Epistemophilia in the Stacks

Why no one is watching the Watchmen

2009-03-21T15:40:00.001-05:00

The Watchmen is a triumph of creativity. It is a re-imagining of a medium upon which all subsequent works shall be judged. It has layers of depth that are a commentary upon the politics of the times, the pop culture that surounds it, and a meta-commentary on the medium and its place in culture. Of course I am speaking of the comic, as the movie is a dolled up piece of pablum that we have seen countless times before and an embarrassment to the source material.

The movie suffers from the same problems as the director Zack Snyder's last effort, shot for shot devotion to the source material. Where Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons used violence sparingly in order to maximize its effect, Snyder has limbs cracking and heroes galivanting around like low rent X-Men. None of the Watchmen have powers except for Dr. Manhattan, but looking at the movie you'd think radioactive spiders were hiding beneath all the masks.

The violence while beautifully shot as is everything else a distraction from the story and the philosophies that the characters embody. This is part of the movie's greatest failure, it can not stand on its own. An adaptation no matter how faithful to the source, even if scenes and dialogue are lifted word for word, has to stand on its own as a self contained narrative. It has to use the techniques of its medium or create some of its own to tell the story. If it needs external sources to make sense of what is being presented it is not a movie version of the comic but a poorly written companion piece.

I am a huge fan of the comic and would say that it is one of the best pieces of writing in any form to come out of the '8os. The fanboys who argue that the only people who don't like it just don't get it and should read the book miss the entire point of making a movie in the first place. If it is only for fanboys spending $150M to shoot it is ridiculous, there is no way to recoup the cost by relying on the fans that already exist. The purpose of a film adaptation is to expose the material to those who never read the book and hopefully inspire them to read it.

The movie has remarkable graphical flourishes but the story is poorly served by the writers and director. The comic is about the characters' psychology and philosophy but they can be lost in the movie to those unfamiliar with the source material. It also suffers from the fact that the idea of the dark hero, while revolutionary 20 years ago is a bit cliched now. The ending while changed is still faithful to the spirit of the comic and is a parody of the comic book genre.

Frankly, the precipitous drop in box office should be foreseen as the trailers are a lie. The trailers make it look like an action movie but the comic is moved forward by dialogue, the movie is mired in it. There are only a few set pieces of violence but they are so over the top and more graphic than the comic that they stand out and make the pacing of the movie all wrong.

Alan Moore and others were right Watchmen is unfilmable, Snyder proved the point. The dense amount of backstory and character development is done in the comic with flashbacks, letters, excerpts of text etc. With the movie it is done mostly with leaden dialogue delivered by wooden actors. It would have been better as a miniseries so that the characters and story could breath.

If you read the book it is a good movie if you haven't read the book before do so before thinking of seeing the movie.

Learning Japanese on a moderate budget

2009-02-26T19:35:00.004-05:00

It has been an inordinate amount of time since my last post so here is some info that others may find useful. I already covered some books to learn Japanese. If you want an immersive leaning environment and are willing to pat with a few hundred bucks to get it you can supplement your education quite nicely with just a few items.

Genki is an integrated immersion course with materials published by The Japan Times. It is geared towards those in college with a lot of the vocabulary but it isn't as if one wouldn't need to know how to say college or physics in Japanese. The entire course materials include a textbook, workbook, CDs, flash cards etc. The Japan Times has an entire course site of useful resources. Some elementary courses at universities and colleges use the materials. Retailers have them at varying prices but you can buy them directly which ships from Japan or you can search for local retailers. Of course some of the materials can probably be found in the usual dark alleys of the internet.

JapanesePod101 is a great way to take in a short daily lesson. You can find it in iTunes or just go to their website. The basic podcast is free which is a few minutes of vocabulary or grammar with practice phases thrown in. This is a simple way to lean something new or practice in the car or at the gym. The paid memberships add access to the forums which can be useful with the community feedback. The forums are great if you are stuck on something o need help finding a tutor or school.

You gain access to the dictionary and quiz area which help to get you off of the romaji crutch. The most useful, to me at least, are the transcripts and the videos. Nothing quite like seeing the phrases on the page as you listen or watching someone speak a language.

If you have a Nintendo DS you are in luck since there are some great games that can be supplementary aids to your learning. My Japanese Coach is the most obvious. It features a quiz when you first start it up and create your profile that tests your knowledge of vocabulary, grammar, basic phrases etc. Once it determines your level it proceeds though a series of courses. These courses cover the elementary level of Japanese. I wouldn't recommend it as your only source but the writing practice, speech practice, and fast recognition of words in the mini-games are a decent supplement to Genki and JapanesePod101.

If you have the desire for true mastery, a DS, and a little cash you can do a lot worse than Zaidenhoujin Nippon Kanji Nouryoku Kentai Kouinin: KanKen DS. This game is basically a huge amount of kanji that you practice writing correctly. This is designed to prepare you for the kanji certification. This can also be useful to improve fluency even if you're not looking to be certified. There are other software options such as Kageyama Method - Dennou Hanpuku: Tadashii Kanji Kaki to Rikun. I'd also recommend checking the prices between PlayAsia and National Console Support.

Games are a good option along with movies to give yourself some immersive practice. You might as well take advantage of the fact that the games for DS, PSP, and PS3 systems are region free. Especially, with the PS3 setting up a Japanese PSN account and downloading a demo from Japan isn't that hard. Understanding what is being said in the movies or the games? YMMV

Language Instruction Part 3: Russian Books

2008-08-03T15:38:00.001-05:00

There aren't as many good books for Russian instruction, surpassingly considering the Cold War. Saying that I can unqualifiedly recommend Live from Moscow: Russian Stage One. This is the textbook series that I learned from in college so take my recommendation with a grain of salt. The series has a textbook, workbook, audio cassettes, and VHS tapes. The textbook gets the learners toes wet with some loan words before getting into some of the grammatical differences as well as some of the more complicated subjects. The audio is used to reinforce lessons with exercises in conjunction with the workbook. The VHS tapes presents a soap operaesque story of an American visiting Russia. This reinforces the lessons of the textbook and shows how they would be used in conversation.

If you are looking for a comprehensive Russian-English Dictionary you can do much worse than this. They also do a decent job presenting the grammar and basic verbs of Russian.

Fortunately for language learners, Russian has a lot of its greatest writers who are out of copyright. You can find the odd poem by Pushkin on Gutenberg or through the links on Wikipedia. If you are yearning for a dual language printed book this may fit the bill. I personally love Mikhail Kuzmin whose books are pretty expensive if you are looking for them in print but are available on-line. He wrote on of the first gay novels in Russian, Wings.

Community (data) properties

2008-08-03T15:03:00.002-05:00

The use of community generated metadata is an interesting example of the potential of social networking. The community can generate terms that are meaningful for them instead of having them generated by an intermediate body such as the Library of Congress does for cataloging.

I'm looking at Delicious, which has revamped their site.

The lack of comma delaminated tagging seems like an oversight and adds to the potential for mislabeling but it can be overcome with a slight redesign. I've used Delicious in its previous incarnation and will check it out further. One of the problems, or at least oddities, that I noticed before is that many of the metadata tags that users create are not that descriptive, relevant, or just plain bad. Tagging a website as cool is useful on an individual basis but not so much on a community basis.

Another site that I'm excited about for a number of reasons, mostly game news related. However they are using community generated content and metadata in a very interesting way in a wiki site.

Video games would seem to be a nightmare to tag. Some of the problems such as the widely creative staff sizes and similar titles have been solved in relation to movies. Some of the issues such as repeated themes, character archetypes etc. have been solved in literature. The means of interaction however is unique. It will be interesting to see how much of a distinction, if any, is made between approaches to linear story telling for example. There are linear games that go from A to B, branching games where on decision effects chooses later on, and there are free roaming games. Some games have a mix of all three. It is always interesting to see how an untrained person approaches metadata creation and descriptive analysis.

Video games, child-men, and anti-feminist editorials

2008-02-04T21:40:00.001-05:00

There were a few editorials about men who play video games and how they are immature. The cause of the immaturity is put to women not being subservient enough. I was going to write something talking about how idiotic the whole thing is but someone beat me to it.

Language Instruction: Part 2 Japanese Books

2008-01-20T15:53:00.001-05:00

Here is the second part of the list of language instruction resources. There are a lot of resources for Japanese some of which are of dubious quality. Even if you ignore my list take my advice and try to avoid materials with a profuse use of Romaji. Written Japanese can be represented by Romaji the phonetic spelling of the language in Roman characters, in other words English with phonetic symbols. Books that use a lot of Romaji can make the learner dependent upon it and prevent one from picking up the writing systems of Japanese (Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji). Books with CDs or tapes should be preferred the sounds of the consonants and vowels in Japanese is a little more consistent than English which can take awhile getting used to hearing or saying.

Like with any language in general I prefer to have a good textbook first. As with Spanish I'd recommend the Living Language series of books since they are comprehensive and well structured. Of course the main problem with this particular series is its high cost. Like most of the Living Language series the glossary leaves a little to be desired but that is solved with a good dictionary.

If you don't want to put up the money for the Living Language books and are willing to deal with a college textbook Elementary Japanese is an easy to follow gentle introduction to the language. There is only the briefest use of Romaji to introduce the phonetics of Japanese. Some of the exercises and vocabulary make it clear that it is aimed at college students. There is also a good mix of vocabulary and discussion of the different levels of politeness.

The Genki series from what I've seen of it is geared mostly towards students in college who are going to be studying in Japan. A lot of the vocabulary and drills are of situations that students living abroad may find useful. It can be a great book if couple with a good teacher or other resources. It seems designed for increasing your score in the Japanese Language Proficiency Test.

The textbook I had in college is Japanese: The Spoken Language. My general recommendation is unless you already have the language almost mastered or have a really good teacher skip the title. It is geed very heavily toward grammar but is very slim on vocabulary. It is all Romanji and doesn't introduce the Kana or Kanji until later in the series. The presentation and exercises are a little unwieldy but some people may benefit from the mostly Romaji approach though the Romaji used here can be hard to grasp.

Japanese in Mangaland is a decent way to back up a more comprehensive textbook especially if the interest in Japanese comes from manga or anime. For the teachers and parents out there be aware that a lot of the more colorful language is presented. So if you are worried about your kids cursing behind your back in a foreign language it is something to keep in mind. If your interest in Japanese is only in reading manga then this can be a primary book, you'll get basics of the language without a complex approach to grammar.

Now that you have an idea of the textbooks on the offing it's time to get serious with some vocabulary and grammar. One of the main considerations is the Japanese writing system. There are three main writing systems in Japanese. Katakana and Hiragana are collectively called Kana and are syllabaries, meaning they represent phonetic elements. Katakana is used to represent foreign words and in manga represents mechanical sound effects. Hiragana is used to represent native words in books for children, grammatical particles, sounds by humans in manga. Kanji is the other main writing system, it consists of ideographs borrowed from Chinese. Kanji is used for writing native names, words, it can be used for numbers etc. There is no one system that can be ignored since all of them could be used on one page of a manga or a newspaper.

The complexity and sheer number of the ideographs being what it is you'll need a few books and I would suggest gravitating to the ones with the Kanji "spelled out" in Kana. This reinforces your understanding of the phonetic systems which can help learn new words.

Modern Japanese Vocabulary is a good up to date resource for vocabulary. The words are broken into sections with the Kanji, Kana, and meaning in separate rows. You'll find many computer, business, and science terms listed here as well as the general vocabulary of colors, directions etc.

Kanji Pict-O-Graphix is a book of Kanji with little drawings that act as mnemonics. It works off of the principle of relating a ideograph to an easy to remember visual. If you are a visual learner it can make the study of Kanji a lot easier than the usual rote method. I bought the similar Kana guide for my nephew, it's really helping him pronounce them on site.

If you are looking for more of a systematic approach to learning Kanji you may wish to check out Guide to Remembering Japanese Characters. The book presents the 2000 Kanji that are needed to be considered proficient in Japanese by the Education MInistry. The ideographs are presented in the order in which they are learned by Japanese children so you won't get into the 20 or more stroke ideographs until you are fairly comfortable. This book also has the etymology of many of the ideographs which is quite helpful as they can be mnemonic devices. I know it helped me pick up some of the roots of other ideographs and get the meaning quicker, seeing the trees in the ideograph for forest for example. Some people may hate the etymologies but for those language nerds like myself we can't get enough of etymologies.

