs could provide options for academic-track students to learn trade skills that could end up launching a lucrative and fulfilling career in trade, rather than the kind of generalized 'office job' that millennial seem to be taking and leaving and taking and leaving and taking and leaving ad infinitum. Rather than holding the two (academic and trade) paths separate, selling the 'academic' path to a majority middle class as the way to avoid 'undesirable' trade careers, the two general sets of skills and pursuits should live much closer together. Trade students should have access to the civic benefits of higher education, just as the countless graduates of four-year colleges and universities who develop during college no real interest in becoming lawyers, doctors, professors, or any other profession for which an academic background is essential, shouldn't have to file into nondescript corporate 'white-collar' jobs after graduation, tens of thousands of dollars in education debt, just because these are the only jobs we seem to deem acceptable for college graduates. Such a system would also reduce the absurd pressures to vocationalize foisted upon academic disciplines in the sciences and humanities for which vocational training is really (and ought to be) secondary to subject matter.

PMB's radical proposal, first wave: rage against the propagandists who suggest that literally everyone belongs in an academic, four-year institution of higher education, a suggestion that implicitly undervalues the trade professions. Take the vocational pressure off of academic disciplines that are not and were never concerned with 'getting you a job' by fighting the political battle within your departments and universities. It won't happen any other way.

PMB's radical proposal, second wave: restructure underperforming and essentially non-competitive universities to include something like a College of Business and Trade, a College of Engineering, and a College of Humanities and Sciences (in many cases all this would mean is integrating the trades). Give the programs more flexibility, in curricula and in tuition fees. Let the admissions standards vary within university colleges. Let there be selective liberal arts colleges structured more or less as they are now (types like Amherst, Bucknell, Colgate, Davidson, Holy Cross, etc.), but partner them with vocational institutions. Do the same with elite universities like Harvard, Stanford, etc. If the best universities aren't broken or bankrupt, they don't need to be fixed; but students of all types could still benefit from having trade ties.

It won't be as simple as it's written here; but it's clear that we need to stop pretending that the unrigorous force-feeding of 'job skills' to students who don't even go to class is all of a sudden going to produce more jobs, or more qualified people to fill them.

Mosqueing Attitudes

2010-08-15T21:35:00.003Z

Few times has PMB been so embarrassed for his country as now, in light of the rigorous and misguided opposition to plans to build a mosque and Islamic community center near Ground Zero in New York City.

Those in opposition to the building plans are claiming that a mosque and Islamic center built near Ground Zero would be an affront to the victims of 9-11, a breach of the sanctity of the tragic site, and would signify capitulation to proponents of radical Islam.

Few on either side of the issue would openly admit that they can identify no difference between what is called 'radical Islam,' 'Islamofacism,' 'Al-Quaidaism,' 'Islamic terrorism,' etc. and the peaceful, 'mainstream' practice of Islam in places all over the world, including New York. Most reasonable people would consider the simple equation of the practice of Islam with terrorism a straightforwardly bigoted attitude. Nonetheless, the rapid and unthinking and direct association of Islam in general, by way of the image of the mosque, and the radical Islamic terrorism of 9-11, underpins the entirety of the position against building a mosque and Islamic community center near Ground Zero. If the simple ontological status 'Muslim' is rendered equivalent to 'terrorism,' our attitude problem at home is as potentially threatening to the American way of life as is any danger abroad.

One could argue that even the mere evocation of anything loosely 'Muslim' is offensive at Ground Zero, given what's happened there, even if there is no explicit or admitted equivalency being produced between Muslim Americans in New York and 9-11 terrorists. But as long as we indulge that paranoia, we again threaten to undermine some of the very basic freedoms that make America what it is.

The building of a mosque and Islamic community center near Ground Zero would be the ultimate symbol of American endurance, the ultimate sign of America prevailing over terrorism, and the ultimate slap in the face to radical Islamic terrorist groups who would like nothing more than for Americans to turn against our own pluralist values and become the monster they portray us as.

When terrorist struck down the twin towers on 9-11, they thought they had struck at the symbolic heart of America, the pillars of America as world financial center. Little did they know that America is best exemplified by its pluralism, tolerance, and polyvocality: by the faces you can still see climbing on and off the World Trade Center Subway stop and walking along Wall St. and Vesey St. where the towers used to be. Erecting a mosque and whatever else serves the community there would demonstrate that America is still the diverse and tolerant community that's made it great. PMB can think of few things that would constitute sweeter poetic justice than the building of a mosque and Islamic community center near Ground Zero.

The ultimate shame, however, is the politicizing by people who have nothing to do with New York, on a national level, of these building plans, along with the childish fear and unenlightened contempt exhibited by those opposed. To raise a political fuss over the wholly legal and appropriate building of the planned Islamic community facilities in their planned location is to take a hack at the most important pillar that Americans ever built: the pluralist tradition.

Research for Research's Sake?

2010-08-05T18:41:00.009Z

In a July 13, 2010 Guardian article, Malcolm Grant, provost of University College London, is quoted arguing that imminent government cuts to higher education should be directed at closing down lesser universities altogether, if need be, rather than reducing budgets at elite research universities. Grant's rationale, which in many ways makes sense, is that while top-flight UK research universities make the UK a top competitor in the global research biz, and "research" writ large is a rather important biz in which to be a leader, many of the UK's teaching-oriented, non-research, or semi-research universities underperform in their primary task of teaching, and do little to produce world-leading research. Grant's fear is that by taking research funding and resources away from top research universities, the UK government will render the UK's top research universities less competitive, all while reducing the potential for practically beneficial research. Much of the force of Grant's argument, which is foremost a very public appeal for the people who vote and pay taxes to side with him, UCL, and places like it when the government decides to bring down the funding hatchet, can be summed up in these remarks, quoted from the article, with Grant's quotes quoted within:

"Such a move [to cut research funding] could 'decimate Britain's global competitiveness in research', Grant told the Guardian, arguing that there is a 'direct human benefit' in areas such as cancer and Parkinson's disease from research-intensive universities."

As universities all over the world are facing the possibility, if not the certainty, of budget cuts, whether from government or from their own trustees and administrators, the kind of thinking Grant espouses comes up frequently. Typical are calls to validate everything that universities do according to some immediate demonstration of "direct human benefit," as though the only things that have "direct human benefit" are things that can also be easily quantified on a balance sheet and/or explained concisely and convincingly to a shareholder-type with an attention span rivaling that of a moth. The logical conclusion of such thinking is that the primary purpose of a university--and hence the primary activities for which it is or ought to be funded--is research. "Research." "Research," from the expensive chemical analysis of belly-button lint to the sequencing of the human genome. All that need be uttered to win over the holder of the purse strings in the eyes of so many is "research" (excluding, naturally, nonscientific research--even if you successfully pass this off as "research," they'll eventually catch you at the "payoff" or "takeaway" stages of the "direct human benefit" assessment, when you ramble on for more than thirty seconds about your "research").

Now is a good time to turn to Princeton philosopher Peter Singer, who had this to say in Animal Liberation, his seminal discussion of the inclusion of animals within our ethical spheres (which, naturally, touches on the use of animals for scientific research):

"In addition to the general attitude of speciesism that experimenters share with other citizens, some special factors also help to make possible some of the experiments I have described. Foremost among these is the immense respect that people sill have for scientists."

Now PMB should inform you that the types of experiments Singer is writing about here are not only, as one might guess from his broader topic, experiments on animals, but also experiments with humans that demonstrate our general willingness to put "science" and "research" ahead of ethics or rationality. Singer gives as an example of this "immense respect that people still have for scientists" a well-known Harvard study in which people who were told to "punish" fellow humans with electric shocks (in the name of "research") would follow the order when it was given by people in white lab coats, continuing to do as the lab-coated "scientist" recommends even as the human writhes and shouts in pain in full view (it should be noted that the person "being shocked" was only acting according to the "shocker's" administration of "shocks," and wasn't being shocked or tortured for real).

The rational and probably non-sadistic person in the Harvard experiment shocking the hell out of a human subject under the direction of a white-coated scientist is a phenomenal metaphor for much of our decision making in higher education. Whatever you think about Singer's ethical position with respect to animals, his anecdote provides significant insight into the flawed logic and the prejudices that affect so much of this decision-making. Research Almighty is almost always granted top priority in the value chain as "directly beneficial" to our lives, despite prominent research findings that suggest, among other things, that by the late 20th century, the vast minority (generously 3.5-5%) of improvements in population mortality could be attributed to medical intervention (versus environmental factors) (Singer's book, to some extent outdated, cites Thomas McKeown's The Role of Medicine, 1976, and the J.B. and S.M. McKinlay study "Trends in Death and Disease and the Contribution of Medical Measures," 1988). We might then begin to talk about what kinds of research (or non-research practices) best improve quality of life; but then we're starting to move into the realm of things that, like a discussion of the value of Chaucer, might take up a bit more time than the shareholders have to listen.

None of this is to say that research shouldn't be a priority, or that research is valueless. Of course one living in this world would have to be blind to much of their own reality to assert such a thing. Nonetheless, research of no kind should ever get the free pass that much of it does, much less be bandied about as a panacea and a monolithic concept all wrapped into one, then splashed over the headlines as an argument to de-fund and de-emphasize teaching in higher education, and in so doing to slash opportunities for a broader range of willing and eager students to gain access to higher education. The simple utterance of the word "research" a few times in an argument is hardly enough to settle debates about the purpose of higher education. Likewise, this word is not enough to cloud the astute reader's rather vivid impression of the innumerable ways and instances, from cancer research with the noblest intentions to animal testing for consumer cosmetics, in which "studies" and "research" produce nothing but a line item on someone's CV, plus negative externalities ranging from large-scale pain, suffering, and death to inconceivable wastes of money.

The World Cup and English Nationalism

2010-06-28T11:05:00.003Z

PMB loves the English, and is privileged to be perched comfortably in an English dwelling. But he can't help himself at the moment. It's routine to hear English friends and acquaintances smugly denounce Americans, for their football (soccer), their lack of 'culture' (whatever that means), their nationalism, their guns and religion, even their (very un-English) public and political sentimentality. More often than not these denunciations come from people whose impression of the US is derived either from the English print media (whose coverage of all things American is as cartoonish and myopic as is the American media's coverage of Palestine), or a view of Times Square on a brief visit to New York for which a junket beyond Manhattan would constitute some kind of ethnic cultural overload for the average Brit. Come World Cup time, especially in matches against Germany, however, virtually everything the English allege about Americans that the English in fact espouse and embody threefold simmers to the surface. Beyond the English flag epidemic (that Germany hopefully cured yesterday), the patronizing comments by British TV announcers about little 'Africa' defeating the US ('it's men versus boys, and right now the boys are on top'), and the references to non-European countries suddenly 'learning' how to kick European ass all over the pitch this year, CBS news and the LA Times have included some gems that PMB, with much ambivalence, feels the need to highlight:

CBS NEWS:

"In England, they joke about the war, German accents and Hitler.

In Germany, they joke about the fact that the English joke about the war, German accents and Hitler.

The Germans used to get offended. Now they look on in slightly patronizing bemusement as English newspapers trot out ethnic stereotypes about war, Aryan races and bombing, preparing their readers for yet another agony-filled elimination game against their old foe Sunday.

With the German team now being made up of Poles, Turks, a Spaniard, a Ghanaian, a Nigerian and even a Brazilian, it's harder for the English to make fine German-baiting jokes. The Daily Star tried, coming up with a demonizing World War II remembrance headline, "Mixed Master Race," to describe the composition of the German team.

And the Daily Express offered this deep literary analysis: "Our national poet (Shakespeare) wrote 38 plays and 154 sonnets. His German equivalent wrote 'Faust,' a gloomy two-part drama about a man who sells his soul to the devil, and a novel called 'The Sorrows of Young Werther.' . . . The latter sparked a craze of copycat suicides among romantic young men. Generations of pupils forced to study Goethe's work know how they felt."

Here's the real joke: The Germans don't really care."

LA TIMES:

"The sad truth of the matter is that England's players, with few exceptions, are an arrogant, ignorant and unpleasant lot. They are paid far too much by their Premier League clubs, where their true allegiance lies, and their ability individually and collectively in an England shirt does not match their swagger.

It is not too much to say that the worthless and nationalistic English tabloids are reflected in the English team. It's all about drinking, drugs, womanizing, gambling, fast cars and slow minds. Little England written large.

Consider, for just a moment, these sophomoric headlines from the gutter press in the days leading up to Sunday afternoon's match at the Free State Stadium:

"Germans Wurst at Penalties."

"Herr We Go Again."

