Anthropologist Posed as a Student

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that a cultural anthropologist who went under cover as a freshman at her own university to write a book about undergraduate life has been unmasked by a New York newspaper. While I respect ethnographic fieldwork, this kind of "covert" auto-anthropology seems a little, say, silly... I applaud the journalist, though.

Desperate in New Orleans

I'm speechless before the devastation in New Orleans. We don't watch television and depend on NPR and on-line news sources. The absence of moving images (esp. the repetitive rebroadcasting on CNN) makes the apprehension of the breadth of destruction more extended in time. No one seems to have a grip on what has happened though, and it seems that it will take a long time for us to understand how an entire American city was destroyed in the summer of 2005.

I remember during our stay in New Orleans how despite the touristic veneer, the neighborhoods right next to the French Quarter exuded a sense of mystery and menacing particularity that the few urban places in America can lay claim to today.

Don't Buy Gas on September 1!

By way of friends in Minneapolis who got it by way of friends in Williamstown:

If Gasoline Prices are affecting you, take a moment and read------THEN ACT

It has been calculated that if everyone in the United States and Canada did not purchase a drop of gasoline for one day and all at the same time, the oil companies would choke on their stockpiles. At the same time it would hit the entire industry with a net loss of over 4.6 billion dollars which affects the bottom lines of the oil companies.

Therefore September 1st has been formally declared "Stick It Up Their Behind"  Day and the people of these two nations should not buy a single drop of gasoline that day. The only way this can be done is if you forward this E-MAIL to as many people as you can and as quickly as you can to get the word out.  Waiting on the Government to step in and control the prices is not going to happen.

What happened to the reduction and control in prices that the Arab Nations promised two weeks ago?  Remember one thing, not only is the price of gasoline going up but at the same time airlines are forced to raise their prices, trucking companies are forced to raise their prices, which affects prices on everything that is shipped.

FOOD, CLOTHING, BUILDING MATERIALS, MEDICAL SUPPLIES, etc. --------  who pays in the end?  WE DO ! We can make a difference if they don't get the message after one day --------  we will do it again and again. So do your part and spread the word.  Forward this email to everyone you know. Mark your calendars and make September 1st a day that the citizens of the United States and Canada say "ENOUGH IS ENOUGH".

one of the most ingenious hoaxes in the history of science

in this NYTimes op-ed piece, Daniel Dennett demonstrates why people are "taken in by one of the most ingenious hoaxes in the history of science," namely the 'intelligent design' scheme. pulling no punches, he tells intelligent designers to 'get in line':

"Get in line behind the hypothesis that life started on Mars and was blown here by a cosmic impact. Get in line behind the aquatic ape hypothesis, the gestural origin of language hypothesis and the theory that singing came before language, to mention just a few of the enticing hypotheses that are actively defended but still insufficiently supported by hard facts."

The Ads They Are A-changing

Kaiser Permanente's $40 million ad campaign is going to use Bob Dylan's famous song to promote its image of corporate integrity. "Kaiser Thrive." Why an HMO would need to spend this much money on an ad campaign is very suspicious. We belong to Kaiser since it is the cheapest health care option available. I don't have anything really bad to say about it yet, except that it has seriously corporate feel.

This Protest Kaiser Thrive website provides some rather incoherent but hair-raising horror stories from about Kaiser's substandard healthcare. There seems to be enough outrage at this outfit to warrant a bit more attention and alarm when being treated by one of their physicians. And does every HMO inspire a protest website?

My family's income has not risen at the pace of healthcare costs, and like most American families, we're paying more money for less care. I was told yesterday when making my appointment for a yearly checkup that doctors only see patients who are over 65. I'll see a nurse practitioner. I have nothing against nurse practitioners. It's just that this policy has the smell of a cost cutting scheme. I'm sure that they are saving money to pay the ad agency, buy television time and have enough left over to pay Dylan his royalties.