Building Power in Japanese is a book on suffixes and prefixes. It's a decent way to increase your vocabulary with little effort if you memorize a few affixes to attach so that your speech and writing becomes a little richer.

Japanese Particles are one of the hardest parts of grammar to get a handle on. How to tell the Difference between Japanese Particles does a good job of making it all more digestible. The included quizzes are great for review and drilling.

The fact that Japanese adjectives and adverbs conjugate makes learning them a little hard to master. The Handbook of Japanese Adjectives and Adverbs makes it a little easier to get through.

Now that you have some vocabulary and know how to conjugate some adverbs let's move onto the verbs. Japanese Verbs: Saying What you Mean is a good introduction. You'll need some grounding in the basics and some vocabulary but it gives decent coverage of verb conjugation. Has loads of examples of usage. It presents the verbs in Kanji, Kana, Romaji and English translation.

A little cheaper but harder to follow as well is The Complete Japanese Verb Guide. There are less examples and no glossary so you'll be doing a lot of flipping to find the right word. If you don't need the usage information you can save a few bucks.

Now on to everyone's least favorite part of language learning, but arguably the bone structure of the corpus. Japanese grammar requires a good book since the sentence structure isn't close to English. If you want to speak fluently or at least move your sentence patterns out of a kindergarden level don't skimp too much here. A dictionary of Basic Japanese Grammar is laid out like the grammar guides in the backs of dictionaries so you can find relevant sections quickly. It's part one of a series. The intermediate book goes further in depth to help in the mastery of the language.
The books covers the particles, politeness etc. Not all of this is used in everyday Japanese but the same can be said of guides to English grammar. If money is tight don't get a book on the particles or affixes but get this book.

The last part of the foundation is a good dictionary. Fortunately, one can find a few inexpensive Japanese-English dictionaries. The Oxford Beginner's Japanese Dictionary has the best layout. You can look up words in English to find Japanese equivalents or vice versa using Hiragana. The Kanji are presented beside the Hiragana so the learning of them is aided.

Another option around the same price but is usually a few bucks cheaper in most bookstores is the Random House Japanese-English English-Japanese Dictionary. The layout is a little more conventional, presenting Romaji forms of Japanese Words beside Kanji. Some may find this easier to use but it does delay learning Hiragana if you use the Romaji as a crutch.

Now that you have a foundation it is time to jump to that higher level, reading for fun. Seeing a language used in entertainment tells the learner a lot about the intricacies of the language and the culture that are hard to find anywhere else.

Breaking into Japanese Literature is a parallel text covering seven graded stories. There are downloads of sound files, dictionaries etc. A good choice if you are looking for a guided approach and just getting your feet wet.

If you want to take the manga approach, let's be honest anime and manga re the main reason many people learn Japanese in the first place, there are a multitude of choices.

The Japanese in Mangaland Workbook is a good companion to the main book and it can be approachable for Japanese learners in general. The book presents a manga story with exercises to translate the text from Japanese.

For those looking just for a good manga to read in the original Japanese Amazon has a whole category just for you. For those low on cash and without concern for copyright you can just do a search for raw manga and you'll find resources. Some comic book stores carry raw manga, if you are in a big city.

If you are looking for Japanese books but not a fan of manga resources are not as readily available as with SPanish but you can find the occasional book in the foreign language section of bookstores from time to time. or you can always try Amazon's Japanese website to have something shipped.

Language Instruction: Part 1 Spanish Books

2008-01-03T22:38:00.001-05:00

I like to spur my nieces' and nephew's interests in language. Their grades have gone up overall since they have more confidence and they are doing something they find enjoyable. The only problem is that my nieces are into Spanish and my nephew is interested in Japanese. I try to help them with the languages and am also tying to improve the Russian I learned in college.

In the spirit of Larry Ferlazzo and his list of tools I'll make lists of some of the books, websites, podcasts, etc. that are indispensable to me. Here are the Spanish books that I've bought for myself, the kids, or borrowed from the library.

I know plenty of people don't have the funds to buy all the books and some people just hate books versus on-line materials. I've always liked books as a primary or secondary source of instruction since they are portable, easily browsed, and can be a nice change of pace.

I think a comprehensive textbook is always a good place to start. The Ultimate Spanish Beginner-Intermediate gives a decent coverage of Spanish. It does cover vosotros and the intricacies of the Spanish of Spain, as the reviewer on Amazon points out the Spanish of Latin America is the most common. It's very comprehensive and worth the expense.

Spanish Now! is a flawed but serviceable textbook series. There are some typos and inconsistencies which can get in the way of a true understanding but it's good for the price. If you are really tight on funds you might be able to find Ultimate Spanish or another text in the library or use the Internet sites I'll list as primary references.

Once you have a decent textbook books on verbs and grammar are a good way to refine you understanding. The Big Red Book of Spanish Verbs is a great way to familiarize yourself with common verbs and their conjugations. The included CD is good for getting some practice with the verbs.

501 Spanish Verbs is an old standby, it is widely available in most bookstores. There isn't a CD just common verbs conjugated for study.

Only a brave few actually enjoy grammar but it is a necessary evil. Spanish Grammar for Independent Learners is a good reference in an easy to follow format. If you can deal with a more regimented format Spanish Grammar is an inexpensive option.

Once one has a decent foundation and has refined their understanding of verb conjugation and grammar the last part needed for the basics is a good dictionary. The cock of the walk would be the Oxford Spanish Dictionary which has CDs, Latin American and European Spanish words and phrases, etc. The only problem is unless you have a lot of money lying around you'd do better with a cheap dictionary and some web pages.

Short stories, poems, novels are all great ways to see the language in use. Spanish Short Stories is a good parallel text suitable for a intermediate learner. For the more advanced learner there is Short Stories in Spanish. Poetry is a great way to see the possibilities in meter and turn of phrase of a language.

Of course who someone would prefer to read is very subjective, personally I love reading Frederico Garcia Lorca. There are quite a lot of manuals, novels et al. that have been translated into Spanish so one isn't limited to works created in Spanish but can also pick up works that you've already read in English. Whether one is looking for Oscar Wilde, Jane Austen, or Stephen King.

I'll write up the Japanese and Russian books as well as the podcasts, web sites, computer programs etc. If you have any suggestions leave a comment.

Google: Statistical machine translation

2007-10-24T19:36:00.001-05:00

ArsTechnica has a mini review of Google's translation service. They have switched from the rules based machine translation that they used to have and most machine translation services use.

I remember studying linguistic rules and statistical machine translation methods in college. Like the article suggests neither one is great but they can work well enough for someone to feel their way to the actual translation. The linguistic rules approach parses texts into an intermediary state using former grammar rules of the source language. The intermediary text is transformed into the target language former grammar rules of the target language.

The main problem with the linguistic rules approach is that it is similar to taking a sentence and marking it a parse tree and rearranging it into the parse tree of the target language and then changing it word for word. Another major problem is the grammars do not do too well with slang since there may not be a direct translation. The other problem is one of syntax there may be structures missing from the source that are needed in the target. For example, to properly translate "I went to the store" from English to Russian one needs to know if I traveled on foot or in a vehicle, since that changes the verb.

The statistical approach basically uses an algorithm to weigh the probability of the part of speech and/or meaning of a word. The statistics can be modified with the help of volunteers marking up a sentence or providing a more accurate translation. Given enough corrections and a large enough corpora the system can improve. Google appears to be using their index of web pages as a potential corpora and users of the service as the volunteers instead of the usual college student looking for beer money.

Googles approach reminds me of a few journal articles on using web pages as an inexpensive means to develop a corpus. Most corpori are rather expensive proprietary collections of text of language in everyday use. The statistical approach seems like a no brainer for Google since they have a corpori lying around and harnessing users even a poor algorithm is bound to get better. The linguistic rules approach only gets better with the development of more elaborate syntactical and transformative rules. The only question is what took Google so long to figure this out?

Justice for the Jenna 6

2007-09-01T09:13:00.001-05:00

This is an important case and a sad commentary on race relations in America. Here is the link to the Justice in Jenna site so that you can keep up with events and get involved. For those who may not have heard about the case NPR has a good run down of the facts but I'll try and present them here.

In the small central Louisiana town of Jenna there was a large shade tree outside of the high school. White students would sit underneath it while Black students stayed close to the cafeteria. At an assembly a Black student asked if he could sit under the shade tree and was told he could sit wherever he liked. Three White students who were part of the rodeo team tied nooses under the tree. The school gave the boys in school suspension, but the Black students though that the punishment was too lenient.

The Black students lead by star players on the football team organized a sit in under the shade tree. The authorities were called and the district attorney told the children, "with one stroke of my pen, I can make your life disappear."

There were fights though out the year which escalated into the school being burned down but who was responsible was not determined. Robert Bailey (16) tried to enter a party accompanied by other Black students that was attended by Whites. He was beaten up by some of the White boys and no charges were filed against them. During the fracas he was hit over the head with a beer bottle by Justin Sloan, who months later was charged with simple assault and given probation.

At a convenience store the next day Bailey argued with one of the White boys from the party who ran to his truck and retrieved his pistol grip shotgun. Bailey ran at the the armed teenager and wrestled for the gun. Eventually getting the gun away from the boy and heading home with friends. Bailey and his friends were charged with theft of a firearm, robbery, and disturbing the peace. The white boy who pulled the gun wasn't charged with anything.

Justin Barker (17) was bragging to friends that Bailey had been whipped by a White man. He was attacked by Black students when he went into the courtyard. The first punch knocked him out and some of the boys kicked him in the head. The wounds were slight enough that he was treated, released and out that very night at a social function.

Six Black students were charged with assault but the D. A., Reed Walters, bumped the charges to second degree attempted murder. The first trial is over with the defense resting its case immediately after two days of the prosecution presenting the charges. Mychal Bell was found guilty by the all white jury and faces a possible 22 years in prison.

Fo anyone who has a hard time understanding let's make it simpler. A black kid asks for permission to sit under a tree on the campus of the public high school that he attends and nooses are hung from it. The kids who did it get a slap on the wrist. Some of the Black students decide to protest by sitting under the tree and they are threatened by the district attorney. One of the Black students and his friends try to get into a party and he is beaten up. He argues with one of the kids from the party the next day and he has a shotgun pulled on him. He wrestles the gun away and is then charged with theft and related charges for getting the gun away from the guy (the gun turned out to be unloaded but there was no way for them to know that while the gun was pointed at them). A white kid boasts about the "gun thief" getting charged and is then beaten up, which wasn't right but charging the kids with attempted murder is idiotic and spiteful. At most they should have been charged with a mutual fight or assault, give them a fine or probation. The boy didn't have any life threatening injuries and was able to amble on down to a ring ceremony after being so "viciously" attacked.

I could do the whole metaphorical thing with the tree of intolerance and the shaded truth. But a case like this is just depressing and a stark reminder of how short a distance we've come as a nation in 40 years. I guess the defendants should take consolation that 40 years ago they would have been swinging beneath that shade tree instead of being lynched by the legal system and the tree turned into kindling.

Building Blocs of the Gay Community

2007-08-27T23:34:00.001-05:00

There was an article awhile back about the study the Equality Forum did of GLBT voting patterns in the Philadelphia mayoral primary. The interesting thing about the report is that gays and lesbians seemed to vote as a bloc for the eventual winner Michael Nutter. For those outside of Philly or who live here but don’t follow the local political scene, Nutter climbed up from next-to-last to first in a matter of months to win the nomination.

The methodology of the study was pretty interesting in that it necessarily relied on a number of key assumptions. It looked at the Census information for areas with large concentrations of self-identified same sex couples. Then looking at the poll results they were able to show that in areas with large same-sex couple populations Nutter received a plurality of the vote.

This is interesting for a number of reasons if one can take the interpretation of the statistics seriously. First it shows that the GLBT community can vote in a bloc to express political will. Used properly bloc voting can be a carrot or a stick to make sure more than lip service is paid to an issue. Used poorly and you wind up like the Black community nationally ignored by the Democrats until election time and trotted out by some Republicans as the boogeyman during elections but mostly ignored since there is little upside in trying to capture your vote.