"Job Done, Now for the Hun."

"Das Boot Is on the Other Foot.""

Political (Haircut) Reform

2010-06-20T12:58:00.008Z

People are always talking about how politicians can be so untrustworthy and disconnected from 'everyday' citizens; how bitter partisanship is alienating voters; how something in politics needs to change before we can seriously reinvest ourselves in the notion that these talking heads can really make a difference for the better.

Well, PMB has a simple solution that could dramatically alter the face of politics for the better: political (haircut) reform. The proposed new law, which is straightforward and easy to implement in virtually any country in the world, reads as follows:

"No person shall be eligible for political office who parts his hair on the side and combs it across his forehead."

Examples of current politicians who would be rendered ineligible for political office by virtue of their haircuts are pictured below:

Virginia Governor (R) Bob McDonnell

Senate Minority Leader (R) Mitch McConnell

House Minority Leader (R) John Boehner

Without question, the disqualification of men who look like this from politics would make way for a whole new kind of politician, such as one who hasn't dedicated an entire life to becoming an establishment archetype.

"To get the product up..."

2010-06-08T12:31:00.003Z

It will take engineers--and damn good ones--to put a plug in the gushing oil well off the Gulf Coast that's leaked around 40 million 'barrels' of oil into the ocean, through the wetlands, and onto dry, American land; but it will take people who pay keen attention to language use and linguistic representation to put a plug in the mouths of people who can't seem to understand that the way we talk about things both indicates much about how we think about things, why we act (or fail to act) on things, and what those actions will look like.

Consider the ways in which prominent people in politics, industry regulation, and the media have talked about oil-in-quantity throughout the BP disaster:

Former US Environmental Protection Agency administrator and ConocoPhillips board member William K. Reilly, while pointing out the failure of the oil industry to reach the level of technological advancement necessary to prevent offshore and deap-sea drilling disasters, nonetheless can't help himself while marveling at the technology required to drill offshore and 'to get the product up.' For Reilly, a former EPA administrator, even in the context of describing the disaster of the endless spouting of oil from inside the Earth into the ocean, the natural substance, the sticky, black substance from the center of the Earth that existed before humans walked on two legs, is articulated as a "product." Just like, you know, a pair of shoes or a kind of breakfast cereal.

Sarah Palin, while on the campaign warpath (campaigning for herself, generally speaking, that is) has been a fiery proponent of offshore drilling. Her 'drill, baby, drill' mantra was taken up by more important colleagues like John McCain and Rudy Giuliani; but Palin in particular has phrased this desire strangely, suggesting we ought to drill for all the 'barrels of oil that are warehoused underground.' Palin is evidently so convinced of the idea that this naturally occurring substance called oil is not only inherently and primarily a commodity, but also that oil's commodity nature is best represented by thinking of oil as already prepackaged for sale, barreled-up, and stored neatly in rows in a commercial warehouse four miles beneath the surface of the Earth.

It's not just political shills like Palin, however, who chiefly conceive of oil as a prepackaged commodity. One notices with ease (given the repetition of coverage) that the standard unit for measuring the volume of oil is 'barrels,' such that even oil gushing out of control directly into the ocean (i.e. oil that is currently running wild, about as far from being corralled and commodified as possible) is measured and conceived of as 'barrels' of oil by media left, right, and center (wouldn't it be nice if the BP oil spill were really just 40 million barrels filled securely with oil floating around in the gulf, ripe for the plucking of BP cargo ships with big, barrel-snatching cranes attached to them?). Consider that the extent to which oil has been commodified, its price in barrels manipulated in finance markets far away from wells where the 'product' is extracted from the Earth, has led us to measure its volume not in standard metric or Imperial units, but in packaging units.

The reality, however, is that no matter how intensely and thoroughly we commodify something, be it a human or natural resource, a thing never becomes just a commodity. When we start thinking that we've successfully manipulated and brought under control through commodification virtually everything under the sun, divorcing material reality so far from perception, we play a very dangerous game. The language of those talking about the oil spill is telling, as it suggests that we've become so caught-up in the idea of oil as pure commodity, measured in 'barrels,' 'warehoused' underground for the taking and selling, a 'product' to be extracted, that we've lost sight of the fat, loud, sequined material fact that's been right in front of our faces the whole time: the oil floating around in the gulf and washing up on the shores in gelatinous blobs isn't available in barrels, never exited in a warehouse, and always has required tremendous labor and technology, and tremendous risk (including the risk of human life) to transform it into a neatly packaged commodity. When people get up and talk about oil, in the face of this disaster, as though it grows on a barrel tree in a warehouse somewhere, they demonstrate the very lack of care and consideration that produces disasters like the one in which we're currently embroiled. It's not that their metaphorical language should be understood literally, but that they're so deluded by the metaphor that the literal (and its attendant dangers and risks) has long since escaped them.

Yes, at the end of the day, a brilliant engineering team will 'save' the day by figuring out how to stop the gushing oil, and they'll get all the credit in the media and all the funding for future salvation projects, and they'll mostly deserve it. But if the rhetoric of 'drill baby drill for those warehoused barrels of oil' persists, this won't be the last Exxon-Valdez...ahem..BP oil disaster. Conventional wisdom (it's called 'conventional' in part because it's never particularly good) suggests that 'actions speak louder than words.' Well, you rarely hear of a human action that words didn't have a hand in causing.

"Real" Doctors?

2010-05-29T16:14:00.005Z

PMB is aware of a commonly held belief, particularly among Americans, that "real" doctors are medical doctors or physicians, and that it's offensively self-indulgent for PhD-holders to take the title "doctor." Whether this belief stems from the fact that physicians, and not chemical engineers or sociology professors, get to parade around in scrubs and expensive watches on popular TV shows, movies, and even real life, solving (or attempting to solve) a definitive set of explicitly illustrated problems with which we can all identify--or whether it's for some other reason--is not really PMB's concern here. Regardless of the cause, the belief that only physicians or medical doctors have the moral right to call themselves doctors is hogwash, based on ignorance of the history and meaning of the term "doctor" and the curricular differences between those who earn degrees in medicine and those who earn doctorates in academic disciplines. Viz:

The term "doctor" comes from the Latin "doctoris", or "teacher." Such a title has been, first and foremost for over a thousand years, an academic title. Though, coincidentally, the first academic degrees happened to be in professional disciplines, like medicine, law, and theology (theology is arguably no longer a professional discipline in the same way law or medicine are today), the title "doctor" was not bestowed simply on account of one studying medicine (or law, or theology), but because one achieved a certain level of academic distinction in a given discipline. "Doctor," "teacher," is a title of honor and accomplishment given someone who has become qualified to preside as a teacher in an institute of (higher) education. While a medieval or Renaissance "doctor" was likely to be a lawyer or a physician who also studied literature, philosophy, and the sciences (as "learned" people were "learned" people then, not specialized and divided as we are today after the democratization of education), "doctor" clearly bears no inherent relationship to the study or practice of medicine.

Presumably, after hundreds of years of linguistic slippage, the American "doctor" is more popularly understood as a physician or medical practitioner who has earned a medical doctorate, though this is at least partially the case because in the US, a doctoral degree is required to become a practicing physician. In much of the rest of the world, however, one is trained to become a physician without earning a doctorate. In the UK and much of Europe, for example, a degree in medicine (and in law) can be undertaken as one's undergraduate degree. Only after pursuing a doctoral degree (and usually submitting a thesis or dissertation of original research) does a physician become a "doctor" in the classical sense. The American-style usage of "doctor" as interchangeable with "physician" or "medic" persists in some cases, though it's widely understood that many such physicians actually don't hold doctorates at all.

As far as who deserves to wield the title of "doctor," or who gets to call themselves a "real" doctor,' the prejudice against PhD-holders is both ignorant and uncalled-for. Earning a PhD requires typically 2-3 years of coursework, examination, and/or thesis writing, only to be followed by another 3-5 years of independent research (and teaching "on the side" (ha!)) that must culminate in more or less a book-length dissertation that constitutes an original research contribution to a wider field of study. Of course, that research must be defended as the culmination of the doctoral degree, such that examiners are satisfied that the work is both strong and a viable contribution to the field. Not at all to belittle the medical doctoral curriculum, for which original research is not a requirement, but difficult and stressful examinations are; but at the very least one would be extremely hard-pressed to find evidence that earning a PhD is somehow easier or "softer" or less demanding or less "real" than earning a medical doctorate.

PMB is not in the business of telling people what to call themselves. Actually, PMB finds it tasteless to push a title--any title--in many social settings, even if you are a medical doctor. Further, PMB understands if people take exception to the use of titles in any or all situations these days, as there's an argument to be had about whether titles are unavoidably pompous, classist, etc. But the trouble starts for PMB when people unthinkingly assume not just that titles are bad, but that one type of doctor has any greater claim to the title than another, or any greater reason to identify as "doctor" in certain situations than another type. What exactly are the reasons for that differentiation, that imposed hierarchy of doctors, that gives medical doctors the right to identify as "doctor" while PhD-holders are somehow always considered insecure or pompous should they dare to take their rightful and proper title, for one reason or another?

It takes an offensive level of ignorance to think that someone who has gone through the long, grueling, and often thankless process of earning a PhD should be thought of as causing offense for simply entertaining the option of taking on the title "doctor," "teacher," which that accomplishment officially bestows upon them, and has for a millennium. A PhD-holder may not have the payoff at the end of the long road of seeing his profession dramatized amid blood and guts by the likes of George Clooney. In fact, a PhD-holder probably never had the satisfaction of taking a break from studying for exams or working late nights in the lab or brooding over a dissertation chapter to gather with friends and popcorn and have a med-school-class viewing of "Grey's Anatomy," a respite in which to fantasize about the days to come, sure to be filled with sex and heartache and, most importantly, salaries large enough to actually pay off student loans. But at the very least, a PhD-holder has the moral high ground, unequivocally, to call herself "doctor," every bit as much as, if not more than, a medical doctor, without being presumed insecure or pompous. Certainly all kinds of doctors can abuse their title and its attendant status and distinction; but the idea that only a medical doctorate deserves the option of distinction in certain situations is an insult, and should be taken as such. PhD-holders achieve a level of distinction and qualification well beyond that of BA- or MA- holders, for example, if not MD holders as well. Accordingly, PhD-holders should be expected to censor their accomplishments or to go by Mrs./Ms./Mr. no more than our ordinary holders of medical doctorates. If that's offensive to you, PMB suggests you make an appointment with your local academic historian (who, perhaps, may refer you to a specialist in the history or sociology of academic titles); they will likely have the cure for your ailment, probably for an alarmingly cheap fee.

More Arrogant: Americans or Scientists?

2010-05-20T12:28:00.003Z

As PMB collates in his fearsome paper head a few unprompted comments from scientists on science over the past couple of weeks, there can be little doubt that for some people, science is a cult idol. Rarely has a contingent been so arrogant about its primacy and potential.

Perhaps the most empirical observation we can make, present all around us, is that humans are terrible scientists. So easily fooled by optical illusions, differing vantage points, constant misapprehensions, and a sheer inability to apply rationality in our daily decision-making, we employ machines to count, measure, and process all that we cannot. Thank the Science Gods for science, which enables us to render scientific and explain scientifically all of that which we are not and do not understand scientifically. Thank the Science Gods for the Great Intelligent Design of Science, Science being perhaps the greatest artist--and PMB says this without irony--in the history of the world.