I'd boycott Dylan, but I already bought his CD's. I'd boycott Kaiser, but they're our HMO for now. Yes, this country's health system sucks. We sold it down the road to the greediest mothers on the block. Thank you Republicans and Red Staters!

intelligent design of dinosaurs

now the flat-earthers are buying dinosaur statues and "converting" them to intelligent design, as reported by the LATimes, and today echoed by boing boing - for instance by selling toy dinosaurs whose labels warn, "Don't swallow it! The fossil record does not support evolution."

it shows how well they understand the absolute lack of rigor of their belief that they would use fossils to prove that earth is only 6,000 years old and dinosaur fossils are not in fact fossils... all in order "to win converts to creationism"!

in addition, a colleague points out that this stupidity is also blasphemous: "[...] 'Taking the Bible as astronomy or physics is blasphemy. They're treating it as an elementary textbook and it's not,' said Francisco J. Ayala, a UC Irvine evolutionary biology professor and ordained Dominican priest." full story

Club "Id"

Since I wrote the last post on Club "Ed," I realized that perhaps what one can't hope for is Club "Id." Perhaps "Ed" is paying Leo for protection against the ravages of "Id." The violin playing/sawing continues apace and is even more out of tune today.

Playing out of tune is one's only revenge: the Id has to have SOME fun!

Club "Ed" Pool Security

Just in case any unwanted intruders get into the pool area of University Hills and make it beyond the virtual gate, Leo is armed and ready.

In the City of Tainan, Hai-an Road is a remarkable setting for contemporary public art installations: it started out as an attempt to create an underground shopping mall slicing down the middle of a residential neighborhood in an ancient part of the city, one of the oldest settled by the Chinese in Taiwan. But after tearing down people's houses, literally right down the middle, it turned out that the water table in Tainan is simply too high for an underground mall to remain dry. So what happens next? The displaced residents do not get their homes rebuilt. You've got these half torn down houses, some with the a sink sticking out of a wall, and a very enterprising curator Du Jhao Hsian, decides to that the ruined walls are perfect for a street gallery . And here you see one of the most famous "installations" called "Blueprint." Hoping to revitalize the neighborhood by creating an artspace out of an urban planning disaster, the city agreed and now Hai-an Road is hoping to become a bo-bo center of consumerism. Well, in these photographs, a wedding photographer and bride and groom have discovered that contemporary art can offer a beautiful backdrop to fabricate wedding memories! Residents I hear had little say in the matter. They were paid off to go live somewhere else. You can't live in art, even if it's public!

blog growth

over the past twelve months, this humble blog has grown from 246 average daily hits to 1287 average daily hits (almost a five-fold increase), from moving a monthly load of 52468 KB to a whopping 390849 KB per month (almost eight times what it used to be), and all in all, it served 34670 people who clicked on higher-yearning 287283 times. for all the details, see this annual report with monthly (and even hourly) breakdowns, generated by webalizer.

hot tubs corrupt

absolute hot tubs corrupt absolutely is the lesson I'm learning in Irvine, California. After our trip to Los Angeles last weekend, I realized that my world view was being imperceptibly but definitely changed by living in CLUB ED, otherwise known as University Hills. Silver Lake, my former LA neighborhood never looked so unplanned to these Irvine-saturated eyes.

I'm also reliving my own childhood because there are at least four recent immigrant Chinese children in our rental apartment neighborhood who saw away at their violins on the hottest sunniest summer days. From scales to Turkey in the Straw to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star to Bach's Minuet in D major, I am serenaded while I write this book on academic populism with the out of tune tunes of my own optimistic immigrant childhood as my background music.

Happily fulfilling my parents' fantasies of being a well-tempered all around spelling b winning math and science genius while mastering string instruments, I didn't know why I had to practice violin while other children played outside in the sunshine. I just knew it satisfied the older generation to hear me sawing away upstairs. They could hear that my hands and mind were occupied and not doing the devil's work. And the Chinese hate aerobic exercise. Being out of breath is not good. Little tiny movements, up and down the neck of a stringed instrument discipline the mind and prepare you for a life of Carpal Tunnel syndrome.