For an example of how the bloc vote can go bad; Lee Atwater, Ronald Reagan’s political advisor made a really good point when describing the Southern Strategy as reported by Bob Herbert in the New York Times. (Copy and pasted from Wikipedia).

Atwater: As to the whole Southern strategy that Harry Dent and others put together in 1968, opposition to the Voting Rights Act would have been a central part of keeping the South. Now [the new Southern Strategy of Ronald Reagan] doesn’t have to do that. All you have to do to keep the South is for Reagan to run in place on the issues he’s campaigned on since 1964… and that’s fiscal conservatism, balancing the budget, cut taxes, you know, the whole cluster…

Questioner: But the fact is, isn’t it, that Reagan does get to the Wallace voter and to the racist side of the Wallace voter by doing away with legal services, by cutting down on food stamps…?

Atwater: You start out in 1954 by saying, 'Nigger, nigger, nigger.' By 1968 you can't say 'nigger' - that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states' rights and all that stuff. You're getting so abstract now that you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is that blacks get hurt worse than whites.
And subconsciously maybe that is part of it. I'm not saying that. But I'm saying that if it is getting that abstract, and that coded, that we are doing away with the racial problem one way or the other. You follow me - because obviously sitting around saying, 'We want to cut this,' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.'

The strategy is alive and well today one need only look at the “McCain’s Black Baby” phone calls in South Carolina during the Republican primary for the 2000 campaign. It was sleazy but effective, with an anonymous call votes for all candidates would be suppressed by those who would be offended that such an accusation would be made. But McCain lost the most because enough people would be disturbed by the alleged extramarital affair and/or the race of the woman involved. As a side note a similar issue was brought up about Nutter and Brady not being Catholic or Catholic enough, since the flyer endorsed Knox as being the one true Catholic anyone upset by the sleaziness likely took it out on him.

As the Atwater quote states candidates can’t be as blunt as they once were in trying to court a particular groups vote, at least when the way to do it is on the backs of another group. The McCain example notwithstanding subtlety is crucial. When politicians want to make political hay out of attacking the GLBT community they rarely come right out and say the Jerry Falwell line about 9/11 happening because of the gays, lesbians, feminists, and abortionists. Invectives like that will backfire; you say you’re against special rights and only for state’s rights. When someone brings up Loving v. Virginia and the possible precedent it sets for gay marriage with the 14th amendment, you say you’re against judges legislating from the bench and such decisions should be left to the legislature. As long as the voting bloc isn’t sufficiently large and the general public will take such answers you’ll get re-elected. The vocal voting bloc is itself a get out the vote tool for their opposition, which can be placated into a stable base.

A side note is that with the higher than average rates of Black and Latino voters attending mass regularly “family values” can be an effective wedge strategy. One needs look no further than the 2004 elections, opposition to gay marriage brought out the evangelical vote in large numbers. There are some obvious problems with this strategy though. There are only so many anti-gay laws that can be passed before you start to look a little mean spirited. The mean spirited bar is a moving target since the more out GLBT people heterosexuals know they tend to view homosexuality less negatively on average. The big problem is the statistic showing that negative feelings toward homosexuality are less among those under 40. Among those who will vote in upcoming elections speaking negatively, may backfire.

The election results are interesting because the five candidates were decent to good on the GLBT issues. One candidate, Dwight Evans, tried hard early on to cultivate the GLBT vote for his campaign but was dead last at the polls. The results may have a lot to do with the tangible legislation Nutter passed awarding domestic partner benefits to city employees.

The key to a successful bloc is to vote the issues and hold the candidates responsible for their votes. That’s how the NRA became such a force in politics. It’s a shame that the Logo “debates” were business as usual. We’ll get nowhere nationally kissing the asses of people who give us a kick in the shins in public. The Democratic candidates are better than the Republicans but not by much really.

Domestic partnership is a joke and like “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” would only serve to keep us in limbo. Domestic Partnership is a denial of equal rights. Using the argument that all but two of the candidates have expressed that gay marriage shouldn’t be recognized because it would violate the religious rights of churches is a way to sidestep the issue.
It's not like people want babies to get married. Under the same argument Rudy Giuliani isn’t married since he divorced his previous wife and under Catholic tradition one can’t get divorced, therefore the state should not allow Giuliani to enjoy any of the rights afforded married couples since his living arrangement would scandalize some religious institutions.

The point is the Catholic Church has every right to deny Giuliani Communion and refuse to officiate his marriage since it violates their religious beliefs but the state could not deny his rights because we don’t live in a theocracy, the same principles could be used for gay marriage. Only Kucinich and Gravel approach this view, Logo should have called the front-runners in the Democratic Party on it. Sure the Democratic Party is the lesser of two evils in this case but as Eugene Debs once said, “The lesser of two evils is still evil.” Politicians will give the least that they can to get you vote; don’t give it away for free.

It was a "Big Black Man"

2007-08-12T22:44:00.001-05:00

I don't know why people even use variations of this excuse anymore. It makes them look not only like liars, but racist jerks who think that the general public is even dumber than they are. The excuse goes something like this: "I'm not to blame it was some Big Black Man who caused me to (insert unlikely sequence of events)." It has to be said that it has a history of working.

As is mentioned in the article Charles Stuart made good use of the "Big Black Man" excuse when he killed his wife. The Boston police were quick to pursue the preposterous story and charge Willie Bennet. After Susan Smith drowned her kids in a lake she was able to convince the country to be on the lookout for a "Big Black Man" who kidnapped her kids and stole her car. Of course Hispanic men appear to be the new dark skinned bogeyman as evidenced by the runaway bride.

Florida State Rep. Bob Allen would have done better to just plead out the solicitation charge. His tory that he offered 20 bucks and oral sex to an undercover officer because he was scared of the "Big Black Man" smacks of the Mandingo myth, the untamed "Big Black Man" understands nothing but violence and sex. The myth has been fostered in popular culture by pornography, obviously, music and television. Poulson-Bryant makes a decent point that the myth of the ubiquity of large penises among Black men leads to an idea of hyper-masculinity among Black men in the broader society. This idea of hyper-masculinity gives plausibility to the "Big Black Man" in the mind of the broader society. So much testosterone is flowing through their brains that they can't think clearly and only understand violence and sex.

Allen's excuse is rather odd when one considers that while hyper-masculinity has homo-erotic elements (just look at the cover of a hip-hop magazine) offering to give a robber some of the money from your wallet and a sex act would seem to increase the chances of getting hurt not lessen them. While homo-eroticism is part of hyper-masculinity in the Mandingo myth it is merely there as an underlying element more as a response of the observing male to the Mandingo who is sex personified. The hyper-masculine is hyper-heterosexual at least outwardly.

Allen's excuse also rests on the unstated racist assumption that the Blackness of a man further up the walk is equivalent to a gun or knife, a threat in itself that demands mitigation. According to Allen's account he made the offer of money and sex without provocation of what turned out to be a police officer. His excuse also has a unique twist on the gay panic defense. The gay panic defense had mixed success in the Matthew Shepard case.

Usually with gay panic the defendant says they went temporarily insane and had to kill the victim for coming on to them. It is a form of jury nullification basically saying that the defendant was within their right to prove their masculinity by killing the victim. In this case Allen turns gay panic on its head, "I had to offer him oral sex or he might have raped and killed me." Not to put words in Allen's mouth (poor choice of words) but this appears to be where his defense is heading.

If Allen is lucky he can find a jury racist and homophobic enough to reduce his sentence or perhaps let him off. I say homophobic enough since they would have to buy into the stereotype of gay men that they will have sex with anyone and if possessing enough power will rape smaller more fragile men, the prison myth. While their obviously is some rape in prison there are obviously some Black men with above average penis size. The two generalizations are combined in the "Big Black Man" myth to form a hyper-sexed, hyper-violent, thug who has a huge penis that he'd love to stick in the White man. It's miscegenation and homosexuality wrapped in a bow looking for the right jury, one that is bent on taking a stand for "traditional values" against a railroading Democratic government. Allen is taking a big risk because he is going to alienate not only the Black and gay vote, who probably wouldn't have supported him in huge numbers anyway, but also some of the conservative backbone of his constituency who may just stay home.

If the Republican party is lucky Allen will plead out before the next election gets too close. One congressman's hypocrisy has a quick way of branding the whole party, see how fast the Democrats dropped support of Jefferson. The Republicans seem to be playing it right so far, let him hang himself. If McCain is lucky no one will remember that this guy was his man in Florida. It doesn't help to appear to have a record of appointing felons when you're making a run for the White House. Once you get in you can spin this type of situation like a top. Every president in the modern era has had some questionable people in their cabinet but you don't want to start off with the plausible deniability game before the inauguration. To be honest Lyndon LaRouche has a better chance than McCain of winning the White House.

The Democratic party will probably just sit back and bide their time. This isn't a huge national issue but can provide a regional opening if they let Allen commit political suicide. They don't have to worry about the body they'll just blame the "Big Black Man."

Pop-up teacher reprise

2007-06-09T07:06:00.000-05:00

The teacher who was facing 40 years for pornographic pop-ups in the classroom is getting a new trial. This is good news in my opinion since she was railroaded. It's understandable as soon as you mention sex and kids people's minds shut down. It's not right but understandable.

Another teacher had a similar incident this week. Fortunately she wasn't hauled into court. As is mentioned in the article the likely cause was the duplication center dubbing the educational material onto a porno tape.

Top of the pops

2007-03-03T09:08:00.000-05:00

Following a post on Angry Asian Man, I saw The New York Times has an interesting article on the challenges Asian American singers have in trying to break into the music industry. This could be seen on American Idol this year when Paul Kim was given the boot in the first round of voting. Despite being one of the best singers he couldn't overcome the fact that he was Asian.

The article goes on to talk about how racially ambiguous singers fair better. As someone who grew up during the 80's I could only think of how African Americans crossed over onto the mainstream charts. Creating a parallel market where acts such as Diana Ross and Michael Jackson could eventually break through. Performers such as Prince could start their careers with the mainstream in mind. Of course as the article states the Asian American market is about half that of the African American market. The Asian American market also has the problem of not being uniform because there are many subcultures and backgrounds, Japanese Americans or Korean Americans for example.

There is still hope since there is so much talent waiting in the wings there just need to be that one big hit in the mainstream. As soon as the mainstream audience is used to seeing an Asian singer in their living room it gets easier for the next act, but never easy. Nat King Cole having his own show paved the way for the rappers and singer one sees today. The irony of it all is that because of the stereotypes that many have of Asians and the market realities the first big Asian star is probably not going to be Asian American.

The recent interest in J-Pop crossing into the mainstream may eventually translate into more tours and CD sales (or downloads if the regionalization of iTunes and other stores ever gets looser). Because of the stereotype of a fifth generation Japanese American as being straight off the plane from Japan this interest could be used to promote domestic singers and bands. A bit of a long shot but waiting for the industry to judge people on talent and not the color of their skin or the shape of their eyes is going to take longer and a lot more luck. Just look at Living Colour or Bad Brains two of the best heavy metal/fusion and punk bands respectively but they've never really gotten as far as white bands with less talent. The British invasion is not a direct parallel but is a study in the sound and look of an American subculture being ignored until it is repackaged and shipped back from another country. The mainstream market likes to fit people into niches Asians do classical and Blacks do hip-hop and never the twain shall meet.

An epistle on epithets part 1

2007-02-19T00:06:00.000-05:00

I’ve been reading Covering by Kenji Yoshino – well I actually bought it awhile ago but got sidetracked – and I’ve been thinking about the problems some celebrities have had with epithets. Mel Gibson, Michael Richards, Isaiah Washington and most recently Tim Hardaway have run into some difficulties for using slurs. The religious, racial and sexual derogatory terms that were used by Gibson, Richards, and Washington / Hardaway respectively have force mainly in how they differentiate the target from the “norm.”

This categorization and classification as being different grants the more “normal” or “ideal” among us power – to greatly summarize Foucault – in the form of the gaze. The epithet is in a way the verbal expression of the gaze; it allows one to point to those who have not successfully assimilated themselves as being freaks outside of normal human discourse. It is a means to objectify the targets of the gaze and the epithets subjugating humanity and reducing them merely to the epithetic difference.