Science, like art, is a perfect self-sealing argument: defined scientifically through the scientific process, everything that can be crammed into this artificial framework can be churned out with a scientific explanation. Defined subjectively and contextually, everything that can be framed under the banner of art can be explained artistically. The difference between empirical truth and experienced truth is vast, though the presumed primacy of the former is as much a construct as the latter, and brings us no closer to an objective Truth, despite its claims of 'little objectivities' and its strategic essentialisms. The idea of science as the all-powerful and all-encompassing, general mode of progress and discovery, is crude and shortsighted, and ought not to be tolerated. From a hapless poet, William Blake, "Jerusalem":

They Plow'd in tears, the trumpets sounded before the golden Plow
And the voices of the Living Creatures were heard in the clouds of heaven
Crying; Compell the Reasoner to Demonstrate with unhewn Demonstrations
Let the Indefinite be explored. and let every Man be judged
By his own Works, Let all Indefinites be thrown into Demonstrations
To be pounded to dust & melted in the Furnaces of Affliction:
He who would do good to another, must do it in Minute Particulars
General Good is the plea of the scoundrel hypocrite & flatterer:
For Art & Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars
And not in generalizing Demonstrations of the Rational Power,
The Infinite alone resides in Definite & Determinate Identity
Establishment of Truth depends on destruction of Falshood continually
On Circumcision: not on Virginity, O Reasoners of Albion

The Case Against Conservatism, Made Simple

2010-05-15T12:56:00.004Z

There exists a long history of authoritarian disaster on the Left, which is rather easily pointed out: where communism reached its extremes in Leninism and Stalinism, for example, we saw the devastating potential of unchecked tendencies toward authoritarianism by way of a Leftist political agenda. What enabled these despotic regimes was fundamentally *not* any particular Marxist or collectivist ideology, but rather an interpretation of these ideologies that favors autocratic government and fears pluralism. In other words, a truly free and pluralist society has room for ideologues like Lenin and Stalin, but ultimately treads toward its own murderous decline when it finds ways to enshrine absolute power in the hands of ideologues instead of merely tolerating them and their political voices within the stable framework of a pluralist and rights-based democratic society. In this vein, for example, America tolerates the unsightly public demonstrations of neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan sheetheads, and does so admirably, its tolerance of even the most abominable speech positions being altogether very different from a (de facto, as it were) ratification of these extreme positions. This is how great pluralist societies work: instead of martyring the fringe, they protect the right of fringe expression and co-opt it into a broader and more sensible political discourse.

That said, here's the beginning of the case against today's American conservatism: whether conservatives like it or not, America is and has always been a pluralist nation par excellence. The greatness of America does not and has never come from any particular 'American' ideology or way of life, but rather through America's impeccable ability to accommodate a daunting range of ethnic, cultural, religious, and political difference under a series of very big tents, doing so by ensuring a set of inalienable rights and shunning authoritarianism. Today's conservatives, however, are committed to a very different narrative of America, a narrative that betrays our characteristic pluralism, our national lifeblood. For conservatives, America's success stems from America as a Christian nation with a free-market economy, a particular set of family values, a way of educating in the great Western European tradition, and particular versions of individualism and self-determinism that sanctify the pursuit of wealth for its own sake. The case against conservatism, however, is not an argument that any of these aspects of the conservative American narrative are wrong, but that the assumed primacy of these aspects of the conservative American narrative is wrong. These aspects--the conservative brand of individualism, the relatively unregulated markets, etc.--are not prime, but derivative, the *results* of a rights-based pluralism that enables some Americans to envision their country in this way, while others can see it differently.

What PMB is getting at, then, is that when conservatives mistake some of the fruits of America's great pluralism and tolerance as the prime American narrative itself--the source of American greatness--they risk establishing a rather narrow, singular version of what America is or ought to be, and consequently they move to defend that singular version at all costs. We see this daily in conservative politics, including, but not limited to, the following examples:

1) The abandonment of the basic right of protection against cruel and unusual punishment in advocating for the torturing of 'enemy combatants,' even when such enemy combatants are American citizens, in order to obtain intelligence (even if this tactic is proven not to work, the point is that the conservative position here is to abandon a fundamental right by making an exception for certain 'special' security cases).

2) The abandonment of basic due process rights (via Miranda) for people suspected of terrorist activity.

3) The threat to remove the American citizenship, through the Department of State, without due process and without conviction, of anyone suspected of cooperating loosely with a government-defined and identified terrorist cell.

4) The abandonment of due process rights and the stopping of people on the street in Arizona based on 'reasonable suspicion' of illegal immigration status (appearance).

5) National prayer days

6) The governments in Texas and Arizona intervening into the substantive material being taught in schools by banning (in AZ) ethnic studies curricula and removing (in TX) Thomas Jefferson, who believed strongly in the separation of church and state, from history of the enlightenment curricula.

7) Assertions that any Americans or American politicians who favor any degree of social welfare provisions are anti-American or 'ruining America.'

8) Assertions that any semblance of government regulation in financial markets, political lobbying, or monopolistic or duopolistic markets is anti-American or 'ruining America.'

9) Assertions that certain Americans living in certain American regions are 'real Americans,' and the 'heartland' is the 'real America.'

In sum, these positions advocate strongly for a singular view of America and Americanness, as opposed to a pluralist America in which ideological difference is not wielded as a threat of exclusion, expulsion, or treasonous hostility.

The case against conservatism, then, is that it's anti-pluralist. The conservative agenda isn't in favor of big or small government, regulated or unregulated markets, personal freedoms or authoritarian measures. It moves back and forth on each of these issues in order to defend, by any ideological means necessary, a singular conservative understanding of what America is and is all about. Even if the professed conservative positions on these issues--small governments, unregulated markets, individual freedom--are ultimately correct, it is incumbent upon all Americans to reject the totality with which these positions are assumed and advanced, for the sake of the true lifeblood of this nation: our pluralism, tolerance, and INALIENABLE rights, all of which can be compromised UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES.

More on Arizona, Union's New Worst State

2010-05-12T17:01:00.003Z

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and her state legislature may have one-upped Texas governor and Texas secessionist Rick Perry's general puerility by dealing the unfortunate residents of the (not so) Grand Canyon State two consecutive and particularly egregious blows. As if Arizona's new anti-immigration law, which the governor tells us will not amount to racial profiling, weren't enough on its own to reflect the racial and ethnic fears and intolerances of a vociferous bloc of Arizona residents, now comes a new bill prohibiting the teaching of ethnic studies courses in public high schools.

Brewer and head of State schools Tom Home argue that ethnic studies courses cause racial hatred and resentment, and teach non-white, predominately Mexican-American students to hate white people. On this basis they will abolish these courses.

PMB doesn't intend for this post to be a thorough discussion of the merits and problems of ethnic studies curricula, as such a discussion would be both longer and more complicated than he has time for at the moment. PMB will say, however, that though ethnic studies courses, taught in certain ways and with certain objectives, can certainly result in race-based resentment, there are two relevant counterpoints:

1) As with teaching virtually any body of knowledge, there are counterproductive ways to proceed and there are productive and laudable ways to proceed. Simply because course material is about a particular ethnic group, its history, literatures, languages, etc., doesn't mean that teaching such material amounts to racial or ethnic favoritism, or an unproductive mode of 'solidarity-promotion,' as the proponents of this law fear. This material can be and in fact is taught responsibly and productively, and has been for a long time. Simply arguing, as the governor and her henchman do, that anything ethnic-studies related is by definition inflammatory because it concerns ethnicity-based knowledge is ludicrous. Not to state the obvious (but sometimes one has to when dealing with ignorant politicians), but the VAST MAJORITY of history, literature, etc., taught in US schools is already refracted through a white, Anglo-European ethnic lens. This makes sense, of course, given the history of the country. But we wouldn't dare argue that the teaching of Shakespeare or Milton or Rousseau over Borges or Garcia Marquez risks rousing a dangerous and disruptive white solidarity. When educating young Mexican-Americans in Arizona, however, certainly allowing them to identify ethnically with some Mexican or Mexican-American writers or histories alongside the rest of the standard Eurocentric curriculum isn't exactly a militant exercise aimed at causing hatred of white people.

2) We must be careful not to confuse transmission of knowledge with advocating ethnic or racial separatism. Tom Home compares the ethnic studies courses to the Old South; but this is like saying that one who teaches or learns about slavery is also advocating for it. Of course that's ridiculous. Categorizing knowledge along ethnic or cultural or linguistic lines, as we often do (you wouldn't accuse your Spanish teacher of being anti-English-language or anti-American for teaching you Spanish, would you?) reflects a tendency to heuristically separate histories and knowledge fields in a certain way, and not a tendency to ratify the separation of actual people in such a way.

PMB is skeptical, further, that these courses are really having the extreme effects on race relations that proponents of the new bill suggest (this is in part due to a lack of trust in people who invoke slavery and segregation in comparisons with teaching Mexican-American kids about their ethnic heritage, no less in school districts that are about half Mexican-American, demographically).

But the issue to trump all other issues here, I think, has less to do with concerns about ethnic studies and more to do with the relationship between the state (and the state legislature) and the education of children, even in public schools.

Even in public schools, ignorant politicians have no business censoring school curricula until they've thoroughly understood the curriculum and the materials they aim to censor. And even then, one would have to cross a lot of lines to shut down courses that teach kids about their own cultural heritage. PMB is not convinced, in this case, that any of these people know anything about ethnic studies and/or Mexican-American literatures, histories, or cultures. This is transparently a political intervention into the sphere of education, a sphere not at all immune from both internal and external politics, but vastly more knowledgeable and competent when it comes to sorting out its own political, pedagogical, and curricular conundrums. This situation, in which a state head of schools has apparently forgotten, if he ever knew, the value of a broad education, is like a distorted mirror image of the situation in higher education, in which many of those running the administrative show are demonstrating utter cluelessness about what actually goes on in the classroom, how, and why.

Arixenophobia (Boycott Arizona)

2010-04-27T18:38:00.003Z

Arizona passed a new immigration law, which effectively requires all immigrants, legal or illegal, to carry their papers with them at all times, and mandates that law enforcement officers stop and question anyone for whom they have "reasonable suspicion" of being an illegal "alien."

Republican Senator and former JAG lawyer Lindsay Graham believes the new law is unconstitutional, while former Under Secretary of Homeland Security Michael D. Brown goes off here about how the new law really isn't that big of a deal.

Unfortunately, our former Under Secretary of Homeland Security is functionally illiterate. His misunderstanding of the most controversial aspect of the new Arizona immigration law below:

"Consider just one paragraph of the bill:

FOR ANY LAWFUL CONTACT MADE BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE WHERE REASONABLE SUSPICION EXISTS THAT THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES, A REASONABLE ATTEMPT SHALL BE MADE, WHEN PRACTICABLE, TO DETERMINE THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF THE PERSON.

Article 8, Section 11-1051, Paragraph B., lines 20-25

Consider that language again: a law enforcement office must first have 'lawful contact.' 'Reasonable suspicion' must exist that the person is here illegally. A 'reasonable attempt' is all the officer can make to determine the immigration status of the person and then, only when 'practicable.'

That's racist, Reverend Sharpton? Sounds like sound law enforcement to me."

PMB will now reinterpret this paragraph correctly (hopefully the Under Secretary is paying attention):

The former Under Secretary treats "lawful contact" and "reasonable suspicion" above as though they're two separate steps in the process of legally stopping and questioning someone, but this is wrong. "Lawful contact" in this case is not a precursor to "reasonable suspicion"; "lawful contact" requires "reasonable suspicion." "Lawful contact" here is basically interchangeable with "reasonable suspicion," though it's presented above by the former Under Secretary as a preexisting condition upon which "reasonable suspicion" can be (more safely) derived. This might seem like nitpicking, but it's actually the crux of the controversy regarding this new law: since there is much concern over what constitutes "reasonable suspicion" and how "reasonable suspicion" would be derived in order to legally stop and question someone on the street about their immigration status, those defending this law have the burden of explaining this mystery about how, practically, could "reasonable suspicion" be lawfully derived. The former Under Secretary attempts to assuage this concern by presenting "reasonable suspicion" as something based not on a guess about the way someone looks on the street, but as a second-order determination after something called "lawful contact" has already been made. Ah, but since "reasonable suspicion" is necessary for "lawful contact" and not the other way around, the former Under Secretary's interpretation is complete and total bullshit. He attempts to explain away the crux of the controversy circuitously, by arguing essentially that "reasonable suspicion will be attained in the context of lawful stops, because a lawful stop requires reasonable suspicion."

The question remains, then: how exactly would a law enforcement officer attain reasonable suspicion? It's easy to argue, as the Republicans are currently doing in their talking points, that the "reasonable suspicion" stops we're talking about here are things like speeding white vans with 16 passengers packed in the back and police cars tailing them (speeding/being in a car chase indeed meets the "reasonable suspicion" standard to make a stop, obviously); but what about the inevitable gray areas? Will the cops ask every white speeder they stop for his or her immigration papers, or will they profile for Mexican-looking people? Will law enforcement officers who see loiterers outside of the club or the grocery store and approach them for their immigration papers...if they're white? Hispanic? What constitutes reasonable suspicion, not just of a given traffic violation, but of illegal immigration status? And finally, do we expect all law enforcement officers, who can be prosecuted themselves under this law for failing to question the "reasonably suspicious" about their immigration status, to reasonably abide all of these nuances, and to avoid simply profiling for Mexican-looking people? This is most likely why law enforcement officers themselves have voiced serious opposition to this new law, doing so also years before when a similar law was on the table during Janet Napolitano's governorship.