I'm sure that my young violin-playing neighbors are wondering, like I did why they have to practice violin day and night too while other children play Xbox and swim in the pool, soak in hot tub and ride around idly on bikes. Not one of them has the makings of an Itzhak Perlman, but I'm sure most of them will do really well on their SAT's and most of them will get into good colleges, go on to graduate degrees, make a shitload of money, drive up real estate prices in neighborhoods with "good" that is high testing public schools, put hot tubs in their pristine back yards, install wall to wall carpeting in their 4000 square foot homes...hire Mexican gardeners to cut their lawns, trim the bougainvillea. And they will feel as if they succeeded in clawing their way in to the good life, and they too will learn to have contempt for the poor, the underachieving the non-violin playing majority who didn't score above 1400 on their boards.

"Left" Anti-Intellectualism Must be Denounced

- and it is, here at LiP , by way of Nick Woomer (this is a print version). Lisa Featherstone, Doug Henwood and Christian Parenti think that action is not enough, and certainly not enough if it is accompanied by knee-jerk anti-intellectualism.

And they cite Adorno here as the one who was willing to denounce the student movement's actionism in 1968. I suppose his sin of calling the police on the 68 student protesters has finally been redeemed. Anti-intellectualism tries to exact revenge on the mind for what Adorno calls "an original sin" -- the radical division of mental from physical labor.

It feels good to lash out at those with the least power -- intellectuals -- anti-intellectuals of Left and Right are playing right into reactionary politics by attacking those whom they believe to free from the demands of survival INSTEAD of attacking the exploitation of monopoly capitalism. As long as radical democracy cannot make a place for the intellectual, it won't be radical enough for me and I won't sing along to their anti-globalization tunes. The weakness of the notion of pluralism is precisely this -- it can't account for the exclusion of the intellectual or scapegoat -- upon which so many immanent communities depend to seal their bonds of allegiance.

the skinny on Roberts and it doesn't look good

Well, I respect the folks at Daily Kos who have now presented the most comprehensive overview of what is at stake in the Roberts nomination. Read it here. I'm afraid that if Armando and "Categorically Imperative" are correct, if John Roberts joins the Supreme Court and this will "fundamentally change the nature of the United States."

I think it is very unlikely that an opposition will be able to stop this nomination. The only thing that can be done is to emphasize the fact that we will have a(nother) justice who sits on the Court who believes "right-wing's royalist aspirations." Royalist would be one thing -- but I believe the concentration of powers -- judicial, legislative, executive and in the end economic has another name. It is an "F" word and we're almost there already.

We shouldn't be hysterical about it because we can call this a Fascist country and not be put in jail. But that's about all the positive spin I can put on this.

Attack Evolution

is the strategy of a movement that wants to overturn materialism in the name of metaphysics. So let us deal with this on a more serious note. Reason has been entirely instrumentalized as engineering, and science reduced to positivism: the poor teaching of science and the lack of an education in philosophy have led to the commonly held assumption in the US that one can either "believe" in evolution or in creationism. No one knows how to reason and no one values reason.

Proponents of Intelligent Design have not emerged from nowhere. The Center for Science and Culture has "transformed the debate [over evolution vs. intelligent design] into an issue of academic freedom rather than a confrontation between biology and religion." Once again, the Right has been disciplined on their talking points. Because we cannot remember or teach our students to remember the legacy of religious opppression and the positive aspects of being liberated from fear, tyranny and superstition, and we have replaced "grand narratives" with "self-interest" we are indeed left to inherit the wind.

A million dollars if you can prove

that Jesus is not the son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster! Boing Boing has thrown down the gauntlet since Dr. yes! Dr. Kent Hovind has challenged us all to offer "empirical evidence" for evolution. Christians mock us because we think we "came from a monkey or a rock."

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha!!! Well, thank Udon that boing boing has pointed me to the REAL RELIGION , albeit without a very stringent moral code. The cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster makes up in gluten what it lacks in virtue (it seems, like most religions, to be very oriented toward the male fantasy of paradise.) The intrepid Keven, prophet of the FSM has written this letter to the Kansas School Board requesting that diverse theories of creationism including the version promoted by FSM be taught.

And to the kind folks at NPR -- enough about the Pope already on unity, and kindness and tolerance and blah blah blah. Let him sound off on FSM Please! We need a real debate here.

Let him challenge my belief in holy Pasta! Now I understand why they called it "Angel Hair"!