I’ve been the target of all three of the types of epithets that the above-mentioned celebrities espoused as have several others. The most recent controversy over “Grey’s Anatomy” star Isiah Washington’s use of the “F word” struck a nerve because so many people trotted out the same old tropes. First some people I know who shall remain nameless – who know that I am gay, mind you - said that it wasn’t a big deal because he was using the word to deny using the word. T. R. Knight, the person he was ostensibly referring to with his comments stated that Washington said them in October during the big kerfuffle. The brouhaha forced Knight out of the closet. This is the “you people have always been so thin skinned.”

The other trope is the old “some of my best friends are (insert oppressed class I just insulted)” which Washington brought out when he brought up his role in Spike Lee’s “Get on the Bus” as a Gay Black Republican. While it is true he was a poster boy for Mary Cheney, PFLAG and others it doesn’t give him a free pass on the use of epithets. If it did Richards could have just pointed to Kramer having an African American attorney after his outburst.

The other trope is the old “ruler contest” that is trotted out every time you have one person from a minority insult another minority. I saw this when some people jumped to Washington’s defense saying that if he is fired it is a sure sign of racism on the part of the producers. The reasoning works like this, Blacks have suffered through slavery, segregation and are still given less pay and opportunities in professions like acting so therefore the “F word” is bad but not as bad as the “N word” so Knight and everyone else should get over it.

The last trope that I’ll bring up is the “but you say it” argument. While I’m a Black Gay Man I try to avoid using the N-word or the F-word, because they have a dark history attached to them. Other people believe that they should be reclaimed, they tend to forget that reclaiming in the modern age means commercialization. When you commercialize a word it goes beyond the confines of the group. By using the words in pop culture it implicitly gives permission to people not of the effected communities to use them. Hence, “why can 50 Cent say it and I can’t?”

While it is true that the overwhelming audience of hip-hop is suburban Caucasians, one has to wonder why so many of them have the urge to use the N-word to show that they “are down with their boys.” I’ve never felt the urge to sling a few anti-Semitic words at my Jewish friends to show my affection.

The main problem is that on the one hand people argue that these are just words and they have no real power and on the other they show the power of the words by pleading to be able to drop them casually in polite conversation. If the words are not meant in a harmful manner then why insist on using them when others say that they are harmful to them.

For those who still think that people are just blowing things out of proportion and wish to affect a more laissez faire attitude in their speech they should try a simple experiment. The experiment goes like this replace their speech with the entire hip-hop lexicon, not just spinners, n****s and f*****s but b*****s and h*s as well. Do this regardless of the audience or to whom the term applies. For example a man should refer to his girlfriend as “this is my b***h, she’s chill wit’ whatevah.” No one who had any respect for his girlfriend would say something like this. Why would it be acceptable to say we can dance like some n****s (a la Paris Hilton)?

Pop-ups and jail time

2007-02-18T22:23:00.000-05:00

A substitute teacher is facing 40 years for porno pop-ups during class in CT. This is despite the PCs running an unpatched, version of Windows 98 without antivirus, pop-up blockers, or spyware blockers. The teacher is being thrown under the bus by the school district on this one because parents want their pound of flesh. The only other alternative is to point the finger at the IT staff of the district for not doing a better job of network security. To be fair locking up the teacher or the staff in this case seems to be going a little too far. The children being exposed to pornography wasn't the intent of anyone involved in this case.

One thing that should be considered in relation to school libraries and even public libraries is the balance between privacy and security. One of the problems of large institutions is the desire to maintain a homogeneous environment and lack of disposable funds. Because of this the lowest common denominator in security is usually what is maintained. At the very least, a browser with a built-in pop-up blocker should be the default, antivirus and anti-spyware software has to be on every computer no matter what the operating system.

I'm hoping that she will get an appeal with a judge that actually understands that pop-ups are not sought out. I'm not holding my breath.

The Becky

2007-01-03T18:02:00.000-05:00

The Language Log Blog just announced the winner of the Goropius Becanus Prize. More accurately, Jeff Nunberg announced it on Fresh Air. The award goes to a person or organization that has "outstanding contributions to linguistic misinformation.

I'd have to agree that this is a very good choice. I found the assertions that I heard in her radio interview on Radio Times to be just someone trying to cash in on stereotypes in disregard to actual scientific studies. For the sake of convenience here are the search results for articles talking about the "scientist" on the LLB.

The fact that she got so much attention and that actual linguistic research doesn't get too much of love is probably due to the preference for sound bite research that affirms stereotypes. The Northern City Vowel Shift didn't exactly burn up the phone lines on the radio. Still people have an interest in the sideshows of linguistics and science, researchers just have to do a better job of bringing people into the real show. A couple of letters to the editor or some such to say, "that was interesting load of crap but the true research is even more fascinating." I mean the fact that most studies show men talk just as much or more than women raises a number of interesting questions about gender roles and power. The stereotypes are not only wrong but pretty boring.

Small pipes part 2

2006-12-13T20:26:00.000-05:00

The fact that almost everyone outside of Japan and Korean gets screwed on broadband speeds and prices is one of my favorite topics. I've had reason to think about the situation since the Verizon FiOS TV roll out in the Philly area but not in Philadelphia. Of course part of the reason Verizon hasn't rolled out the service in Philadelphia is because of issues over franchise fees as in Chicago. With the change in the congress we might see movement on NetNeutrality and statewide franchise agreements. Basically, municipalities prefer to negotiate with telecoms for franchise fees to offer programming. This allows a large municipality such as Philadelphia or Chicago make a lot of money in fees and taxes. Telecoms don't like this because it cuts down on profits. Statewide or federal franchise agreements allow telecoms to maximize profits and can speed up the roll out to some areas. The potential problem is that there may not be franchise agreements to carry local stations or to provide community services that municipalities can barter out of tlecoms.

An article that I read on Ars lays out what I've noticed over the years, there is more competition but the prices are increasing instead of getting lower. This makes sense for the reasons pointed out in the article that it is hard to move from one service to another. That is assuming that one even has a choice which a lot of people do not. My brother recently dropped Comcast after getting tired of their crappy service and high prices. For example, his old house was about twenty yards from a regional office where the trucks came from for installations but he had to wait nearly a month for a sometime between 9 and 5 installation. He's going with Verizon's FiOS but I live in the city and am thus screwed. Frankly, FiOS is overpriced in the greater scheme of things when one can get 100 MBPS in Japan and Korea. There are some differences in taxes and culture but the biggest thing is there is no real competition.

The Brand X decision is partly to blame and an inept FCC deserves a lot of blame as well. From an economic standpoint what the telecoms are doing makes perfect sense. If you can deliver the same product for more money why wouldn't you? Even the incremental increases of 1MBPS for the same price in the face of competition is rather insulting since they could go even faster. Of course profits would only remain steady doing that.

The Language Thing

2006-11-05T21:39:00.000-05:00

There was a bit of a translation controversy in the news. The outsourcing of the translation of Iraqi documents to amateurs on the Internet leading to the publication of nuclear weapon blue prints is kind of predictable, after all Saddam Hussein's nuclear program prior to 1991 is the reason Iraq was under sanctions. Open source intelligence has its uses, but you'd have to be pretty stupid to publish classified information that you haven't translated. That was the whole point of the site but that ground has already been covered.

I've been playing around with some more interesting language resources recently. The British National Corpus is a free corpus that can be analyzed for linguistic information. A free corpus is a rarity, usually they cost a few thousand dollars or you have to create your own. It's a pretty fun site in a language nerd kind of way. The Linguistic Data Consortium has some very interesting articles and a decent collection of corpora. New articles are free and the membership is reasonable if you have an organization paying for it. I've been playing around with the sites a bit checking the frequency of words, POS, reading articles, and anything else I can think up. Even if you don't have any experience with linguistics or natural language processing you should have some amusement from the two sites. At the very least you don't have to worry about revealing classified information.

Adam4Adam and Murder

2006-10-16T21:00:00.000-05:00

Michael Sandy the nephew of "Calypso Rose" was lured to his robbery and eventual death by a chat on Adam4Adam. A4A is a gay chat site. This case isn't the first or the last of Internet robbery/beatdown attempts. One of the murderers apologized but the charges should go up to homicide, robbery and hopefully a hate crime. There are larger issues here. The depravity of the perpetrators of these crimes has power because of the larger society that perpetuates the closet. The closet makes the survivors of these hate crimes reluctant to come forward. Sadly in this case Michael did not live to see his attackers be punished. I talked to Michael a few times and he seemed like a wonderful guy. Its a shame something that shouldn't happen to anyone happened to such a nice guy.

Meme: Gays Tied GOP Hands on Foley

2006-10-03T21:07:00.000-05:00

This is a perspective put forth by Newt Gingrich and the Family Research Council on the Foley affair. Will Bunch has already taken it apart and show how ridiculous it is as have the comments to his article.

The argument goes like this: the GOP knew something was wrong with Foley's relationship with the congressional pages but they were so afraid of offending the gay community that they could not stop him or start an investigation. The problem is that the Republican party won the last election largely on the idea of an amendment to the constitution on the idea of banning gay marriage. When sodomy laws were deemed unconstitutional by the courts Republicans like Rick Santorum made comparisons to bestiality and incest. It's pretty hard to make the case that the GOP is afraid of appearing non-PC by getting tough with a pederast. That is also part of the problem to make the homophobia argument you have to assume that gay men in general are attracted to teenage boys, I myself find most guys under 25 kind of scrawny with boring personalities. Maybe that's just me. But to use the FRC correlation that homosexuals are 3% of the population and 1/3rd of molestations are male-male and therefore endemic of homosexuality then the necessary corollary follows that the 97% of men who are heterosexual are responsible for the majority of child molestation over 66%.

It is a dumb attempt by the FRC to try and protect the GOP by diverting attention from the congressional leadership and put the harassment of teenage pages by a staunch conservative Republican into the hands of the Democrats. The FRC has obviously not thought this argument through because if it was true, which it obviously isn't, then the GOP put getting elected above protecting children. It argues the Democratic point from the other position, its unintentional but with a few weeks before the election the press may pick up on that point. If it was a day before the election it might be a useful, if cynical argument. A few weeks before you have to wonder who their political advisors are and if they really want the GOP to keep the seats.

Foley is trying to argue that alcohol and molestation as a teen is the cause of the problem. He is perhaps thinking that he can resurrect his political career. He might as well forget it his current (former) election battle was heavily in his favor before the revelations, as the former LA governor once said "The only way I can lose this election is if I'm caught in bed with either a dead girl or a live boy." He wasn't caught in bed but IM is pretty close. Hastert can save himself but he'll probably drag the party down to losing the House. The press loves a story of a politico pimping out kids.

It's not that I'm enamored with the Democrats it's just that they are the more honest liars in this instance. To quote another LA governor Huey P. Long once said, "The only difference I ever found between the Democratic leadership and the Republican leadership is that one of them is skinning you from the ankle up and the other, from the neck down."

Queer Response to Gay History in Philadelphia

2006-09-30T10:05:00.000-05:00

A lot of people in Philadelphia are up in arms over the school district recognizing gay and lesbian history month. Most of the parents seem to be objecting because "it involves sex." That is a very narrow minded definition of homosexuality, I've always been gay even before I knew what sex was. In a way the reaction of the parents and the 70% of people who voted in the local CBS poll on whether the school district should have the calendars are the reason there is a need for the school to recognize Gay and Lesbian month. Parents flipping out and taking their kids out of class because "Gay and Lesbian History Month" is printed on a calendar they may not even notice. In a city with a climbing murder rate and a school system that is under funded and undermined continually by the state to have parents put their prejudices against a some of the students, potentially their own children, is offensive.