PMB tends to agree with Senator Graham that not only is the new Arizona law unconstitutional, but it's also not a very smart or effective way forward for tackling immigration issues. As current head of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano has suggested, the law will likely result in the redistribution of immigration law enforcement resources away from concentrated areas of need (cartels and human trafficking) and toward the detaining of peaceful and productive people who happen to get stopped without their papers, and constitute a far lesser security risk.

Those in favor of the new Arizona law are calling it a way of fighting drug and human trafficking; yet the negative effects of this law will move far beyond its alleged toughness on real criminal behavior. John McCain talks about illegals bringing drugs across our borders as though Americans aren't the ones demanding and paying for the drugs that keep the cartels and their violent tactics in steady operation. If drug smuggling and all the nastiness that goes with it were really a concern among these politicians, then surely they'd have figured out by now that the best way to crush the cartels is to cut them out of their US market by legalizing and regulating certain drugs on our own soil. But PMB digresses...

The Arizona immigration law is just another example of shortsighted, xenophobic, fear-addled people compromising some of the most basic American values in order to attempt a quick fix. So long as certain Americans believe that Americans are the only ones in the world deserving of the fundamental rights that we daily proclaim our own, we threaten to erode these rights within our own communities. If you believe things like due process and habeas corpus are fundamental, INALIENABLE rights, then you must concede that they are universally INALIENABLE, even, ironically, for those we deem "aliens."

Bear Arms, To Keep And

2010-04-25T19:16:00.002Z

PMB notes that the text of the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution, which prescribes the right of US citizens to own guns, reads as follows:

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

Now that we've seen a dramatic increase in US 'militia groups,' groups of private citizens who tend to stockpile arms and gather to conduct psuedo-military training exercises in preparation to defend themselves or their states against the US Federal government, PMB is compelled to comment briefly on how this phenomenon relates to the 2nd Amendment.

While many gun rights activists argue that the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms is an essential freedom whose primary function is to allow individuals to defend themselves and their families against criminals and allow for the use of guns in sporting or hunting pursuits, another prominent segment of activists views the 2nd Amendment primarily as a means of empowering the people for an uprising against a tyrannical government. While the former view is probably a more tenable justification for the 2nd Amendment in the 21st century, the latter is almost certainly more Constitutionally valid. Considering the language of the amendment together with its historical context--the Revolutionary War against tyrannical Britain, fought and won largely by a militia-style army--Constitutional originalists would have to agree that using arms as an aid to populist uprising against an overreaching government was the main purpose or spirit of the 2nd Amendment. For the rest of us who think that divining a singular and definitive meaning or notion of intent from the text of the Constitution is about as ridiculous as assuming that everyone who's ever read Macbeth ought to have come to the exact same conclusions about its 'meaning' and Shakespeare's 'intent,' one can still assume with some confidence based on the text and the history that, indeed, the clause 'A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State' either imposes a condition on 'the right of the people to keep and bear arms' (for the forming of a militia) or it constitutes clear evidence of an 'amplifying example' of the importance of the right to bear arms, the example of a militia being considered extremely important (thus 'amplifying') to those who drafted the amendment. This is to suggest that the 2nd Amendment pertains primarily to the formation of militia groups as a check against tyranny not because Constitutional intent is always clear, but rather because a piece of it happens to be rather clear in this particular case. Whether one subscribes to the idea that the 'militia clause' is qualifying or amplifying, the idea of the formation of a militia and its relation to the right to bear arms is central nonetheless.

What does this mean for the 2nd Amendment in the 21at century?

While PMB is not attempting here to argue for the sheer abolition or recusal of the 2nd Amendment, it's time to reconsider the whole militia thing.

As Obama and Medvedev's recent arms reduction treaty reduces the terms of nuclear weapons deployment down to no more than 1550 warheads or 700 launchers, the idea of 'a well regulated militia' with the ability to 'keep and bear arms' becomes perhaps slightly less ridiculous than it already was in the 1990s, when the US and Russia were operating with literally thousands of nuclear warheads. Of course, nuclear warheads really are just the tip of the 21st-century munitions and combat technology iceberg. Without going into anymore embarrassingly obvious details, suffice it to say that no militia acquiring any number of legal arms stands a shred of a chance against the US military. Perhaps the dark underside of this statement is that any fringe group, foreign or domestic, naturally stands its best chance against state military powers by engaging in acts of terrorism. And terrorists like Timothy McVeigh don't need guns to murder 168 people.

The point here is that, putting aside terrorist groups for whom obviously the 2nd Amendment was never meant to be an enabling factor (i.e. people who will engage in lethal combat against innocent, unengaged civilians as opposed to a state military), militias are now obsolete. In fact, as was the case with the Hutaree Militia in Michigan, the FBI is already protecting the nation and its law enforcement officers and government employees by tracking and getting to potentially violent militia groups before they even get the chance to stare down the barrel of a US tank. With the threat of terrorism continually present, whether from persons home or abroad, the only things a bunch of ragtag middle-aged men playing backyard George Washingtons and Paul Reveres are going to harm with their 2nd Amendment rights is innocent people and potentially themselves, and not the Federal government.

If we're going to justify the 2nd Amendment in the 21st century, let us at the very least dispense with the notion that the right to own guns has anything to do with anti-government resistance anymore. Let's stop feeding this potentially dangerous fantasy to burgeoning militia groups all over the country before people start getting killed for all the wrong reasons.

PMB will post again shortly on the Constitution, the early American government, the 'founders,' and the myriad ways in which contemporary anti-government populism evinces a harmful and regrettable ignorance of US history.

Negative Equity and the Free Market

2010-04-19T12:00:00.003Z

As unemployment figures improve, investment banks are back to profiting, bailout funds have been repaid at a surplus, and the US economy begins to glimpse a turnaround, there remains a particularly scary issue that still jeopardizes the US economy on a fundamental level: the mortgage crisis, which had a prominent hand in effecting this deep recession, remains unresolved. For this reason, the brilliant Elizabeth Warren, Leo Gottlieb professor of Law at Harvard Law School and chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel for TARP, has warned and continues to warn that we need to improve (or, rather, establish) consumer protections to help stabilize the housing market. For warren, the mortgage issue is the most pressing issue on the table right now.

Part of the problem is that, even taking the real estate industry's figures, about 25 percent, or over 11 million US mortgages, as of late February are in negative equity. Translation: for these "underwater" mortgages, consumers owe more in debt on their homes than the actual market value of their homes.

Now consider this, particularly if you are a "free-market" conservative: if the all-powerful and self-correcting free market is based on rational consumer choice as well as the rational commercial pursuit of profit, the combination of which ought to provide consumers with the best types of products they seek, businesses with incentivizing profits, and broader society with the greatest possible amounts of wealth and innovation (however one measures these), then what is the best, most rational choice for consumers whose mortgage debt balances are higher than the values of their homes?

The answer is pretty simple: we wouldn't expect a business to continue to invest capital in a division that looses money year after year; we wouldn't expect a real estate firm to retain "sinking" property on which it makes a continual loss; so of course we shouldn't expect a consumer to keep making monthly mortgage payments to a lender on a debt balance that's worth more than the house itself. To do so would simply be irrational, against the very principles upon which capitalist systems fundamentally rest. A business isn't a charity; but neither is a consumer. And a smart consumer in a negative equity situation has plenty of incentive to simply default on the mortgage, walk away from the home, leave the lender with the debt, save his or her money, and go in with another completely desperate lender on a cheaper home. With so many middle-class American "homeowners" in similar situations and so many lenders in self-created shambles, credit standards will fall (have fallen) and consumers can viably move on from negative equity situations if they have the gall.

What does this tell us?

1) The free-market justification for producing sketchy loan products and financial vehicles is also a justification for underwater consumers to walk away from their debt, ultimately threatening the full-scale collapse of the entire loan industry. Yet the hypocrite free-market conservatives and conservative-supported real estate lobbies have continued to tell constituents to keep paying on their mortgages (to suck it up because it's their fault for making such poor financial decisions in the first place), however irrationally, while using arguments for free-markets and industry deregulation to support the industry in preying on un- or under-informed consumers in the first place. You can't have it both ways, folks.

2) As someone who worked as a government contractor for Housing and Urban Development in the past, specifically on the HUD-1 and Good Faith Estimate mortgage forms, more specifically to fight the real estate lobby and design more user-friendly forms that make it easier for consumers to understand their loan terms and harder for "innovative" lenders to intentionally complicate the forms in order to sneak crucial information past un- or under-informed consumers, PMB can tell you that certain kinds of financial "innovations" are poison. Not only does the brute incentive for profit maximization provide incentive to "innovate" financial vehicles that harm consumers; it also harms the very lending industries that created faulty loan products in the first place, as consumers have been defaulting on their mortgages left and right.

Following from Elizabeth Warren's recommendations, the only way out of this mess of self-contradictory, "free-market" illogic is proper consumer protection and financial and lending industry regulation. One would have to be a fool not to support basic regulations that not only save consumers from poison products, but, perhaps more importantly, save industry producers from themselves and their own shortsightend, unbounded avarice.

A Life Worth Living?

2010-04-16T16:19:00.001Z

From Joseph Epstein in Notre Dame Magazine:

"In the last stage of life, even with the cheeriest outlook, it isn’t easy to keep thoughts of death at bay. Consider, though, the advice of the Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 B.C.), who lent his name to the school of Epicureanism but who was, in my reading of him, the world’s first shrink. Epicureanism is generally understood to be about indulging fleshly pleasures, especially those of food and drink, but it is, I think, more correctly understood as the search for serenity.

Epicurus, who met with friends (disciples, really) in his garden in Athens, devised a program to rid the world of anxiety. His method, like most methods of personal reform, had set steps, in this case four such steps. Here they are:

Step One: Do not believe in God, or in the gods. They most likely do not exist, and even if they did, it is preposterous to believe that they could possibly care, that they are watching over you and keeping a strict accounting of your behavior.

Step Two: Don’t worry about death. Death, be assured, is oblivion, a condition not different from your life before you were born: an utter blank. Forget about heaven, forget about hell; neither exists — after death there is only the Big O (oblivion) and the Big N (nullity), nothing, nada, zilch. Get your mind off it.

Step Three: Forget, as best you are able, about pain. Pain is either brief, and will therefore soon enough diminish and be gone; or, if it doesn’t disappear, if it lingers and intensifies, death cannot be far away, and so your worries are over here, too, for death, as we know, also presents no problem, being nothing more than eternal dark, dreamless sleep.

Step Four: Do not waste your time attempting to acquire exactious luxuries, whose pleasures are sure to be incommensurate with the effort required to gain them. From this it follows that ambition generally — for things, money, fame, power — should also be foresworn. The effort required to obtain them is too great; the game isn’t worth the candle.

To summarize, then: forget about God, death, pain and acquisition, and your worries are over. There you have it, Epicurus’ Four-Step Program to eliminate anxiety and attain serenity. I’ve not kitchen-tested it myself, but my guess is that, if one could bring it off, this program really would work.

But the real question is, even if it did work, would such utter detachment from life, from its large questions and daily dramas, constitute a life rich and complex enough to be worth living? Many people would say yes. I am myself not among them."

Basic Economics for Befuddled Humanities Profs And Higher Ed. Policy 'Experts'

2010-04-13T13:24:00.008Z

Let's consider the unfortunate job market for English professors:

There is a market oversupply. This means that the quantity of prospective English professors willing to sell labor is greater than the quantity of demand for that labor. In this scenario the "price" of academic labor for English professors--salary and benefits--is relatively low, as consumers of that labor--universities--can pick and choose from a "consumer-friendly" group of highly qualified individuals, the top end of which are relatively interchangeable. And, naturally, since the academic labor market for English professors has more sellers than buyers, much of the "stock" will remain "left on the shelf to rot" (un- or under-employed). This labor market is highly inelastic. This means that, despite the sinking of the "price" of labor to embarrassing levels for the highly-educated, high-achieving, and generally elite members of a profession that still carries a lot of cache and social capital, the supply quantity of those willing to sell their labor in the market remains freakishly high.