R--AMEN

Vocational Education and low expectations

got its start with Charles A. Prosser's life adjustment movement: to read a laudatory history, click here. The darker side of this story is that so continued an anti-intellectual backlash within secondary education that led to the "life adjustment movement."

Education reform brought you health classes, home economics, shop and auto mechanics, socialization and popularity electives, all meant to enrich your education, do the job that your parents weren't doing at home.

Prosser was head of the Dunwoody Institute in Minneapolis for 31 years, and as an educational vanguardist, he pioneered from his home institution this down to earth pragmatism that still distinguishes the ethos of public education in that state. Academics for Prosser, was for stuck up elitists!

One of my French classes at the U of M didn't know who won the Trojan War. Well, that was long before Brad Pitt fought in it. Now everyone knows it was the Greeks and not the Trojans. The daughter of a friend of mine performed in the school band: I attended some of these concerts. The students may have been enthusiastic, but you could barely tell what they were playing. Criticizing their inability to play in tune would have been elitist I imagine, which is why they continued to play badly!

In high school English, many of my students were restricted to a reading list of novels adapted to film , and since it was the Clinton years, Maya Angelou. Angelous is many things to many people, but her poetry is terrible. No matter, that's elitist of me to say.

Objecting to the deterioration of standards once again, would have been seen as -- you guessed it, elitist. Now I know that I was living in a hot bed of education reform, a state at the vanguard of low expectations, which is why I was always so uncomfortably bringing up the rear with my coastal attitude.

God, not Gravity makes you fall!

Breaking News! Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory

Thanks to Jost for bringing this news to our attention.

Out of Kansas comes Evangelical Physics who say that "secular" physics are just not consistent in theories of gravity. Consistency in the Evangelical mind is perhaps the criteria by which all truths and truth values should be judged and THAT'S why the Bible should be read literally, because we all know how consistent God was. Especially about shellfish and abomination -- do not eat the creepy crawly swarmy things -- and do not eat of the animals of the cloven hoof!

Satan's falling out of Paradise and Jesus' ascension to Heaven are not explicable if you follow the strict gravitists [sic]. Wow!

OK, so let me know how not to be disgusted with this kind of delusional Christian logic. Please!!! My sarcasm is a defense against my outrage. Says one Kansan, "We Just want our children to be educated properly..." for what may one ask? For life on another planet? Who is to say that we live on Earth?

I'm really looking for the right level of balance here. The Onion article is actually an example of pure restraint, so why should I not allow myself to become exercised? Help me, I've fallen down and I can't get up!

Conservative Manifesto from 1971

Supreme Court Justice Powell wrote the Powell Memo before he was appointed by Richard Nixon to the top court . In this memo, or manifesto, he outlines ways in which conservatives and business interests must take a more aggressive stance in defending the free enterprise system, American freedom and corporate values against the incursions made by the New Left.

According to the post at Kos, this memo was instrumental in forming the conservative think tanks that have become the source of Right-wing talking points: Heritage, Cato, we know the drill.

Do progressives have enough discipline to organize themselves along these lines by promoting an aggressive campaign on campuses, and in the media to reclaim the momentum for protecting progressive values as American values? Reclaim Democracy.org believes not. I see little sign of real change in the ways in which the Democratic Party is conducting business, but there are some hopeful hints that at least the smug establishment multiculturalism of the Clinton years is breaking up and that there is a real sense of crisis on the Left.

The World's first Stalinist News Feed!

Thanks to Mirko fo the for heads upon on NK News. North Korean Propaganda at your fingertips.

I especially liked the random insult generator, try it when you feel that your interpretation of Jane Austen promoted social justice and you'll immediately be taken down a few notches.

Will post more seriously at some point, but am writing furiously and find that blogging has become pure escapism. Please feel free to help me escape.

A Literary Organ

There are academics who believe that teaching literature in the proper way can make the world a better place! I don't even want to get involved in the silliness of this debate, but if you want to see a very impassioned discussion of this issue, check out The Valve's discussion of "theoretically oriented approaches" versus "politically oriented approaches" to literature and you'll see the nature of the dispute.

The fact that "literary criticism ought to further the cause of social justice" is justly criticized, but the debate degenerates into impassioned, and not very witty accusations and counter accusations - it must be said by mostly men.