It isn't the first time that the school district has received flak for the calendars. People complain about Black History month and the noting of Ramadan. The district also notes Asian and Pacific Islander Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and Jewish and Christian holidays. The school district has to train students to compete and work alongside others in a global marketplace with people of different nationalities, races, genders, and sexual orientations. The school district has to be The only problem I have with the calendar is that there are no lesson plans to go along with it. They have the opportunity to tie in many other communities as well. There areBayard Rustin, Sappho, Socrates, James Baldwin, Bessie Smith, Alan Turing, , Michael Foucault, Virginia Woolf. The list really is endless lesbians and gay men have contributed to the world as much as anyone else to fear talking about their existence is to give into the belief that acknowledging their existence is somehow going to "turn" the kids gay is as idiotic as thinking Rosh Hashanah or Ramadan being marked is going to "turn" the kids Jewish or Muslim. It would be nice if things worked that way then September 21st of every year all violence would stop.

America's Pipes Don't Measure up for Broadband

2006-09-13T19:43:00.000-05:00

I have a bit of an interest in Internet connectivity. Not just because I work in IT, not just because I work with a lot of people who are part of the digital divide but in part I like to download the sweet multimedia content that's available. The problem is that broadband is expensive and in comparison to other developed countries kind of slow. Ars points to a report by the Consumer Federation of America, Consumer's Union, and Free Press.

One thing that gets forgotten in the paying more to get less reality of American broadband is that the policies of the FCC and the companies perpetuate the digital divide. Yes, the gap is shrinking a bit but still 16th in penetration and 15th in terms of growth, is to be frank pretty piss poor performance especially when one considers the price we pay. For example, Verizon offers FiOS at 30 Mbps / 5Mbps for $179.95 per month, yet in Japan or South Korea one can get 100 Mbps /100 Mbps for $35 and $32 per month respectively.

The reason Americans get screwed is that in most metropolitan areas customers have at most two broadband providers. Others have only one and in large swaths of the country there are none. There is no real profit driven reason for cable or DSL providers to provide service in rural areas, just ask Verizon why they don't want to offer FiOs in Swanksville and other areas in westwern PA. The duopoly and the inherent lack of real competition is due in no small part to the Brand X case and the subsequent FCC ruling on DSL. Cable and DSL providers don't have to lease their lines to competitors and can therefore charge highly for rather slow speeds and poor customer service.

Congress is trying to fix some of the problems with broadband. They are trying to overturn bans on municipal broadband which some states have passed. Municipal is one strategy to bring in much needed competition but congress could go further. They could require broadband providers to lease the lines. The broadband companies are given exclusive right of way in many locales. Doing so would not only shrink the divide in large cities but could help in rural areas. There is a lot of dark fiber that companies are putting to use that can be lit for consumers. If competitors can lease lines then the larger companies would have to compete on price and speed, there would be an incentive to get more customers in unserviced areas because of the competition in former monopoly areas.

On a somewhat related note this puts the whole anti-network neutrality of the cable and telephone companies in perspective. It's bad enough they want to throttle down the speeds of companies that don't pay extortion but the speeds of the fastlane are pretty damn slow.

Meme: Surviving the race

2006-09-10T21:03:00.000-05:00

As anyone who is interested in such things already knows Survivor will be dividing people into tribes based on race. There isn't an obvious library angle on this but race is an interesting and persistent social construct. A number of people have already pointed to the Herbert Spencer inspired quality to the whole endeavor of "survival of the fittest." There are calls to boycott the show, since it does have the unfortunate potential to degenerate into racist boosterism based on arbitrary criteria taken out of context in the same way as the bestselling but disproved Bell Curve.

Ever since the first Survivor almost everyone tries the same strategy as Richard Hatch. Form alliances and lie and cheat anyone not in your alliance and then lie and cheat those in your alliance until there is only three left. Then it is a simple matter of either winning the last challenge or being such a villain throughout the show they take you to the final two because who would vote to give a million dollars to a guy who faked his grandmother's death. With this the lying and backstabbing can have the accusation of race traitor, racist, and Uncle Tom that race baiting always brings out. Some critics point out that it is a crass attempt to pull up sagging ratings of the show by having people root for their own race, which I think is true. Unfortunately the coarser language that comes with race baiting probably will be edited out for family viewing. The race war would have to be fought over the water cooler instead. Which with the show losing steam isn't going to amount to much fighting.

What would have been more interesting is an examination of the idea of race. Race is not a scientific categorization despite the fact that most people would think it is. In fact the host found out that lumping people under Asian puts together people who see ethnic divisions and may have tensions with other "Asians." If he did more searching he would find some people from the West Indies who do not see themselves as being Black or "Blacks" from Africa who do not see themselves as being in the same race as "Blacks" in America. Race is one of the most arbitrary ways to categorize human beings what constitutes a race is highly influenced by the society one is raised in. In America race is defined largely by visual cues even when the visual cues aren't there. A light skin Black man is Black even if he can pass for White.

Whiteness itself is an interesting concept. It took decades for the Irish and the Italians to be considered White. The Jewish community is considered White by the mainstream sometimes but as a minority that is separate and apart at others. The lines are flexible and exist only to hang myths upon. Those myths that tell people to clutch their purse when a black man approaches, that Asian men are all foreigners, and that Latinas are sex crazed freaks. They aren't remotely true in most cases but they let you shut your brain off for a few minutes, and that is what reality TV is all about.

If someone is looking for good resources that treat the construct of race in a meaningful way there are a few choices. There is the series "Matters of Race" that aired on PBS. It examines the meaning of race from a number of perspectives. Race: the Power of an Illusion provides an interactive site to learn about the realities of race. It's a good site for teens and younger kids. There are a lot of books on the subject of Race but two recent ones to mention are Covering: The Hidden assault on Our Civil Liberties by Kenji Yoshino and What White Looks Like by George Yancy. Covering deals in part with race but also gender and sexual orientation. It is an interesting take on the need to assimilate, when is assimilation necessary and when is it the destruction of the self. What White Looks Like tries to expand the field of White studies which is in its infancy by having professors in Black studies tackle philosophical concepts of Whiteness put forth by Foucault and others.

The evils of video games proven ...

2006-07-31T21:19:00.000-05:00

... not quite but close. Ronaldinho the Brazilian phenom who took leisurely strolls through the finest stadiums in Germany in the last World Cup is using marathon sex and PS2 sessions as an excuse for his lackluster performance. He had to give some excuse when the sports rags and blogs point out that he plays harder for Barca than he's ever played for his country. This would have been the end of it had a playboy editor not done any detective work on the model who contacted the tabloids. Which led others to question whether she even exists.

The excuse is interesting because it reinforces the meme of the selfish, testosterone drenched sports stud. The idea that he would put winning the world cup at risk to sneak off to his girlfriends place for sex and to play a simulation of the same world cup is a little odd. Naturally the ultra macho stance makes some suspicious that he is hiding something. Maybe not like MAX but maybe like Esera Tualo. Personally, if he couldn't take off from sleeping with his girlfriend or boyfriend for a month to lead his team to the biggest championship in sports he shouldn't be on the pitch for Brazil 4 years from now. Although, from past experience I could see why he wouldn't come out if he has anything to come out about.

It's all about semantics

2006-07-24T20:41:00.001-05:00

Peter Norvig, CEO of Google, posed a few tough questions to Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web (WWW) at the recent conference for the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. As any one who is deeply involved in information retrieval or metadata research know Berners-Lee is pushing the Semantic Web as the biggest thing since teh Interweb. The basic idea of the Semantic Web (SW) is that web pages will be written in a way that computers can extract meaning from them in order to perform various operations. For example, your computer could automatically buy tickets for the movie, you’ve been reading about on the Internet, at your favorite theater at a time that will fit in with your schedule. Berners-Lee first described it in his landmark article for Scientific American.

Norvig’s criticism of the Semantic Web is that proponents need to factor into account incompetence, unwillingness to comply and dishonesty. The incompetence that he mentions is a problem on the World Wide Web now with web designers using non-standard markup technique. The unwillingness to comply or competition approach has been seen with HTML and I doubt SW will be any different. If one were the leader in selling widgets web wide why would one rewrite their entire website so that competitors could search their data. The deception aspect is pretty obvious to anyone who has clicked on a link high in their search results and being directed to a porno site when that isn’t what they were searching to find. He had more criticisms in a paper in 2005 but I guess you don’t want to berate the father of the WWW at a conference during the Q & A.

Berners-Lee took on the criticisms one by one, on compliance he suggested that powerful search engine companies can force others to reveal their data to store in Resource Description Frameworks (RDF). RDFs are part of the backbone of the SW and I’ll get to those shortly. On security / deception he pointed out that the Semantic Web requires explicit digital signatures on files. This would allow Semantic Web engines to only index trusted signatures and ignore unsigned Semantic Web pages.

The astute reader will notice that Berners-Lee did not touch incompetence. Some of the people who have commented on this story before and some of the people who I have talked to who are Semantic Web true believers say that advanced authoring tools will solve this. To which I say, B.S. if advanced tools could solve this problem why aren’t all web pages valid? Sure you have some that are still hand coded but most web masters are using DreamWeaver or some other WYSIWYG web editor. The problem of course is that different browsers treat tags differently in some cases the same browser will treat the same page differently depending on the version of the browser.

There are problems dealing with semantics in the semantic web which nyone who has studied natural language processing would expect. I don't think that the W3C has found a magic bullet to solve language translation problems but it still could be useful. Pushing the boundaries of technology in such a way could spur on some real developments in natural language processing and information retrieval. Eventually the SW may be a reality in a few more decades.

The Beautiful Game and the Ugly American

2006-06-19T19:38:00.000-05:00

The world's greatest sports spectacle is going on but you'd hardly notice from most American sports coverage. The local news does not give a run down of the days results, show highlights or even mention that the quaterly tourney is taking place except when the U.S. team is playing.

While I'm a huge soccer fan and am TiVoing each and every game to watch later I realize I'm of a distinct minority of Americans. Soccer has never been a very popular sport in America whether that exceptionalism is because of the full sports space in America or fears of globalization. While there was a well documented lack of organization of soccer clubs in the early stages of American sports space and some may fear the communist menace of football I think the success of the women's team and the constant prodding to enjoy the world's sport makes it a non-starter.

There is a certain level of misogyny and homophobia surrounding soccer in the U.S. it is seen as being safe,and unmanly. The fact that the U.S. women have been so successful compared to the lackluster performance of the men confirms the stereotypes for many. The fact that so many people have been pushing soccer for so many decades inadvertently turns off many who feel the foreign media is being condescending.

The lackluster performance of the American team this year is not helping to spread interest in the sport. The fifth place world ranking was a joke and this team tried hard to confirm it when they stepped on the pitch in their first match against the Czech Republic. They didn't play like a team at aall, they played like a team of prima donnas. It is the same problem that I saw in England's first match, they couldn't get organized or motivated but England has enough talent to sleepwalk into the round of sixteen. The U.S. isn't Brazil they can't wait for the game to come to them like Ronaldo is doing this World Cup. The team played a decent game 9 against 10 in the Italian game but complaining about a bad referee is pointless. If you are a good enough team calls go your way, if you're not they won't it is the same in every sport everywhere. To be honest the two teams that seem to be lkeaving their hearts out on the field are Ghana and Trinidad and Tobago. When the U.S. goes up against Ghana I'll be pulling for the miracle of America making it to the next round but won't be too sad if Ghana wins.

Soccer probably will never overtake even hockey in popularity in America but I'll keep watching the beautiful game. I try to avoid ABC's and ESPN's coverage, the least they could have done is get announcers who know the games terminology calling play by play.I have the TiVo set for Univision, the announcers know what they are talking about and it helps with my Spanish. I'll need to speak to the most likely football fans in America.

Marking time

2006-06-19T18:31:00.003-05:00

I just finished my course on metadata in digital resources. I did a short study on the use of TEI that somebody might find interesting.

Filmis and iTunes

2006-05-10T11:03:00.000-05:00

I'm a huge fan of filmi music. I've bought a few filmi songs through iTunes and this post makes it pretty clear why it isn't a good experience. Apple and the music industry as a whole would do well to modify ID3 to be a better metadata scheme for non-western music cataloging.

GTA San Andreas needs to be saved

2006-05-04T10:58:00.000-05:00

The library of Congress is trying to formulate a plan to preserve video games. There is some talk about it on Game Politics. Aside from wondering if they are going to preserve the greatest game of all time. I'm wondering if they are going to store decent ROM copies of games for digital delivery, as well as physical copies of the cartidges and discs.