So when professors talk about what to say to their poor, forsaken humanities graduate students, and how to address the market oversupply, there are two basic considerations they need to bear in mind (only the first of which they actually do bear in mind, sometimes and sort of):

1) When we're talking about academic labor in the humanities, there's another supply-demand relationship that must be accounted for: student demand for humanities courses, relative to the university's willingness to supply the appropriate resources (largely consisting of academic labor--professors running courses) to meet that demand. Currently, in many cases, the humanities suffer, from professors to students, because universities cut back on their supply of labor to cut costs, and stretch what labor they have beyond what is reasonable for optimal learning and teaching situations. Even with a decline in student demand for humanities courses, universities have slashed budgets and tenure lines in profitable English departments well beyond the demand reduction to save money, simply because they can get away with it. When a a biochemistry professor says "I need a lab to teach these students," the university can't just say "tough shit pal." But when an English professor says "I can't reasonably teach this material to 100 kids in a lecture hall," the university can and does say "tell your graduate TA to do more grading," or "tough shit pal." In other words, in a shocking paradox, because the cost of resources in this case is human and therefore ambiguously scaled, rather than material and therefore easily and accurately priced, the human capital is considered at once more expendable and more exploitable than the the non-human capital. As a result, one factor in addressing market oversupply is that universities don't properly define or recognize human capital, even though human capital makes up the figurative heart and soul of a university. Universities skimp on the quality of humanities instruction by attempting to squeeze more labor out of one professor instead of hiring another to meet demand--by holding the price of professorial labor low and fixed and simultaneously treating the human labor unit as an endlessly malleable and productive thing. Fixed low price, endless mileage. Sound like a bad used car financing scheme? Nope, it's your modern university.

2) This is what none of the people writing on this subject dare to acknowledge (and it relates to market inelasticity): despite these market realities, much of the reason for oversupply has to do with the basic fact that lots and lots of people always have *DESIRED* and currently do and always will *DESIRE* to enter the academic humanities, more people than the field has ever needed, needs, or will ever need, even in its wildest, most decadent dreams. How about these figures for applications for doctoral degrees in English from a handful of strong institutions (for which PMB could get admission stats readily):

From Columbia University's English department website: "The department typically receives around 700 applications per year for about 18 places in our sequential program."

From Oxford University's English department website: "Admission to the graduate school is very competitive. For entry in 2009 we received over 650 applications from candidates who were, or were about to be, graduates from universities all over the world."

From UC Berkeley's English department website: "The English Department typically receives between 450-550 applications each year and offers admission to 40-45 applicants, of whom 18-20 enter the program."

From Brown University's English department website: "We receive approximately three hundred applications each year, and we are able to offer admission to approximately 18 of those applicants."

Lots of people apply for these programs because they want to for a whole slew of reasons above and beyond the feasibility of academic careers. In this respect, humanities fields like English are profoundly successful, drawing a vast oversupply of highly competitive students with consistency through economically difficult and disastrous times. PMB isn't sure that this is plainly a good thing, considering the smoldering pyre of dashed hopes upon which countless humanities PhDs lay themselves year after year; but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that this problem isn't in part a function of how attractive these fields are, and how interesting and relevant the work is.

The Most Crucial of 21st Century "Humanities" Skills: Perseverance

2010-04-11T17:31:00.004Z

Few things are more insulting to PMB than the approach that so many seem to have these days toward career guidance for humanities PhD students. You can say "Bear, why don't you have any legs," and the bear will not stir. You can say "Nice claws, one is falling off," and he won't so much as crinkle his nose. But don't say what Diane Auer Jones wrote in the Chronicle this week. While some offer ways of reconceptualizing the academic profession and its approach to training young humanities scholars for ever-dwindling academic careers with hopes of addressing the market oversupply, and others are willing (thankfully) to get feisty with those who propagate ignorance and misconceptions about what humanities programs do and don't do for a university, there remains always an undercurrent: humanities PhDs must be prepared for more than just an academic career, since academic careers are awfully hard to come by.

The thing is, humanities PhD students are getting all the "job skills training" and more by just doing what they do already. If you take a look at your preferred job listings source, be it a trade or professional website, Craigslist, an internal job postings e-mail at your current organization, a university careers services job board, etc., you'll find the same lists of the same general, desirable criteria for a broad range of different jobs: "excellent" writing ability, verbal/oral communication skills; ability to work in a team environment and work well with others; highly organized and detail-oriented; self-motivated; ability to work on and manage deadlines; wide range of computer and software proficiencies, etc.

Of course all of these "skills" are rigorously cultivated over the roughly six years it takes to earn a doctorate in the humanities. And as someone who has worked in "high-end" industry (consulting, finance, etc.) before, PMB understands that the "latent" training of humanities PhD students in these "skills" quite often exceeds that which is acquired in industry jobs via job training and project management. Of course the continual writing and revising that is part of a large-scale research project, culminating in a piece of original research that merits a doctoral degree, tackles several of the most important job "skills" on employers' lists: certainly these projects require outstanding writing ability, careful revision, constant and often tactically difficult communication with a committee of dissertation advisors and readers, collaboration with fellow students and researchers, the meticulous management and organization of vast amounts of information (much of it changing frequently) over long periods of time, meeting regular deadlines, and having the fortitude and the motivation to stick through it all, despite poverty-level pay for Wall St. working hours, and grim job prospects. Add to that the growing importance of "digital" humanities resources, familiarity with databases and online information retrieval, and the generally considerable role of software aids in academic research. Add to that the communication and organization skills associated with regular presentations at conferences and in university-based seminars and the regular teaching and grading of undergraduate students. Add to that department service responsibilities, like sitting on faculty hiring committees, organizing and running conferences, and in some cases serving on wider department and/or university academic committees.

What other kinds of "skills" do people like Diane Auer Jones think we should be cultivating?

The bottom line is that most humanities PhD students, many of whom have already worked in other careers, both possess and actively cultivate large sets of directly vocational skills that apply to both academic and nonacademic professions. The very notion of a deep chasm between academic and nonacademic work is more a mirage than not. There is no "Ivory Tower." In other words, the skills are largely transferable. The perception that they're not is the real problem; not that humanities academics aren't getting what they need to branch out and have successful nonacademic careers if the academic gig doesn't work out. Commentaries like that of Ms. Auer Jones suffer from a crude causal fallacy: they assume that because lots of humanities PhD students are still plugging away at academic careers that aren't there, and an oversupply still exists, and they're not looking to get into other (nonacademic) careers, it must be because of their unmarketability (a problem which must then be remedied by doctoral training methods and emphases). No, no, no. People plug away at academic careers in the humanities, despite dismal job prospects, because they really really really want to have an academic career in the humanities; because many of them left other careers precisely to seek an academic career in the humanities; because that's why they're in a humanities PhD program in the first place. They don't need "skills." They need to get organized in collectives and lobbying groups, get feisty, and get ready for a long battle with ignorance: the misconception that their work doesn't have value; that they're not prepared to make measurable and immeasurable contributions to the world; that humanities work should thrive on light consumption in Ivory Towers rather than down and dirty politics, like everything else. Roll up your sleeves, people.

Toward an End to Sexual Violence

2010-04-08T10:11:00.003Z

PMB wrote a speech, which was read recently at a Take Back the Night event organized by the law schools at Rutgers and Seton Hall. The impetus for this speech was PMB's growing discontentment over the various forms of "unwanted sex" that occur frequently among friends and acquaintances, among educated people, in university settings. This is not to suggest that these are the only conditions for unwanted sex, but rather that the problem persists among people who are being both taught to know better and socialized into university cultures that value both excessive drinking and sexual conquest, generally at the same time. PMB's speech appears below:

Imagine: You’re having dinner with a group of friends after a long and stressful week. This is a dynamic group of people you’ve known and trusted for years, people like yourself: some are lawyers, some teachers or professors, some community organizers or local leaders. As always, your dinner conversation is lively and stimulating.

The conversation turns to those ambiguous but prevalent situations from your college days, when a woman and a man, both of whom have had a lot to drink, go home together and share a bed. What happens when one or both parties don’t remember what happened? What happens if sex happened?

You’re educated people. You believe in fairness and equality. You believe in respect, for yourself, for your body, for the bodies of others. You would never engage anyone in unwanted sex, let alone a friend or a colleague.

But what if sex happened? She was at the bar, and then she was in her bed. She woke up and you were there. Not just there, but there. You barely remember it yourself. She’s hurt; she’s sick. It wasn’t supposed to happen. She didn’t want it. You couldn’t read her mind; you couldn’t read your own after all those drinks. Now a person is suffering in real life, in real time. Who is responsible? This is a disaster. Is it natural or man-made?

She says: If you’re not sure she wants it, then don’t proceed. He says: But how could I ever be sure? She says: It’s your responsibility to be sure. He says: What about her responsibility? Are we not equals? She says: It’s different for her than it is for you. It’s a different experience. You couldn’t understand. He says: That’s not fair.

For all of us the ability to abstract and articulate the meaning of things like fairness and equality will be essential to our getting by in this world. For many of us this ability will sustain our careers. Yet we can’t afford loose sight of the crude anatomical facts of this material world: the facts that no theory of fairness or justice or equality will ever change. Gender equality between sexes does not produce anatomical equivalence. We don’t need to go into the mechanics of sex between a woman and a man to understand, I hope, why a man must bear particular responsibility for how he wields his anatomy. Perhaps this is unfair; but this is the unalterable reality. So, too, is it reality that a man will never have the experience of birthing a child, or the ability to make decisions about the body that carries his child to term. In some ways this is also unfair. But what jurisdiction does fairness have over such circumstances?

This is a plea from one man to all men: Imagine yourselves having dinner with a close group of friends at the end of a long and stressful week. Imagine that the conversation turns to those ambiguous but prevalent situations of unremembered or unwanted sex—the kind that just happens. Imagine sitting at a table full of friends talking in the hypothetical about what’s fair and what’s just and where responsibility lies. Then imagine that not everyone around the table is speaking hypothetically.

This is a plea to men, men who would never do such a thing, well-meaning men, respectful men, strong men, educated men who know better, who can tell you all about fairness and justice and equality: it’s one thing to take responsibility for your arguments, but quite another to take responsibility for your reality. Unwanted sex is not a theoretical matter. What you would do is inconsequential. What you do or refrain from doing is what makes all the difference in the real lives of real people. Despite what you may think, these scenarios don’t really come down to your personal sense of justice or your richly cultivated ethical sensibility. No, these scenarios come down to the cold mechanics of an act, an act that, regardless of intent, accumulates significance in the future-time of an individual like the turning of a gear and the click of a second hand in the momentum of time: once it happens, it can’t be rewound. Once it happens, the reasons behind its happening are immaterial. Only the happenings remain—the bodies—the breathing artifacts of a bad decision, an unfortunate click.

Today I struggle to make sense of what happened to a loved one who passed out in her bed one night and woke up with a male acquaintance on top of her, having sex with her, taking her lack of consciousness as a sign of consent. Or maybe the fact that they chatted earlier that evening was a sign of consent. Or maybe she was shifting in bed, or talking in her sleep, and those were signs of consent. Maybe he was so drunk that he imagined her consent. Maybe she said “I want you to go,” and he missed the “to go” part. Somewhere embedded in the strange semantics of drunkenness, there’s an excuse for everything, it seems. But men: it’s our grave responsibility to be sure. Not hazy, not wishful, not lingering around in a drunk woman’s room at the end of the night. This isn’t a hypothetical. Once you’ve crossed that line, no matter how justified you think you probably were, there really is no turning back.

The Catholic Church and Pedophilia

2010-04-02T16:11:00.002Z

PMB sees fit to preface any discussion of pedophilia with a simple challenge: what assumptions underlie our assumption that the crime of pedophilia is so much worse than other kinds of violent crime? Does pedophilia draw the better part of our outrage because it is a crime against the defenseless? Against the innocent? Is it worse than sexually assaulting an adult? Human trafficking? Torture? Murder? Beating a spouse? Is it worse than pushing drugs on children? Because it's a crime of a sexual nature? Because we're scared of dirty old men? Because we should be?

It is not PMB's aim to apologize for pedophilia, or to justify it, or to de-prioritize it in terms of policy or jurisprudence. PMB only wants to raise the question in an age in which the abundant media already prioritize youth and innocence, perhaps not for all the right reasons: when a pretty blond girl goes missing, an entire nation will hold vigil; when a middle-aged black man is shot dead in a Baltimore alley for $12.55 and a half-empty pack of cigarettes, it's just another Tuesday. We have entire movements dedicated to the "salvation" of unborn children so much so that they're willing to take the lives of doctors with their own families and their own children. When a young soldier is photographed maimed and dying somewhere in the Middle East, half of us shield our eyes while the other takes in the images. So young is this soldier; so innocent; too young to look upon. To put it simply, distasteful as it is, many of us already make day-to-day judgments about the relative value of human lives at different stages and in different circumstances. So we might as well question the extent to which similar judgments operate when we try to make sense of tragedies like pedophilia. Take this as a preface and put it aside for now.