It took me back ten years ago to the Derrida discussion list when I was so lonely in Minneapolis, that I spent my days on a 14.4 bps modem dial up connection on the internets!

Junk Food Nation

Junk Food Nation makes me wonder, why is the mainstream media not reporting on the cosy relationship between Altria, Coca-Cola, Burger King, General Mills and Pepsioc (what this Nation article calls "blue chip members of the obesity lobby") and no joke here-- the President's Council on Physical Fitness.

The argument against government regulations on junk food and fast food advertising in schools and to very young children will be the same Right-wing tripe about individual responsibility vs. government intervention, leaving in the meantime corporations completely free to saturate the airwaves with extremely seductive images associating athleticism and beauty with high fructose corn syrup sweetened beverages.

And as usual, the Bush administration boldly urges us to question the "science" behind the assertion that consuming higher amounts of fruit and vegetables "leads to decreased risk of obesity and diabetes."

Junk science will support junk food and if you eat it, it's your fault. Big Food cashes in and we are told to "stop blaming the food industry for obesity."

ruined vacation villages, part II

Another image courtesy of Lindsay Cox of ruined vacation village in Baishawan, Taiwan. Leo loves the story of Sun Wu Kong, the Monkey King sent to protect his master, a monk who brought the Buddhist sutras from India to China. And the Monkey King, whose gong fu is a match for any demon's, has been defeated by neglect. He wasn't powerful enough to overcome the Taiwanese/Chinese aversion to beaches and direct sunlight.

Potemkin East Village coming to Vegas

East Village in Vegas!

Now we can savor the delights of downtown Manhattan in Vegas -- Mark Advent is proposing a "retail complex": but what will they be selling? I hope some smack and clean needles to make it really authentic.

But the really, really sad thing about this story is that ever since we've moved to SoCal, I have felt the call of Vegas -- CHEAP family vacation, especially since I've gotten a load of what it costs to live here, what my extra-academic, humanities degree bearing peers are making in media...I've been feeling very, very, very poor. So don't be too surprised if yo find yours truly juggling a four year old, sunblock, a bucket of quarters in that City in the Desert on her next vacation.

I hate theater -- sort of,

but it is disturbing to see directors, playwrights and arts administrators wondering aloud in the New York Times Theater Pages if it's about portraying more real people and more real life which for these FAME graduates translates into more plays about minorities and people with disabilities.

How much more insulting and ridiculous can "traditional mainstream theater" be? I have cringed my way through only a few overacted "mainstream" productions in my day, so I find it hard to shell out to see people emote on stage. -- I was a devotee of the East Village, the late Ethyl Eichelberger and The Wooster Group who were moving by turns and wonderfully, over the top THEATRICAL. I'm not going to say any more about theater I like because that would take too long, but let's get this straight
"traditional mainstream theater"! -- If you think that I am going spend 25 bucks to watch a bunch of overearnest, overcaffeinated thespians emote their way through a play that is supposed to be about my life, you're going to have a really hard time prying those bills from my hands.

Suspicion about expert testimony

can lead to all sorts of problems for plaintiffs suing big corporations. Chris Mooney at American Prospect Online shows that it is perfectly possible for liberal Supreme Court judges to make terrible errors of judgment having to do with everything from philosophy of science to regulating corporate malfeasance, so chill out about the Roberts nomination. Moveon.org made a big mistake trying to rally the troops on this one. The jury is out so to speak and there is no reason to jump for one's checkbook or one's soapbox.

Has anyone heard of "picking one's battles"? The battle in Ohio was gratifying, even though Hackett lost.

Beauty and the Bleach : Hard Hair!

Every other television commercial in Taiwan featured a willowy young woman caressing her face while describing how this amazing cream actually makes your skin soft, downy and white. So now the LA Times has caught on in theBeauty and the Bleach , an article describing -- and I've seen them -- Asian women, mostly Chinese to my eye, or Taiwanese, wearing these anti-UV welding masks while driving, walking their toddler, pushing a shopping cart, taking out money at an ATM -- doing whatever. They look seriously freaky and definitely not attractive, not to me at any rate. Indoors, they may be total babes, but this chador of the face has something to do with the deep anxiety being dark that afflicts almost all the women of Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, etc. etc. Perhaps their best bet for total sun avoidance is to move underground.