With all the games for the myriad systems past and present this will be a huge undertaking. I wonder if they are going to stick with MARC or use Dublin Core, either way this is going to be a lot of typing. If they need help with cataloging the games I can lend a hand. I could use the practice.

MARC is dead long live Metadata

2006-04-14T10:07:00.000-05:00

OK a little too hopeful perhaps but had a great guest lecturer in class yesterday. Dr. Moen from the University of North Texas gave a lecture on the use of metadata in libraries. He made some interesting points on how MARC 22 will be XML based and how metadata will need to be used more and more for libraries to interact with the larger information community. He also showed off his work from one of the IMLS grants he was awarded. It was shocking, of the 2000 fields in MARC only 900 fields are used at least once. You can look up your favorite fields for usage and such on the project page.

The ALA and the idiocy of Library Corps

2006-04-08T06:02:00.000-05:00

The American Library Association is one of the largest professional organizations for librarians. They have pushed for the interests of libraries and librarians. The ALA has done some pinheaded things from time to time, but that is usually when they wander away into the larger political world.

With Library Corps, they have really screwed their newest members. The whole proposal is kind of strange since the ALA boosted the number of library students and ALA members by harping on the looming librarian shortage, which seems to loom further and further in the future.

A smarter idea than keeping retirees around in libraries with need would be using some of the graduates or soon to be graduates as interns. The students gain experience, the libraries get work done and may hire the students full time or part time. Between Library Corps and libraries using library assistants without masters degrees library schools seem like a waste of time. There is still positions in corporate, legal and medical librariesbut public libraries are getting the elderly or the untrained.

Network neutrality nixed: Libraries get ready to open your wallets

2006-04-06T12:21:00.000-05:00

The network neutrality amendment didn't go anywhere, which isn't surprising since cable and Telecoms lobby extensively for their interests and service providers like Yahoo and Google do not. For those not following the issue, network neutrality is the idea that when you are surfing the Internet content from a site that is signed with your ISP will be just as fast as content from another ISP. For example, under network neutrality Verizon won't slow down my Google searches because Google is on another companies pipes.

Going beyond the party breakdown of who was for it or against it, partisan discussions are rarely enlightening, you'll see interesting arguments on both sides. The idea of doing away with net neutrality was first proposed by SBC. The idea goes like this why should SBC give Google a free ride on its pipes when SBC customers do a search on Google or view streaming video from them. Google isn't paying SBC for the use of the pipes so why can't SBC slow down the speed of content delivery from non customers. The problem of course is that SBC customers are paying for Internet access and expect it to be at site independent speeds.

Where someone comes out on the issue depends on what model one uses to interpret network neutrality. Net neutrality is what we have now, all content is treated the same by your ISP whether it is streaming video or a call over Skype. Customers pay the same rate regardless of who they connect to or how often. The argument that is used is the "it ain't broke" reasoning of this is the current state of affairs.

What the telcos and cable companies are proposing is that they tier the internet so that you can pay one rate (likely the same rate people pay now) to access sites on the ISP which has their account at the current speed and other sites at a slower rate. There would be another tier where customers could pay more to get all sites at the same speed as they do now but have to pay more for the privilege. The argument for this usually uses the "In" cellular model. I pay less per call to people who have the same cell phone company.

There is more than the shaking out the last quarter from the consumer motive behind this. The other parts of the bill that did pass such as E911 and the nationwide broadcast regulation of telcos are major motivating factors in the tiered Internet idea. With the easing of E911 than cable companies are free to eat the lunch of telcos by providing VoIP service to their internet subscribers who may eventually decide to do away with their tradition phones. Telcos getting licensed nationally for video delivery coupled with the fiber-optic roll out means that cable companies will lose the monopolies they enjoy in many municipalities. Add stripping states of the ability to halt municipal broadband and you have a full on price war looming on the horizon.

Price wars are great for consumers but not so good for companies. That is where the tiered Internet comes in. By allowing Verizon to slow down Comcast customers' data signal VoIP from Comcast won't seem like such a hot deal with constant static and dropped calls. Verizon's IPTV won't be that hot compared to Comcast or a satellite provider when the customer's brand new HDTV is giving a picture not even worthy of 50's era TV. The pronouncements point to the "dead beats" of Yahoo, Google and Microsoft but the proposal is aimed more at the partners for a tiered Internet.

The worst part of the tiered Internet idea is that there is likely to be less of an uptake in these next generation services and higher prices. The consumer gets screwed yet again. Where this is bad for libraries is the obvious point that Internet and phone costs are likely to go up with the tiered proposal.Institutions that are strapped for cash will be forced to provide a worse service to patrons at the same cost.

Meme: The media ignores good news

2006-04-04T21:18:00.000-05:00

This is not a new meme per se. When Bush was gearing up for his second bid, the White House downplayed the growing insurgency with claims that the media was only reporting the bad news. This worked great with the base of the Republican party that thinks that the press is too liberal. Besides distrust of the press is not exclusive to conservatives, liberals often claim that the press is in the back pocket of right wing corporate interests.

The beauty of this meme is its simplicity. It relies on assumptions of the major media outlets' political biases that are firmly entrenched in the target audience and thus puts a filter onto their eyes. If there is a bombing reported the response of those infected with the meme will be "why aren't they reporting on the schools that have opened." In essence the worse the news gets the more one's views of the shamelessness of the media and the strides made in the war are strengthened.

It is an interesting approach to spinning the news which some are all too eager to take up. Instead of trying to make lemons out of lemonade when the Golden Dome Mosque's dome was obliterated by saying this will spur on the formation of a coalition government, now every car bombing is diminished into the same old news. The picture that the meme creates of the media is of lazy liberals drinking cocktails in the green zone waiting for the next bomb to go off so they can distort reality.

The problem with this meme and why it probably won't last beyond the November elections is for one, it ignores reality. The fact that Jill Carroll was released from captivity after several months of being threatened with murder belies the idea that reporters are completely safe to report from the streets and should focus on good news. There is an insurgency that is killing civilians, a low level civil war between sectarian militias, an internecine conflict developing among the Shia, a stalled political process and members of al Qaeda training in Iraq and traveling to parts unknown.

amongst all this there are schools and hospitals being opened which is good news. There is also a shortage of good teachers and physicians since many have left the country over security concerns, which is bad news. Very rarely does one consider the nuances involved. As it has been pointed out a reporter can look ridiculous if their positive report is aired at an inopportune time.

Yet that is another threat to this meme. One of the memes intended or unintended consequences (depending on your political leanings) is that reporters are likely to bend over backwards to do positive portrayals. In the next few weeks Fox won't be the only networks still showing pictures of the chocolate and roses era right after the fall of Baghdad media will take up this positive agenda to show they are not beholden to any agenda. It is very likely that any school they show will be targeted as happens now (part of the reason the State Department doesn't allow too many positive stories to be filmed), positive stories are going to turn negative very soon. The next meme may be the media is covering these events to tip off the terrorists.

Finally the main reason this meme isn't long for this world is the Bush administration itself. If they truly want to follow through with the Middle East transformation strategy than it will take decades of sectarian reconciliation and economic assistance for Iraq to even be a stable proto-democracy. There are centuries of old wounds and tribal conflicts to work through and basic problems of demographics and the location of oil reserves. If the meme truly took hold and its corollary that things are going far better that is being reported than there would be pressure to withdraw. Put simply Bush is in a Catch-22 if the American people believe things are going well they will see no reason to stay. If the American people think things are going poorly they may want to cut their loses.

This meme will have outlived its usefulness if the Republicans maintain control of the House and Senate if they lose control it won't matter. This meme resonates best with those who know service people in Iraq, assuming they are in relatively quiet areas. The soldiers and marines I know were in heavy fire areas and are pretty pessimistic. This also resonates with the widows, orphans and armchair hawks. The more people die the more important it is to see a positive outcome. A few people close to the family have died in this war and I am comfortable with them dying in a pointless cause. Wars have been successful in delaying future wars but have rarely prevented war. Diplomacy and communal interaction has done that. On that front there is no good news.

Orphaned works

2006-03-08T14:06:00.000-05:00

For those like myself who missed the reminder the hearing on orphaned works is happening now.

The ALA is keeping busy

2006-03-03T12:23:00.000-05:00

The president of the ALA has released a statement on the reauthorization of the USA PATRIOT act. The library provisions of the bill that was passed haven't changed much. Which is understandable in an election year when the Democrats are trying to look tougher on security than Republicans.

The ALA also has joined with SUN, IBM and others in support of the Open Document Format. I've spouted my efusive praise on it before so I'll spare you the bromides. The announcement has already rekindled the format religious war (along with the usual Apple/MS bashing).

Both of these stories are pretty interesting for long term impact. The PATRIOT act can eventually irradicate the freedoms necessary for libraries to exist. In essence granting de facto limitless powers for library warrants. The format war can have everyone formally recognize the proprietary MS XML format. Part of the liscense states that rights to use the format expire with the release of a new version and that developers have to reapply for liscense rights. This has implications on the goal of accessibility of documents decades from now.

Philly Wi-fi news

2006-03-03T09:53:00.000-05:00

I've been really busy with work and classes (cataloging and now library automation) so their has been a drought of posts.

Engadget has some news on the Wi-fi front in Philly. It is looking promising and while I'm not a huge Earthlink fan I can honestly say they are much better than Verizon or Comcast (the two locally based monpolies). This might force Verizon and Comcast to lower their prices, kind of doubt it since the last few months have shown increased prices and the same service or worse.

It will at least get the city wired for wireless and put people up to speed on the technology training portion. The portion of the profits that Earthlink is offering can be used to educate kids and adults in computer literacy, assuming of course that the usual money lost off the top to political corruption is kept to a minimum.

Meme: Xbox 360 failed in Japan due to Xenophobia

2006-01-06T09:51:00.000-05:00

This is perhaps one of the more interesting memes in that it spread quickly through the Internet on gaming boards and often revealed stereotypical "Ugly Americanism." The meme goes like this the reason that the Xbox 360 failed in Japan was because the Japanese hate American electronics because of xenphobia, WWII, or nationalism. Other sites have torn this apart piece by piece.

The case against nationalism and xenophobia being the cause of slow Xbox 360 uptake in Japan is pretty obvious and logically sound. Despite the new sleeker design away from the rather hideous industrial shell of the original Xbox it still is pretty noisy with 2 fans in the case and 1 in the power adapter. The fact that it still overheats only hurts sales especially when a lawsuit is launched mere days before the Japanese launch. Hanging the adapter above ground so that it has airflow all around it supposedly solves the problem but I can see why some may wait for a more elegant solution.

The lack of compelling titles for the Japanese market is probably the main reason it hasn't sold well, afterall it is a game console. Gamers follow games onto new platforms very few gamers will just buy a system just because it is new. Some people bought the PS2 mainly because it had a built in DVD player and at the time it came out was about $100 cheaper than the nearest DVD player on the market. The XBox 360 as launched does not have a HD DVD or Blu-Ray drive. At any rate having more action games and RPGs would have helped the launch in Japan. The initial offerings were mostly FPS, racing and football. DOA4 should be coming out shortly so sales may pick up but there isn't a whole lot of action of RPG or fighting games after that on the horizon.

Microsoft has just announced that they will sell external HD DVD players for the XBox 360 but that will be at an additional cost above the ~US$339 that it sells for in the Japanese market and US$399 it retails for everywhere else. The new medium is virtually guranteed to only support HD DVD movies and music since gaming houses could not reasonably assume that there will be enough of penetration early on to justify limiting their potential sales by making games HD DVD only. Despite this future split in the system configuration and the minor split currently over hard drives the HD DVD game meme is already spreading. The fact that there were rumors of Microsoft planning such a move as late as last year may have put the brakes on the sales in Japan, especially when the PS3 having Blu-Ray drives into the equation.

The thing that is so fascinating about the xenophobic meme is that many ignored these real issues especially the crucial issue of games and jumped on the they hate America bandwagon. This despite the fact that iPods are even more ubiquitous in Tokyo than in New York or that Windows has over 90% market penetration in Japan just as they do here. It isn't as if they do not have other options for mp3 players or operating systems. People tend to ignore the jingoistic nature of some of Xbox 360 fandom. In essence people ignore the fact that certain types of games do really well in some countries and rather poorly everywhere else. FPS such as Halo and Half Life are huge in the US but may not get as loyal a following in Japan as such titles as Dead or Alive (DOA) or .