We have very reasonable calls from Laurie Fendrich and Christopher Hitchens to address issues of pedophilia within the Catholic Church through secular, legal means, rather than letting the issue languish as an internal matter with the Church, to be sorted out somehow by what many assume is some kind of epic and clandestine Church bureaucracy.

The first thing to keep in mind with respect to this issue is that the Catholic Church is a massive global organization that, despite its ranging influence, is not the all-powerful monolith that many seem to think it is. This means that the Pope can tapdance for the international media all he wants, but he still won't be able to have much influence, a single man from the Vatican, on what goes on among priests at and in between the far corners of the world. As the figurehead of the organization the Pope bears mostly a symbolic responsibility, like that of the CEO of a multinational corporation whose Kuala Lumpur office gets creative with their accounting and sinks the whole ship. When an organization gets so prodigious and rangy, it's just not possible for its chief executive to have a hand in everything that goes on. Catholics in various traditions, from Europe to the Latin countries to Africa, Asia, and the US, have a range of cultural traditions associated with their Catholicism, branching off into sects and participating in varying degrees of mysticism. Despite strong Papal discouragement, for example, some Catholic Filipinos have found ways to safely and cleanly nail themselves to a cross for Lent--literally--walking away afterward with slight wounds and eventual scars, only to practice the ritual again and again in the following years. What can the Pope do about this? Where is his influence?

PMB mentions this not to excuse Benedict XVI, but to draw attention to the fact that cleaning up the pedophilia mess will be primarily the responsibility of secular law enforcement agencies and not the Catholic Church. Many seek to demonize the Catholic Church, and certainly the pedophilia crisis provides lip-smacking fodder for the demonizers; but the secular societies among (or around) us need to deal with the reality and effects of institutionalized religion as it operates within secular society, not apart from it. Whether we affiliate with or participate in the Catholic Church or not, we're all responsible for protecting victims of crime and enforcing the law against criminals. Reducing the issue to a "Catholic" thing as a way of leveraging against the Church politically sends the wrong message to everyone. For the victims of pedophilia, it suggest that secular society is not there to help and support. For the Church, it suggests that it can co-exist with secular society outside of the law and under its own law.

This is not to say that the Catholic Church is without any serious institutional responsibility. Which brings PMB to a final point: the expectation that a flesh-and-blood human being remain both celibate and without intimate companionship (i.e. marriage) for the duration of his or her life is cruel and untenable. PMB has read through much of the Church literature on this subject, and finds it nonetheless a severe problem that the Church expects priests to vow celibacy and marital or romantic solitude in order to enter the profession. Having no sexual or intimate outlet is certainly not an excuse for inappropriate sexual behavior like pedophilia, though it would not surprise PMB at all if instances of pedophilia in the priesthood were drastically reduced by allowing priests to have intimate partners, homosexual or heterosexual, and to marry in either case as well. Certainly PMB is not holding his breath for such a radical change within the Church, or even, in the case of homosexual marriages, within secular society; yet these measures will be necessary at some point, if not already, for the survival of both. For pedophilia isn't the only crisis in the priesthood. Relatively speaking, fewer people are wanting to become priests these days. Perhaps if priests weren't expected to shed their humanity, if such a thing is even possible, to enter the profession, more might want to enter. But this is a topic for another time.

Meat-free Fridays: A College Divided

2010-03-28T16:57:00.005Z

Like the Oxbridge sex blogger, PMB lives at an Oxbridge college. Let's call that college "Ursa College," named for the Greek mythical figure Callisto, whom Hera turned into a bear out of jealousy, and Zeus cast into the sky as a constellation (along with her son, Arcas). Right. Ursa College.

Ursa college has voted to adopt a meat-free dinner policy on Fridays in the dining hall (meat is no longer served in hall on Friday evenings). The spirit of the policy is to make a small gesture toward carbon emissions reduction by abstaining in one meal per week from the consumption of meat. The policy also acknowledges that our current (global) rate of meat consumption is not sustainable in the long-term.

Because the policy has been met with vociferous opposition, boycotting of the dining hall, and general animosity, PMB will try to break things down for those still interested in the issue.

Currently, most of the discussion of and argument over meat-free Fridays is failing because discussants are unable to separate debates over the policy's intent from debates that arise from the policy as externalities. Consequently, while some are arguing about the importance of choice versus mandate or individual versus collective will in addressing environmental or consumption issues, others are having an entirely different argument over whether Ursa College provides adequate choices for vegans and vegetarians, and whether the backlash against the meat-free Friday policy is indicative of institutional marginalization (through extreme reactions, through limited meal choices) of persons with certain dietary restrictions. That the policy has prompted multiple arguments or discussions is not at all a problem; that these different arguments and discussions are going on over and across each other and often at the same time is a clarity problem, and produces distortion and communication breakdown.

PMB will start with the easier of the two questions, the question of whether Ursa College adequately meets the dietary needs of all of its members, and whether it ought to. Though the majority of Ursa members is omnivorous, a considerable minority is vegan or vegetarian. Ursa always serves at least one or two vegetarian options in hall (out of four to six total main course options), but has traditionally failed to serve vegan meals. Minorities of any sort don't inherently deserve extra or special attention, though it is often the case, in practice, that the dominance of the majority requires extra effort to ensure that minorities are treated democratically and their needs and interests are properly addressed. Mind you, democracy does not mean "majority rule," but "rule of the people." Minority people need to be accounted for, despite the marginalizing force of majority, in all manners of governance. Accordingly, as a democratically-minded academic institution, Ursa must be committed to doing what it can to meet the dietary needs of everyone at Ursa. In the near future it will be important for Ursa to continue in its quite successful tradition of being admirably fair, open, and responsive to the needs of its members, and in that vein to consider how to improve dining options for vegan and vegetarian members, regardless of the outcome of meat-free Fridays. As PMB understands, Ursa has already begun to think about possibilities for improvement, a testament to Ursa's culture of fair-mindedness, inclusion, and generosity.

Has the meat-free Fridays policy already begun to address the need for better options for vegan and vegetarian members? As PMB has noted, this was not the initial concern of the policy, though the policy has at least spurred some discussion about better vegan and vegetarian provisions. While the policy has not directly contributed much of practical value, and notably functions to restrict choice rather than to provide more choice, it has helped put the issue of vegan and vegetarian provisions on the radar.

As to the more difficult questions about the best ways for Ursa members to be environmentally conscious, PMB believes that Ursites would be better encouraged to make ethical choices about their consumption than forced to do so, even if for only one night of the week. One layer of this dispute is the old question about utilitarianism, whether ends justify means; a second layer is the consideration of, even given that ends justify means, whether the meat-free Fridays policy as a means actually best justifies its intended ends.

PMB is a harsh critic of utilitarian arguments and endeavors. First, the Best Possible Ends is something one can rarely quantify convincingly. Second, utilitarian arguments give short shrift to intentionality. Third, certain ends, even good ones, can be achieved through means that violate necessary and sustaining ethical principles.

1) If banning meat in hall on Fridays reduces carbon emissions and meat consumption in hall, but causes disaffected students to make a point of going out to restaurants to consume meat every Friday, how does one determine whether the best possible ends for the environment have been met?

2) If well-meaning omnivores intend to abstain from eating meat on Fridays, then find themselves robbed of that good-faith intentionality by being deprived of the choice of abstention by force or by mandate, haven't we discouraged the very kind of thinking that we aimed to instill?

3) If it's OK for omnivores to be deprived of choice in one instance each week with the aim of aiding the environment, does it not also ratify the tactic of choice deprivation used by other, less-savory groups to marginalize or to persecute their opposition? Should Ursa apply the same principles to its policymaking across the board, what would happen to our core values?

An ends-justify-means approach, whose instrument in this case is choice deprivation, fails because it undermines its own guiding sentiment of choosing to do the right thing by the environment. By effectively mandating a collective "choice," for what to eat in hall on Fridays, the meat-free Friday policy disempowers large groups of Ursites who would otherwise choose to forego meat meals on Fridays and other days in reverence to an ethical request, as it were, rather than a mandate. In most cases, right action happens through choice, and not through coercion.

In some cases, collective will must be imposed. For example, individuals will never decide of their own free will to charitably donate enough of their income to sustain a given society's poor or build that society's infrastructure. As a result we have taxes and government-based social provisions. The principle behind this is that a governing body is responsible foremost to the society (the people) who comprise it and give it legitimacy. Ursa operates in a similar way; the primary responsibility of its governing bodies are to its members and their needs. Abstracting global intentions beyond the needs of the locals must be done carefully, and not necessarily by mandate. In the case of Ursa, as PMB has suggested, many members will choose to concern themselves with global issues without being forced to do so. In many cases being forced to do so will counterintuitively turn the concerns of the globally minded back onto the local (as has happened at Ursa), creating the opposite orientation of the mandate's intent (here we find ourselves engaged in very localized politics of global concern).

Additionally and admittedly, moral and ethical action is less meaningful when it isn't chosen. In Theocratic Society X, for example, where stealing a piece of fruit gets you stoned to death, they have low crime rates. It doesn't necessarily follow, however, that the citizens of Theocratic Society X are more moral than the citizens of societies with higher crime rates but less severe punishments. What does it mean, then, to chose to do what is right, versus being coerced into not doing what is wrong?

And, at the end of the day, it's at least questionable whether the means of limiting the choice of meat in hall on Fridays have optimally produced the desired ends. As PMB's comments have suggested thus far, the policy has largely engendered the opposite of its aims.

PMB's recommendation: encourage meat-free Fridays in hall, but allow the choice of meat nonetheless. If members opt against meat on Fridays, chefs will prepare less of it. Another option would be to negotiate, instead of a meat-free Friday, a sustainable meal Friday for which all food is purchased from local producers and the most sustainable options, meat or fish or otherwise, are chosen for the menus. And as a separate issue, Ursites should think together, in conjunction with governing bodies, about how to provide better for vegan and vegetarian members, and what such members would like to see on the menu. Perhaps a standing order of at least one or two vegan options per meal, with another vegetarian option, and two meat options? Perhaps the quality and nutritional value of vegan and vegetarian provisions in hall is also a consideration?

Game meat also tends to be more sustainable. Let us not consider bear.

Conference Reform

2010-03-27T15:26:00.002Z

Even for a one-day conference, PMB is highly skeptical about the ability of participants to productively engage with the content of presentations (paper after paper after paper). Particularly in the humanities, for which conventional delivery means literally reading a scholarly paper for 20-60 minutes and taking questions afterward, the amount of mental energy required to really stick with and think actively about someone's ideas for long periods of time (and then do it over again in the next session, paper after paper after paper) is daunting. For one, having someone read to you or talk at you for an hour is probably not the best way to transmit information, particularly information that relies on considerable attention to detail and sorting of complexity. Also, it would seem our attention span is not particularly suitable for the conventional conference presentation. There is always a new study detailing how quickly into an hour-long talk audience members begin to tune out, then to start thinking about sex. Now that technological distractions are possible, we have a slew of studies on the prevalence and uses of things like Twitter during conference presentations. If anything, the conference Twittering phenomenon suggests that people are looking for new ways to actively engage with the material being presented, and in many cases benefiting from such engagement.

PMB actually enjoys conferences, even though sometimes he begins thinking more about his own research than the research being presented, once launched off onto a thought-tangent (not necessarily a bad thing). But he would like to take some time to begin thinking about better ways of doing conferences. Here are some first proposals, admittedly geared primarily toward humanities conferences:

1) Drastically reduce the number of conference papers at a conference. Hold less than a handful of plenary sessions on broader topics (in relation to the conference topic) that touch on smaller topics (beneath the umbrella of the conference topic).

2) In accordance with 1, shift the emphasis of the conference from the conference paper or presentation to the mediated panel discussion. Develop a series of panels with pre-identified discussion topics. Assign a chair or co-chairs to each panel with some demonstrable degree of expertise in the subfield or subtopic that the panel is to address. Encourage scholars to come prepared with their own notes and references for the discussion to facilitate more specific and content-driven discussion.

3) Have conference attendees write a paper for the conference just as they do now, but have the paper available in digital format, organized by topic, for attendees to read rather than listen to. This admittedly causes a couple of problems re. preparation of digital materials (extra work for conference organizers) and opportunities for plagiarism of unpublished work. This idea needs work; though mainly it's aimed at providing a more efficient way of consuming the information in scholarly papers (reading) while allowing scholars to share work that hasn't yet been published (very important).

4) Networking is almost always one of the focal points of a conference, though we pretend that it's only a positive externality, a consequence of people getting together to read and listen to papers. Make the networking aspect of the conference more explicit by organizing meet-and-greet or informal discussion sessions for participants by research topic. Rely less on academic cliques deciding on their own terms to take the discussion to the local bar or restaurant.