I wouldn't bother blogging about this again, but I encountered another freaky example of Chinese self-hatred when I went to the beauty salon attached to the huge Chinese grocery store here to get my hair cut. The Thai-Chinese owner discussed my short hair (I'm trying to grow it out now) and he brought over some mags with pix of short hair cuts. I pointed to a few and he said, "Your hair won't do that it. Your hair is too hard." My hair is too hard? what the ef? But I realized he was saying that because all the girls with perky short hair cuts in the mag were WHITE and that according to this freak, WHITE girls have soft hair. I felt as if I had straw growing out of my head --straw that I had wanted him to spin into WHITE, soft silky gold.

Well he can ask my red head husband who has hard hair! I was pissed off, but it seemed a bit hysterical to jump out of his chair and call him a racist self-hating weirdo, especially since we'd been kibbitzing in Chinese and I would have had to switch to English to call him self-hating. I really don't know how to say "self-hating" in Chinese and that in and of itself would be my lording it over his recent immigrant ass, so I did some deep breathing and went through with the whole haircut thing, but I won't be going back there ever again. I'm going to have to find a non-Chinese hairdresser -- and I regret this because I never paid more than 20 US for a haircut in Taiwan and they were all excellent -- especially after I learned to ask for pun-ku!

It will be dorky hair for the time being in SoCal where "feathering" was pioneered if not invented --

Ugh! Hard hair indeed.....

Bush is corrupt and dishonest,

and he gets away with it! Tiresome! Is this really news any more? You can read about How Bush's Berlin Ambassador Pick Profited from Protective Tariffs against German Companies - , but it's getting a little redundant.

John Bolton, abusive boss and intelligence fabricator is US ambassador to the UN, the situation in Iraq contradicts everything that Bush & Co is saying about it. Republican cronies are cashing in everyday, the average California family makes 60,000 USD less a year than it takes to actually buy a house in Southern California and yet, the Republican administration seems to be able to get away with every sort of distortion, lie, insider dealing and outright abuse of human rights in the book.

mourning my new york

I think I've finally made my peace with the fact that I'm never going to be able to live in New York City or its vicinity. I always believed that somehow, I would be able to will myself back home again, not just to a place, but to a mindset that had to do with good public schools, progressive teachers, likeminded friends who were willing to fight for their convictions that might have to do with something about art and politics and a commitment to something more than hustling some one or something for profit. Well, amazing shrinking academia, the New Economy, Rudolph Giuliani, the real estate boom, endless it seems now, and my increasingly dissenting views in academia have made this dream almost completely impossible.

I always thought that eventually I would raise Leo in New York, however hard it was going to be. He was going to go to a neighborhood school (in my imagination, I started with Manhattan, and then had us move to Brooklyn) and then get into Stuyvesant High School. We were going to go to Curtis' and Tania's in Montauk for a little relief from the summer heat. The multicultural reality of everyday life would be more than some bureaucratic notion, thought up by reformists to make themselves look good.

I was going to be able to learn more Yiddish from cab drivers (except now it would probably be Sikh). I would be able to take Leo to the Met when no one was there. He would go to City Center with his school class and do the inevitable Children's Theater interactive activity just like me.

I left New York City unthinkingly after graduate school, never realizing what it would mean never to live on those mean streets again. I was sick of the noise and the hard commute on the L train, the perpetual financial uncertainty. I didn't realize what I was giving up until many years later. But then when I have returned for visits over the intervening years, despite my happy rediscovery of the accent, the hustle, I realize that it's not my city any more, and that maybe it never was. I was always for getting by on as little as possible and that is not really an ethic by which one can survive in that place. But New York taught me to be idealistic, just as it it taught me to dream tinselly dreams of glamorous impoverishment that are like the outdated currency of a deposed regime.

Bolton makes it to the UN

Yeah, f*** parliamentarism -- that's for pussy dems who are a minority anyway, what has George to fear from them anyhoo? So an abusive, paranoid megalomaniac is our man at the UN! Faneffingtastic.

I'm learning a lot from these Republicans.