The question of Japan's relevance in the gaming industry is a sub-part of the xenophobic meme raising the natural corallary assuming the Japanese are nationalistic when it comes to product reviews does their opinion matter in a globalized world? Kotaku took this on but by the racist responses from some of the American readers not all are convinced that the original proposition is false and that the corrollary would necessarily be false as well.

The power of the xenophobic meme comes from an old tradition not unique to America at all of being suspicious of the "other's" motives. The "other" can be anyone from another country or culture that raises one's own xenophobia. It is partly classic transferrence of one's own prejudices onto the "other" as an explanation for why one is so xenophobic. The xenophobic argument in relation to the Japanese has a lot to do with the economic power of Japan and an uneasiness about it in the West. Similar arguments were made during the 80's when Japanese cars were starting to gain traction in the US with complaints that the Japanes would not buy American cars because they hate America.

The stated reason for the perceived xenophobia is telling, anger over Hiroshima probably enters the mind of a Japanese gamer as much as memories of Auschwitz invades the mind when thinking of the Beetle. Perhaps a desire to repeat the act if only metaphorically.

What laws effecting media / libraries to expect

2005-12-28T09:53:00.000-05:00

Ars has a decent roundup of laws that congress will be taking up next year effecting technology.

Network neutrality is one of the biggest since SBC announced that they would hinder the performance of competing VOIP services over their lines. The network neutrality law would prevent such practices. It is likely to pass since cable is moving into voice and telcos are moving into video; there will be less lobbying to stop it.

Patent reform is touched on and the problems Research in Motion is having. The US patent system is severly broken on several fronts. Patents are granted for obvious improvements. Patents are granted when prior art is already on the market. The ability to get injunctions preventing the sale of products that contain parts that are in dispute often drives small companies out of business.

The current system favors the practice of large companies with huge stables of patents to hagel with other companies that have a patent they may infiringe in exchange for allowing them to infringe. There are already law firms that buy up patents from failed IPOs so they can sue people later. Ideally software should not be patented, by its very nature most innovations are obvious or incorporate prior art. Patent terms sould be shortened to a maximum of 15 years and a minimum of 2 years, and terms should be applied in a case by case basis.

Science education is also touched on. The US is doing a horrible job educating kids in science and education in general. With No Child Left Behind teachers are required to teach to a test which obviously means that if successful than the children will be able to pass the test. However, this is a bad way to teach critical thinking and real world problem solving techniques which are vital to science education. The funding of schools is antiquarian to say the least but as Gov. Rendell (PA) found out people are all for lowering property tax but raising funds for schools in another way is hard to do.

The hard truth is that people may love their children but part of that love is to see their children do well even if they have to drag your child's education down to do it. For some the education of their child takes a back seat to the culture wars and a misguided attempt to increase faith in America. The proponents of such psuedo-science undermine the very nature of scientific inquiry by suggesting that since evolution is "only" a theory any holes in it discount it totally and instead of filling the holes through tests and inquiry just pull the "God did it" card.
I wonder when they'll get around to dismissing gravity since it is "only" a theory, after all, the "God did it" card would explain why scientists can't find gravitons. Most of scientific education is theory there are very few laws.

Meme: victory in Iraq

2005-12-08T12:36:00.000-05:00

The current president of the United States made his second of four planned speeches to try and bring up his poll numbers and those for support of the war. The problem he is facing is that making speeches won't bring "victory" in Iraq but redefining what victory is will. When the war first began an idea of what victory would look like was clear in a "squint your eyes as you look at the haze rising off the tarmac" kind of way. Kill or capture Saddam, remove the weapons of mass destruction and Iraq would quickly become a beacon of democracy in the Arab world.

The problem is we've captured Saddam but there were no WMD and Iraq with it's corruption, ethnic tension, and crime is serving more as an example of what not to do than anything else. The thinking going in and why Neo-Cons were so sure Iraq was the key to the Middle East is that Iraq is a secular society with large oil reserves so it should have quickly become a secular democracy as soon as the murderous dictator was removed. The reality besides the daily bombings is that what progress is being made towards democracy is taking Iraq closer to the Iranians and towards a civil war. The steady drumbeat rising against the war has less to do with these "inside baseball" issues and more to do with the fact that it has been two years and over 2000 Americans have died.

The Bush administration has been successful in the past by setting up a false dichotemy of either pulling the troops out right now and conceding defeat or staying the course which will lead to eventual victory. The problems with the dichotemy is that it misses the nuance inherent in an ancient society and modern warfare. The real options that have been expressed are to start drawing down troops six months from now and base them close by outside the country in order to pressure the Iraqi forces to step up and for civil society to stabilize, this is favored by Murtha and Pelosi. Set a flexible timeline with milestones for the Iraqis to meet militarily and politically with an eye to full withdrawal anywhere from late next year to the start of 2007, which is where most of the other Democrats are at. Have milestones with no timeline tentative or otherwise which is where most of the Republican party is at. Stay until total victory is acheived, which is the president's position.

What is total victory? That is a question that isn't really asked but the answer to the hypothetical question has clearly changed. Victory has gone from a Jefforsonian democracy with close ties to the US and Isreal to a military capable of fighting local resistence. The meaning of victory is critical to paraphrase Sun Tzu "you have to know what victory will look like in order to know how to reach it." The problem is not just semantic but also demographic. With so many redeployments it is only a matter of time - around the midterm elections - that large portions of the forces will be on their 3rd or 4th tour. It could be alleviated with a draft but that would be political suicide. The whole Jeffersonian democracy thing takes time, even in America it was only after a civil war and the civil rights movement that we have come close to a true democracy. The military preparedness is easier to predict and control.

In the end it comes down to a choice for the current president does he shoot for the history books and the enduring legacy by ignoring his national agenda and focusing exclusively on Iraq in order to steer it through the minefield of corruption and civil unrest towards that beacon. The downside is that his base will likely turn against him for the financial strain it will put onto the deficit and the much sought after fruits of an ownership society (personal retirement vs. social security, personal healthcare vs. medicare/medicaid etc.) left to rot on the vine. In that scenario the Republican majority in the House and Senate would most assuredly be lost and the whole endeavor may be for nought since the effort would stretch into another president's term or terms.

The other victory vision is a successful redefinition to military preparedness and a quick exit around the time of the next election. This has a higher likelihood of getting Republican incumbents elected and plausible deniability is afforded by placing the onous on the military leadership for the "decision." This also gives the current president the opportunity to push for the ownership society as a lasting legacy. The downside is that it is hardly a play for the history books since the war is most likely to be the lead item in his biography unless his ownership society has as lasting an influence as the New Deal. It can also go pretty poorly if al Qaeda either attacks anywhere shortly after we leave or boasts of kicking us out. It can also backfire if civil war breaks out but from a real politik standpoint most Americans who are his base could be convinced it could not be helped. I can see the talking points about Guy Fawkes and King Louis XVI. This would be a convenient retelling of history similar to the stories about the Nazi Werewolf which the right wing ran with.

I was not and am not a supporter of the war partly because I know quite a few people who went over there and came back in flag draped coffins. That is not the only reason I did not and do not support the war, however. The fact that the motivations given to the American people were baseless is one but if I could see through them before we even moved troops into the area then the people who are suddenly shocked at being lied to are guilty themselves of willful deception or ignorance of the facts.

The main reason I was against the war is something that is bearing out right now, Americans have too short an attention span for a sustained war measured in decades. Iraq was not the center of terror before the invasion but it is now and the once metaphysical war Bin Ladin had against the West punctuated at times by attacks killing a few hundred or a few thousand at a time is now a daily ritual. By going into Iraq to force Middle East transformation we put ourselves in a position to lose more than we can reasonably gain. We set up a situation where if Iraq does not become a secular democracy then we have lost the war of idealogy. We must not just win militarily but also idealogically. Al Qaeda and similar groups do not need to defeat us militarily as long as they create disruptions or can spread their message. In short "victory" necessarily means the Jeffersonian thing but in national political terms that isn't going to happen since it would take so long. The only real guaranteed winners are going to be Iran because they will gain influence in Iraq and through out the Middle East since they are the agent of stability for the Iraqi government and al Qaeda who is using the war as a recruiting tool through out the Middle East and Europe.

As for Bush's speech Juan Cole tears him a new one, pointing out all the little half-truths and mistatements of fact. So while Bush, who started the war is looking for a way to gracefully exit, I someone who opposed it from the start am arguing we have to stay quagmire or no.

Anarchist organization and authoritarianism

2005-11-27T18:24:00.000-05:00

Part of being an anarchist is examining power structures and speaking out against authoritarianism. This post makes the argument that anarchists (particularly White males) do not want to hear, that an established open structure is preferable to structurelessness. She points to the rant on Infoshop.org attempting to debunk the idea of creating structures in collectives and affinity groups as proposed in "The Tyranny of Structurelessness." The basic argument boils down to anyone who would use the essay by a 1970's feminist socialist to criticize the behavior of their small ad hoc groups is not an anarchist.

The question is asked in the Infoshop piece why would people (women presumably) read this essay instead of talking about their problems with the group. The answer is actually pretty obvious, the people that are marginalized by society as a whole and subsequently by their anarchist comrades need a way to press the discussion. The problems with anarchist groups is pretty obvious but rarely discussed in fear of being called authoritarian.

A gay man, self-defense and a tough cookie

2005-11-15T14:30:00.000-05:00

Lucas Dawson was cleared of manslaughter charges brought by Philadelphia D.A. Lynne "One Tough Cookie" Abraham for stabbing his assailant in a gay bashing incident. You can read the links for the details suffice it to say that he didn't have a choice and tried to flee at first. The thing that makes this so interesting is that Abraham who tries to foster a reputation for being tough on crime brought charges in the first place.

The argument for charging him centered mainly on the fact that he is 21 and the attackers were under 18 including Gerald Knight Jr. who was 17. The officers involved said he used excessive force in trying to defend himself from youths who followed him for nearly as he fled from their taunts half a block and began punching and kicking him once they got him on the ground.

This new found concern for the use of appropriate force would have been appreciated in the cases of the videotaped beating of carjacker Thomas Jones and Officer Christopher DiPasquale who had a long record of brutality complaints and shot an unarmed teenage motorist twice (once in the head). In the Jones case there were no charges brought against the half dozen officers who held Jones down and beat him with batons while being videotaped. DiPasquale lost his badge not by anything the D.A. did but through a routine investigation by I.A.

She is in no risk of losing her job as she won re-election quite handily this month. The Republicans don't bother to put up a real candidate since this is a highly Democratic town and the Democrats will not support a challenger since she is so popular and what poltical organization is going to throw out a sure bet. I just wish she would do a little "soft cookie" once and a while.

OS X a no go on $100 laptop

2005-11-15T11:40:00.000-05:00

While I am a big fan of OS X I am on the fence whether Red Hat Linux would be a better fit for the project to bring a $100 laptop to the developing world. The developers are looking for a totally open source laptop so that they will be "tinkerable" while I am sure they have good intentions they may also have too much invested in an idealogy of Free Software and not best software.

Reading the FAQ and other information they have big plans for making all the software open source in order to allow students to get into rewriting the code but is this meeting the need of the user or the developer? While Linux is great (I'm dual booting OS X and Yellow Dog Linux) there are some issues with ease of use. They are addressing the user space quirks but the question needs to be asked is this the best soultion for the problem since there are still outstanding issues.

Ideally they could have used Apple's and yes, even Microsoft's help in refining the Linux distro that would be installed. Instead they are going to use Red Hat Linux which is a solid choice (the basis of Yello Dog Linux) but not the most user friendly environment. They could have made all changes to the sytem to make it more accessible open source under the GPL, which could be used by other Linux distros.

To cut through all the crap and get to the heart of the matter all of the technology companies currently involved or considering involvement are looking at long term growth trends. Third world countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia will not be Third Worlders forever. Just the continuous search of capital for inexpensive labor pools to insource will raise the standard of living. China and India are likely to become economic superpowers in the near term and Africa and Latin America are ripe for growth. People want to develop brand loyalty early not just Apple or Microsoft but Red Hat as well.