These are some quick stabs at conference reform that PMB hopes to revise and reconsider at another time.

Bad People

2010-03-21T14:01:00.002Z

PMB was sitting at a wobbly table at Pret A Manger having a sandwich and reading John Carey's What Good Are The Arts? when he heard a loud splat. No, it wasn't the sound of Immanuel Kant's gravestone exploding or Jeanette Winterson falling flat on her face. A young woman accidentally dumped the half-eaten contents of her tray on the floor as she brought the tray to the waste bin. PMB was startled, then turned to observe what fell: a sandwich wrapper, a quarter of a sandwich (exploded into lettuce and bread parts), and a napkin. The woman made the effort to scoop up the sandwich wrapper and throw it in the bin, left the napkin and food on the floor, and walked off.

PMB contends that there is something deeply disturbing about this display. First, if one will make the effort to pick up some of the mess she made, why would she only pick up some of the mess? Second, since she knows that the mess is her mess, who does she assume will clean it up for her? Third, why should she assume that either her mess is fine where it is or that, if it's not fine where it is, someone else should clean it up for her? Fourth, is she immune to the rightful social pressure, applied through the disapproving stare of at least one onlooker, to mind one's own mess and be respectful of other people? Perhaps the most plausible answer to any of these questions is simple enough: she doesn't care.

PMB can only conclude that she is a bad and inconsiderate person, at least in this instance. No excuses will be made for such behavior.

Capitalism Is Not The Same As "Free Enterprise"

2010-03-16T15:48:00.004Z

One of the ways ignorant politicians sustain continuous innovation in the realms of Saying Stupid Things and Being Wrong, even after so much saying of stupid things and so much being wrong, is their impressive ability to misuse and conflate terms. The latest and most talked about example is the conservative-dominated Texas Board of Education, whose recent vote to re-write history textbooks according to a mixture of sometimes reasonable but mostly downright ridiculous takes on American history has caused quite a stir. The New York Times writes it up here.

PMB understands if, in economics curricula, the Texas Board wants to include prominent "free-market" economists like Milton Friedman and Friedrich von Hayek alongside equally-if-not-more-influential economists like Karl Marx and John Maynard Keynes. One should really have knowledge of all of these economists after taking an economics curriculum. And while PMB is not sympathetic to the dropping of the seminal figure Thomas Jefferson from curricula on the Enlightenment and the American and French revolutions, particularly in favor of that unenlightened and counter-Enlightenment hack John Calvin, if Texas Boarders really want to teach some theology they might adopt Thomas Aquinas, a serious thinker.

But what really makes PMB want to bare his teeth and claws is the completely imbecilic notion of replacing the word "capitalism" in textbooks with the phrase "free-enterprise system."

PMB should explain for conservatives that capitalism and free-enterprise (or free markets) are not the same thing. Fundamentally (because many conservatives like the Texas Board of Education's rightist faction lack fundamental knowledge of the things on which they vote), capitalism is a system in which the means of production (land, capital) are privately owned. Capitalism as such is often associated with free markets or laissez faire economic policies, though these are not actually necessary components of capitalism. In fact, the most successful capitalist country today is a communist country. In China, a mix of deregulation and draconian regulation and social measures have produced the world's most dynamic mode of capitalist production. Further, that the one-party (you guessed it, Communist) government maintains a degree of ownership of the means of production (contra traditional understandings of capitalism), doesn't overshadow the incentivizing of Chinese industry leaders with such high shares of the profits that the system is, in a very strange way, also kind of privatized.

Not knowing anything about Marxism, socialism, or communism aside, when "free-market" conservatives say things like "we've already witnessed the failure of Marxism/socialism/communism" in defense of capitalism, they get at least one thing right: we have indeed witnessed failures of non-capitalist systems of government--the failures of governments that own the means of production. In fact, there's hardly anywhere in the world where non-capitalist systems of government exist. This bit of information, which conservatives would be the first to point out, should serve as glaring evidence for conservatives that in fact there are many different ways for governments to regulate and manipulate capitalist systems to produce a vast range outcomes. There's a tremendous difference between government ownership of the means of production and heavy government regulation. This difference enables heavily regulating, even totalitarian governments to exercise capitalist systems. It also means that capitalist systems are not necessarily "free" or deregulated. After all, if Communist China can outperform the great beacon of capitalism, the freedom-loving utopia of the United States, in the great sport of capitalism, all of these conservatives should be second- and third-guessing themselves about equating "capitalism" with "free enterprise." They should likewise begin to let go of the ruinous assumption that capitalism as such necessarily makes for the freest societies. A glance across the globe reveals flourishing capitalist social-democracies in Western Europe, flourishing socialist-capitalist democracies in Scandinavia (where, I should add, the means of production are still mostly privately owned), and even a flourishing non-democratic-capitalist communist regime in China, in which the existence of capitalism has actually exacerbated many human rights problems instead of bringing "freedom" (widening gap between wealthy elite and poor; censorship; astonishing government execution rates, etc.). From these observations we can learn two important lessons: one, the redistribution of social resources isn't at all anti-capitalist; two, capitalism does not ensure democracy, freedom, or any other channels for the sustaining of basic human rights.

Even within American history, capitalism has not necessarily meant "free enterprise." Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury under America's first president, George Washington, within America's first government, fought to nationalize debt and establish a Federal bank. There were eventually LBJ's Great Society program and FDR's New Deal. Let's not forget the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, or the Glass-Steagall banking act of 1933 (later repealed), though "free-market" conservatives would like us to ignore these important moments in American history.

But can PMB really expect members of the Texas Board of Education to have been educated?

Graduate School in the Humanities: A Bear Trap?

2010-02-12T13:16:00.004Z

Anyone who's read PMB's interview in the Michaelmas Term 2009 issue of Linacre Li(n)es knows that PMB completed his doctorate at Linacre, but only after taking some time off to swim the Atlantic and create the Internet. Things have worked out well for PMB, but we must admit that he is a rare success story.

There are many sound arguments against pursuing a graduate and then academic career in the humanities, primarily because trends in academic labor are looking grim, and have been looking grim for decades. It's cheaper for universities to increase their reliance on contingent academic labor: adjunct faculty who are paid by course and not by salary, often receive limited or no health benefits, and can be dropped at any time (this often creates a rift between full-time, tenure-track faculty with job security and benefits and a majority adjunct underclass). Outside of academia, it remains difficult for people with humanities PhDs to find work. The assumption is that someone with a doctorate is too expensive, overqualified, under-experienced, potentially disruptive, not socialized for the 'business world' or the 'real world,' and perhaps just too old at that stage to compete with a newly-minted double-major in English and Economics with a BA from Yale. William Pannapacker, alias "Thomas H. Benton," an tenured English lit. professor and columnist for the Chronicle of Higher Education, has made a name for himself by elaborating in a series of articles on these arguments against graduate school, culminating in his latest, here.

Though "Benton" approaches the situation fatalistically and unproductively, and I thoroughly abhor his approach, it's hard to disagree with most of what he says on the topic. I would just offer a few points to supplement and to counter his "just don't go" oeuvre:

1) There is no such thing as a 'life of the mind,' and everyone knows this or ought to know it. Benton goes after this alleged romanticizing of the 'life of the mind,' which is supposed to be inherently more valuable than being able to pay your rent or feed yourself or your family; yet this is the weakest argument of his detractors, and quite frankly the easiest to dismantle. Benton takes on this argument precisely for the reason that it's a straw man easily taken down. The real reason why people knowingly sacrifice stability and earning potential to enter graduate school and pursue academic careers in the humanities, often with less assurance than Harry Potter on the tale of a Snitch, is because of the mitigating value (or even potential value) of having more control over one's schedule, working for oneself in a sense, on the work that one likes to do, with relatively few obstacles and overseers and managerial types to heed or appease. While studies and surveys have shown that professors actually work as many hours or more and for less pay than other elite professions, professors do have the benefit of working more on their own terms than, for example, an investment analyst who works 70 hours/week in a cubicle or small office and whose employer bans the use of gmail or Facebook or iTunes to "ensure" productivity. So enough of this 'life of the mind' stuff. If anyone actually enters the academic profession because they believe that it's some kind of heterotopic space where occupants live a majestic and sequestered 'life of the mind,' they deserve to be unemployed. Benton either knows this and is disingenuous or doesn't know it and is naive after being tenured; but either way he's picking the wrong fight.

2) While Benton defends his advice that only the independently wealthy should pursue graduate study in the humanities by arguing essentially 'thems the facts, I'm just reporting, I'm not advocating the situation,' his approach and the 'just don't go' mantra only reinforces the threat of humanities scholarship becoming once again the prerogative of the wealthy, or the 'gentleman scholar' scenario. The problem is that, in practice, by making it policy to actively discourage everyone but the wealthy to become humanities professors, you will end up with only the wealthy as humanities professors. By contrast, if you accept that young adults and in some cases old adults looking for a second career have the capacity and the responsibility to make their own informed career choices, rather than reifying the in loco parentis situation beyond the undergraduate years, humanities fields will continue to productively sort themselves out, as they always have, with a broader range of perspectives and a larger pool of competitive and intelligent and driven young scholars.

3) Related to above, it's not humanities research that results in the poor job market for the humanities. Students aren't shying away from taking a course in history because they fear a syllabus full of Hayden White. They don't know who Hayden White is in the first place. They're not taking courses in history because their parents are telling them that, interests aside, they'll get a better job if they take a course in business. Further, while the most esoteric examples from humanities subject matter are often held up by critics in comparisons with the most 'applied' examples from other fields (the Lacanian real vis-a-vis applied statistics or disease spread modeling: choose wisely), most of us fail to grasp the fact that the vast majority of everything in academic study in all disciplines, including the sciences and math, is not directly useful at all, and doesn't automatically prepare one better for any particular career. This is not to equate the usefulness of research in the humanities with that in the STEM fields, but rather to suggest that academic training and teaching, i.e. college or university, is not necessarily vocational, nor should it necessarily be. In light of this, it's the lack of value placed on teaching and learning in the humanities, and the assumption that the attendant skill sets and experiences are less valuable in the broader market than other degrees or disciplines, that puts extra pressure on academic job markets in the humanities. Humanities research has never been valuable directly, nor even accessible or widely read. Humanities research exists almost entirely to support teaching, and to foster innovation in what is being taught in the classrooms. No student would want to hear the same thing about Shakespeare that a student ten years before was hearing. And no field of inquiry, across the board, would retain interest and value should it become stagnant. This is all to say that rather than telling people not to try for an academic career in the humanities, we would do better to welcome people who are motivated and feisty enough to take upon themselves as a crucial mission and fundamental aspect of the profession the burden of communicating to the public what humanities work is, what it does, and why it's necessary. A dissertation on the Harlem Renaissance won't have any direct public impact whatsoever; but what that study does for academics as they prepare to teach Langston Hughes to a predominately black and latino class at Howard University is indeed important. As important as it is for another professor getting ready to teach the same material to a predominately white class at Columbia.

4) Benton is right to gesture toward a more comprehensive ranking system for doctoral programs in the humanities. Such rankings exist for philosophy programs, and are sorely needed for English literature programs. Prospective students should have better information, including, also, job placement statistics and maybe even exit interview excerpts, in order to make smart decisions about graduate school. The MLA and the AAUP should be taking care of this. I haven't met many academics opposed to oversight on Wall St.; why not better organization and job-placement oversight for ourselves?

PMB is thus a firm (insofar as glue and rolled-up newspaper can be firm) supporter of higher education in the humanities, and will always have a wrinkled eye on the issue as he proceeds in politics.

Issue 4: Cats Eat Grass

2010-02-09T15:31:00.007Z

Being a responsible politician requires attention to detail, as well as an ability to make decisions based on discernible facts. This is especially the case when the discernible facts contradict one's personal experience. Voters frequently delude themselves into supporting the intuitive hero type, the politician who 'shoots you straight' or acts 'from the gut' or 'the gut feeling.' There's a certain populist appeal in that kind of approach, derived from an unfortunate sense that a leader shouldn't be more knowledgeable than the rest of us, but s/he should nonetheless be a 'natural.' For the British readers, Churchill comes to mind. Independent of his policy chops, the man remains a celebrated international figure for his fortitude rather than his discerning mind. No one cared if Churchill applied sophisticated policy analysis (granted, the whole WWII thing was kind of a no-brainer), just that he was committed to an intuitive sense of being on the right side of history. That's what the people wanted to hear, and that's what they still hear in the echoes of Churchill's name. A crass, American example ('crass' and 'American' are, for the British, almost synonymous) of 'from the gut' populism is G.W. Bush (does Churchill turn about in his grave at this comparison? Maybe, maybe not). Bush is perhaps the modern-day epitome of a political leader who generated enough support to satisfy his agenda through sheer, unenlightened conviction. Whether for good or ill, blind conviction is a powerful and dangerous political instrument. A responsible politician must know when to heed the material facts that stand between conviction and outcome, so that the outcome is a product of discernment and deliberation and not merely dedication. Outcomes tend to be better across the board when they reflect some accounting of material reality.

This is all just a preamble for my primary point: cats eat grass. Now you're saying 'look, Bear, cats are carnivores, they don't eat grass. Cats eat mice and moles and other small rodents, sometimes bugs, whatever else we feed them of the meat variety, occasionally milk or cheese. But if I put a plate of asparagus in front of the cat it's surely not going to eat the asparagus.' Well enough, but if you put a plate of grass in front of your cat then you will soon observe that the cat will eat the grass. 'But Bear, that makes no sense. I've personally never seen a cat eat grass. And I know that cats eat mice. And I never give my cat any grass, and my cat does fine without any grass.' Maybe so, but if you were to feed it grass it would eat the grass. Further, the grass would improve its digestive health. Further, the grass would serve as a supplementary source of vitamins A and D. To put it simply, you should really start feeding your cat some bits of grass every once in a while, because this will produce better outcomes for the both of you. Counterintuitive, I know, but that doesn't make it wrong.

'Bear, how am I to trust you. Are you not a politician?'

Photographic evidence here, including a fun bit of swatting around 40 seconds in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oz-b0zuCqNk

PMB Issue 4 thus concludes with PMB Maxim 4: Regardless of conviction, the grass on the other side of the fence is not necessarily greener, but your cat would eat it regardless.

Issue 3: Carbon Emissions Reduction

2009-12-03T00:44:00.003Z

Like most reasonable bear replicas, Paper Mache Bear believes that reducing waste, promoting energy efficiency, and looking out for the environment are important things to do. PMB understands that individual contributions to these causes can go a long way, so he is sure to be consumption conscious in his daily 'life.' Knowing that there are live bears (Polar) in places that are rather imminently affected by climate change, PMB considers carbon emissions reduction a serious issue. But PMB knows that when sentient human beings get involved in political issues, all hell breaks loose.

Consider the following:

Much of the rhetoric of political advocacy for reduction of carbon emissions emits populist overtones, perhaps for good reason: the 'small steps can go a long way' approach, aimed at effecting big change through the relatively minute, quotidian behavioral changes of committed individuals, is powerful and potentially solvent. The problems arise, however, when this fervor and rhetoric suffuse over any possibility of substantive progress.

What are you talking about, bear?

It has become popular among climate change activists to promote community pledges to the tune of "We, Community X, pledge to try to reduce carbon emissions at our facilities by ten percent by the year 2010 (everyone's doin' it).'

OK, that sounds like a great idea. How do you plan on doing this?

By encouraging individuals to try to take more trains or eat less meat or turn off the lights or take shorter showers or...and then you can report to the community, individually, what you've done, individually, to help us all reduce carbon emissions.

OK, that sounds reasonable to me. So what is our level of carbon emissions now?

Hmm, I don't know.

So how do we measure our carbon emissions, or, for that matter, our carbon reductions?

Hmm, I don't know. It's very difficult to do this. We have some reports, but they're not very precise. It's very difficult to do this.

So let me get this right: we're going to pledge to reduce our unknown quantity X carbon emissions by ten percent by 2010, but we have no way of measuring our carbon reductions? How do you take 10 percent of I Don't Know, measured in increments of I Don't Know Either? It's been a while since I had algebra...

Well, I don't know either...either?

PMB recognizes that there is a major problem here. A pledge of solidarity is one thing; but making what is essentially a rhetorical pledge couched in the language of a substantive pledge is both disingenuous and incredibly self-righteous. Such a pledge amounts to empty words aimed at making everyone feel lovely, and rather ineffectually conceals the fact that there are zero measures of progress, and zero measures of accountability for the pledging community.

PMB could pledge to cure AIDS by the end of the week, or to end global hunger by the end of the month: just make a commitment, he could say, as individuals, to drop off a few cans of pinto beans at the shelter--you know, do your part--and then stop off at the monkey research lab and prod a few Rhesus for a few hours until we get a vaccine. So long as no one has any idea how and to what extent we're progressing, no one can say we haven't succeeded. Furthermore, without any reasonable means of measuring, or even accounting for what we've done, nobody knows what we've failed to do.

Well, OK, PMB didn't mean to be that snarky. But when a debate over a real, concrete, important issue like climate change becomes blinded by such suffusions of goodwill, it can be ultimately counterproductive. PMB applauds the enthusiasm of activists who fight the good fight while most bear replicas sit perched on their walls with no torso or legs; but he also thinks we would all benefit from injecting a healthy dose of intelligence and a dash of prudence into the pulsing veins of this debate.

What's at stake here, apart from the polar bears, is NOT what individuals might fear they might have to do under such a community pledge, nor what potential life or comfort restrictions might be 'imposed' by such a pledge, no. What's at stake, rather, is what individuals might get away with NOT DOING under the warm, pledgy cover of accidental subterfuge. An empty pledge is an enabler of insouciant inaction.

PMB Issue 3 thus concludes with PMB Maxim 3: global warming might be curtailed drastically by reducing the amount of hot air coming out of the mouths of some emissions reduction activists.

Issue 2: June Scandals

2009-11-23T13:54:00.002Z

In June of 1972, Paper Mache Bear did not break into the DNC headquarters in Washington to steal information on his rival party.

In June of 2007, Paper Mache Bear was not arrested in a Minnesota airport for soliciting sex from a stranger in a public bathroom.

In June of 2009, Paper Mache Bear did not disappear for a week, telling the press that he was hiking the Appalachian trail while he was actually absconding to Argentina to bed a 43-year-old divorcee while his wife knew nothing of his whereabouts. Paper Mache Bear doesn't even have a wife.

Paper Mache Bear is mounted regally on a wall, without the ability to move himself this way or that; so Paper Mache Bear does not get involved in political scandals.

It has also been pointed out (cite: Linacre College CR Pres. Rob Shearer, 2009) that Paper Mache Bear's lack of genitals (which is not to say lack of fortitude) makes it difficult for him to chase after Argentinian women, at least not with any realistic expectation of coital engagement. One might also add that PMB's lack of genitals is a function of his lack of torso, and not any semblance of testosterone deficiency, his testosterone levels being wholly on par with those typical of a thing made of paper mache.

Whereas most politicians are too brainless to avoid scandal-worthy behavior, which quite obviously undermines democratic governance along with whatever popular confidence that underwrites such governance, Paper Mache Bear is too brainless to enter into scandal, his literal absence of brain being the limiting factor that confers his ironic superiority. A supporter of traditional definitions of (sentient) politicians might condemn this as a straw-man argument; but of course this argument has far more to do with scarecrow. Without going through the trouble of unpacking the finer differences between these two kinds of anthropomorphic farm aid (to say nothing of their relation to the urso-pomorphic), suffice it to say that Paper Mache Bear is without a brain, yet not without an acute intelligence that has been there all along. There is precedent for brainless things delivering superior knowledge, viz:

[Scarecrow: I haven't got a brain...only straw.
Dorothy: How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?
Scarecrow: I don't know. But some people without brains do an awful lot of talking, don't they?]

And by "some people" Scarecrow means members of U.S. Congress. As Mark Twain suggested, "Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself."

Unfortunately, there is no precedent for the inverse scenario (in relation to Paper Mache Bear): deficiently-brained human politicians offering sincere acknowledgment of their shocking stupidity. There are no nuggets of insight to be had on this stock phenomenon; only talking points. And bromides. But I repeat myself.

Paper Mach Bear is thus shown to overachieve without a brain, exceeding in merit, valor, wit, intelligence, sagacity, and sensibility all of his cerebrally-endowed competitors.

Paper Mache Bear Issue 2 thus concludes with Paper Mache Bear Maxim 2: The presence of a central nervous system does not necessitate the presence of a backbone.

Issue 1: The Statue of Liberty

2009-11-20T14:17:00.004Z

Paper Mache Bear has on record from a RoboCop poster that hangs near him in his Presidential Room that in the year 2015 the Statue of Liberty will detonate, destroying all of America. A crime-fighting cyborg, RoboCop naturally has the expertise and experience in such relevant fields as espionage, electrical engineering, and ballistics; and so when RoboCop claims that the exploding Statue de la Liberté is a Trojan Horse of sorts, planted by the French in the late 19th century as a surreptitious plot to destroy America, we surely ought to listen.

Or should we?

The circumstantial evidence lines up: the statue did indeed come from France, and the French, an irony-loving people if ever there were such a people (indeed there are such a people, the French), would indulge in that proclivity and dub this weapon of mass destruction a symbol "of liberty." Further, 2015 is several years into the future, events of the future being things that we in the present can neither confirm nor deny. Additionally, the statue is located near New York City, a renowned metonym for the American financial-industrial complex, and an infamous target of infamous terrorists. And lastly (but perhaps more worthy of being firstly), the statue of liberty is chalk full of nuclear warheads (cite: RoboCop, 2009).

We may take each of these statements individually as factual, beyond which we may devise a means of connecting these individual facts with tenuous lines in order to form something of an arc of knowledge, or a definitive plot, whose climax is the realization that the Statue of Liberty will blow up in 2015, ending America once and for all, to the resounding appreciation of all the world (especially the French masterminds), and finding its dénouement (yes, dénouement is a French word)in a future event which at present can neither be proven nor falsified.

Indeed, we have seen this kind of production before (and here I am not referencing the false insinuation of nuclear warheads...at least not intentionally). Sarah Palin, recent author of "truly one of the most substantive policy books" (cite: Rush Limbaugh, 2009), has suggested that at some point in the future, after health care reform, the Federal government would murder her mentally disabled child. Seeing as the United States reserves the power to hold capital executions, and many of those executed have barely more ability to speak coherently for themselves in the court of law than a child, and Sarah Palin already has a reputation for "going rogue," and Barack Obama is a Maoist who has been known to exterminate children (cite: RoboCop, 2009), and, once again, none of us knows what will happen in the future, ex-governor Palin's accusations are wholly plausible.

Or is it?

I mean, or are they?

Paper Mache Bear understands that in political climates in which there are no standards for any claim to truth or falsity, the politician who can wrangle the largest population of supporting idiots can win the day. Paper Mache Bear rejects this conjecture as an insult to his potential constituents, and vows therefore to hold himself accountable for truth-claims, and to robustly expose the errant statements of the likes of RoboCop.

Paper Mache Bear Issue 1 thus concludes with Paper Mache Bear Maxim 1: cyborgs are full of transistors...and shit.

Raison d'être

2009-11-19T15:43:00.003Z

Paper Mache Bear has decided to run for political office in the near future. He may become president of the United States, or he may prevail in a local ward election in which most people forgot to vote or his sentient opponent was caught in a bribe or tossing bodies out of the trunk of his Lincoln Continental. Paper Mache Bear has plenty of time to calibrate his aspirations because in politics, urgency is a function not of situational demand, but of monetary supply; and Paper Mache Bear is not in anyone's pockets (yet).

The purpose of this site is to raise awareness of Paper Mache Bear's Campaign To Change The World by getting elected to public office, and concomitantly to help him get elected to public office.

You may have the following questions:

Q: Paper Mache Bear is an inanimate object, and even as such, he has no body.
A: That's a statement, not a question.

Q: Then how could an inanimate object benefit me or my constituency as an elected representative?
A: Inanimate objects possess a greater body of knowledge and a keener intelligence than most elected officials. Furthermore, as Sir Philip Sidney once wrote of the poet, the inanimate object "nothing affirmeth, and therefore never lieth." In other words, unlike sentient politicians, Paper Mache Bear will never lie to you.

Q: Why is his left arm longer than his right arm?
A: Paper Mache Bear leans to the left.

Q: And what about his missing claws on the right paw?
A: This is only proof that Paper Mache Bear will fight, tooth and claw, for your interests and your rights.

Q: Are you serious about this?
A: Yes.

Q: Then how can I get involved?
A: The Paper Mache Bear Campaign To Change The World is currently designing promotional items like t-shirts and posters, which should be ready by the time Paper Mache Bear selects his first political contest. In the mean time, you can follow his speeches and pointed analysis on this site, and feel free to link to this site on your blog, Twitter, or Facebook. But be patient; revolutions don't happen overnight.