While open source is great and promotes the freedom to alter your tools fundamentally to meet your needs if there is a proprietary tool that meets one's needs it should be considered. OS X is mostly open source, the only closed source parts of the OS are the Finder, Aqua, Core Graphics/Audio, and some of the apps like iTunes. If the user wishes to change OS X to a strictly open source piece of software they can strip it down to Darwin and install another window manager and recompile Linux apps for it. Frankly, it is the best of the proprietary and open source worlds.

I can understand people wanting to be evangelistic about open source especially when the possibility of nearly doubling market share overnight is in sight but somebody should "please think of the children." The prospective buyers should be given the choice of operating systems from anyone willing to provide them and lifetime service agreements. No one should be able to provide "free" software and then charge for support, neither Apple nor Red Hat. If Microsoft wants to offer a version of Windows let them do it but users should be able to replace the operating system at any time. Since the machines are so small and do not have large hard drives Flash memory is the ideal solution to the cost, size, speed and upgrability of the sytem.

If they want to use a totally open source system why are they using proprietary chips from AMD and not the open source chips on the market? If the idea is to have people tinker with the laptops why limit the tinkering to the software? Why are they using Red Hat Linux and not Ubuntu Linux? Ubuntu is built on the non-profit model and does not charge for support.

There is still some discussion around it going on.

The MPAA is killing my TiVo

2005-11-02T13:46:00.000-05:00

Caesar at arsTechnica takes a look at the latest attempt by the MPAA to kill fair use. Basically, if the "Analog Content Security Preservation Act of 2005" passes the whole point of a TiVo, recording video to watch at a later time or transfer to another TV in the house will be severly limited.

If you've listened to Jack Valenti and other MPAA representatives this is just a small step to the eventual goal. Presented with the hypothetical of a father videorecording his child's first steps who steps in front of a TV which is playing a protected movie Jack opted for the the recording to go black. The rationale is if you allow this type of fair use then eventually video pirates will twist it to their advantage.

Considering that Hollywood is putting out more and more life wasting movies I might just opt out of the whole thing.

David Cole puts John Yoo on the rack over torture

2005-11-02T10:35:00.000-05:00

For those who aren't that into politics the name John Yoo will likely be followed by the question, 'whose he.' In many ways he is the architect of the Abu Ghraib, GTMO, extraordinary strategy in the war on terror. He has a new book, The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs After 9/11, making the case for why torture is a good thing when America does it. I've seen him in interviews most recently on Frontline.

He is an originalist but that doesn't seem to square with his views for a strong executive branch. David Cole, a Georgetown law professor and author of a competing view Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism, takes up the case against Yoo's originalism and his legal opinnion on torture in The New York Review of Books. The article can be read in its entirety on TomDispatch toward the bottom of the page.

While in my personal opinnion Yoo's legal reasoning is contradictory and baseless in cited precident, when he bothers to quote it, his book gives insight into the White House's thinking. Won't buy it but may pick it up at the library along with David Cole's book.

Opening up

2005-10-14T09:34:00.000-05:00

I'm excited by OpenDocument, I know it has been around for years. It was developed by Sun, Microsoft, IBM and Corel to be an XML based standard for office suites. It hasn't caught on in huge numbers because most people use MS Office even though there are 3 revisions to the .doc standard that are incompatible with each other.

It is picking up steam with support from Massachussets. Mexico, Peru, Brazil, China, Japan, the EU and other states are considering it. I like it because it can prevent vendor lock in and promotes document portability and retrievability. Retrieval of old Office documents can be a chore after you've made a few upgrades in versions.

While Microsoft's new Office format MS XML Schema has some potential I think they would do better to look into adding OpenDocument support. The same goes for Apple's iWork suite. The ISO is received the OpenDocument schema for consideration as an international standard. If it gets approved there will be very little standing in the way of international bodies supporting it wholeheartedly. Unlike America there is little interest in using the current de facto standard of .doc for much longer, especially when MS XML will soon replace it and render it obsolete and may be altered to be less backwards compatible in the future.

Microsoft is hoping to stonewall governments into sticking with MS Office by not supporting the standard. The switch would mean that Microsoft would have to compete in an area they thought they won with Office 97.

The worst part about it from their point of view is that they could not just create a new document standard with a few bells and whistles that was incompatible with the competition. They could implement various schemas on the underlying OpenDocument XML structure to add various bells and whistles. The problem there is the same that Apple would have there is no guarantee that others won't figure out a way to get the same look and feel.

Sun sees ODF the same way as HTML a standard that can allow users to communicate despite thier choice in browser (if all pages are written to W3C specs). Microsoft is seeing only the lose of control and missing the fact that most people who use Windows will continue to use Microsoft products like Office because of preconceptions that it is better. If the governments make the change and MS is not there for it those preconceptions will be significantly challenged. Especially with the radical layout changes that Office going to go through when it hits Windows Vista. While interesting in concept and kinda cool in motion it may be a steep learning curve for casual users. OpenOffice, StarOffice, KOffice and NeoOffice all look relatively like standard Office.

Microsoft is taking a large gamble that people won't try out a low cost or free office suite instead of sticking with a $300 suite that doesn't work with government documents. Apple is missing a huge opportunity to be totally compatible with these government documents without relying on MS.

For librarians the implications are obvious, a standard XML document format will make digital libraries a lot easier to manage in the future.

OpenDocuments closed minds

2005-10-13T14:23:00.000-05:00

Slashdot has a posting pointing to Fox News retraction of an earlier report by James Pendergast, executive director of Americans for Technology Leadership. An earlier article on Slashdot pointed out that one of the founding members of his organization made his position look suspiciously like shilling for Microsoft.

The argument in essence is over whether Massachussetts is right to make all documents it produces available in an open source document format and PDF. If they do they would be the first state government to use OpenDocument for things like unemployment forms and anything else that is shared electronically between agencies.

The reason why it is a good idea is the reason Microsoft is so oppossed to it. OpenDocument is an open standard that anyone can use in a similiar way as PDF, you can find many apps besides Acrobat that will open PDFs. While some apps will open Word documents they do not display it properly in many cases and the new document formats Microsoft is creating for the next Office are proprietary XML. The planned change will require that all old Office documents, spreadsheets etc. be converted to the new format which may change at any time.

Office is not great at backwards compatibility when moving to a new or different version of Office (Mac to PC) reformatting often has to take place. The new Office will also require a much faster PC than most governments have so updating the office suite means updating the office PCs as well. Let's not forget that while Windows PCs dominate most of the government market there are still Mac, Linux and Sun systems out there.

Microsoft had and has a chance to use OpenDocument it is an open standard that is set forth by committee. If a Microsoft programmer sees a way to do things better in OpenDocument they are free to submit their modifications for all to use. Microsoft is also free to use OpenDocument along with their new Office document specs. They don't even have to pay a liscensing fee. The real concern is that given the ability to move to another office suite without losing their past work people may choose to do so. That choice takes away a big roadblock for most people thinking of switching from Windows.

Frankly, I think all state governments and commonwealths should move to OpenOffice or the OpenDocument format, I'm looking at you Pennsylvania. It would save taxpayers a lot of money in licensing fees and could spur competition in the office suite world which has grown stagnant.

For the curious OpenOffice runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X (in X11). NeoOffice is a native port of OpenOffice for OSX users who don't want to delve into the Unix goodness that lies at the core of the Mac. There are a number of other products that use the OpenDocument format but these are free and easy to install.

Fair Use and the IP Rental Model

2005-09-23T12:10:00.000-05:00

Fair use is on the way out as the licensing of rights gains industry acceptance. This has huge implications for libraries, information professionals and the general public. This can also put the kibosh on projects like Google Print and Google Scholar. But first some background.

In the old days, back in the early 90's when dinosaurs roamed the earth, if you bought a CD you owned the CD and were entitled to fair use privileges. You could sell it, trade it, re-record it for personal use, play it at parties or destroy it. Most people didn't partake in the last freedom of fair use but used CD stores, clubs and personal music players can still be found. They exist only at the pleasure of media companies, however.

With the Digital millennium Copyright Act, which President Clinton signed into law while America was focused on "The Dress", media companies can license media content in a similar fashion as computer companies. They could also use Digital Rights Management systems (DRMs) to protect the content from being copied. That's how CSS and Macrovision could be put on DVDs that would not work unless the user had the licensed decoder. Fortunately for anyone who has a ton of DVDs and likes the option of looking at them on her Linux boxen there shortly appeared DeCSS which effectively broke the encryption algorithm.

That's not going to happen as quickly with the next wave of media devices. Windows Vista will use HDCP for content protection which has raised some concerns. The realistic concern is that people may be drawn into purchasing a Blu-Ray Disc movie and find that it is no better than a regular DVD. This is because of the way protection is implemented. Typically the rule is if you can see it you can capture it but HDCP allows for a protected stream on top of the other mechanisms such as encryption. In essence you need a trusted player and a trusted display. Depending how things shake out when the spec is finalized people who've just bought a HD monitor may be getting screwed shortly.

Windows, Macs and any of the other operating system producers who wish to pony up the cash will be fine but Linux will likely need some enterprising user to crack the protection. HDCP needs to be commercially licensed and while Linux has many distros it doesn't have a central company to make such deals. It'll be every distro for itself. There is the added cultural problem that KDE ran into how are you going to distribute a free operating system with closed code. Even without the source are the distros going to include a HDCP tax? If they include it at all I'd say yes.

Buying a BD-disc or a HD-DVD disc and not being able to play it properly is a future problem that won't hit home till next Spring CD protection has already been a problem. Some bands have taken the unusual step of telling fans how to circumvent copy-protection. The technical details of how to bypass the copy protection on most Sony discs is to just hold down shift when you put the CD in the Windows PC so it doesn't auto-load. For Macs and Linux you don't have to do anything since the copy protection only works on Windows. This is an improved version of the protection that crashed PCs when it was included in Celine Dion's CDs in 2002.

At this point one might ask how this effects libraries or Google. Well if one were to look here or here, they might get a clue. The key is that from the media companies view playing a CD in a computer is not a right it is a privilege that can be taken away when it interferes with their profitability. The thinking boils down to the belief that sluggish sales are a sign that piracy is running rampant. Piracy is a problem but most people aren't buying CDs or DVDs to share with their closest million friends. Most of the people who rip CDs are transferring them to their iPods, iRivers or some other digital music player. The fact that some CD players will not play some of the DRM schemes out there is only worse.

This impact libraries in the event a patron checks out media that is DRM protected and they do not have the means to play it. Libraries could carry devices for loan but that can be expensive or have large placards telling patrons to get a new media player. The problem is that most people would not see the DRM sticker unless told where to look and wouldn't understand what it meant regardless. after all, the exploit to bypass Sony's DRM does nothing to stop Macrovision. Should telling people how to bypass copyright protection be part of the job of a librarian? As much as the ALA would say the opposite is true, within reason there are reasons to think that circumventing copyright isn't all that bad.

Opening the can of worms that is intellectual property rights, they are by definition limited so that there is a fair use right. Copy right has expanded to the point where fair use is an endangered species. Since in the digital world everything is a copy and despite giving you a copy I can still keep my copy rules like the DMCA were established to limit the spread of the copies. A case can be made that this is proper but preventing me from copying a CD I bought so that I can listen to it in my car on my iPod is a little over the top. It only works because of the licensing of content instead of the purchase. The switch happened so rapidly people didn't even see it. When you buy a CD now you are merely buying a license to play it in locations and on devices considered acceptable by the copyright owners.

I find this kind of ridiculous myself, the legal exception made for copying for educational purposes or personal use can slowly be eroded by the prohibitions on technologies to circumvent DRM. If you have an old recording that is no longer available and you wish to preserve it you are in a bit of a gray area depending on the number of copies made and in what format the original and copies are in.

This is similar to something Google found out the hard way. Despite the fact that Google Print allows authors to opt out the Authors Guild thinks they are not going far enough. Google Print they fear, will allow ne'er do wells to avoid buying the book and instead read a brief excerpt of their work online. The Authors Guild should lose the case but that is not guarantee that they will. This raises the specter of litigation facing any library that co-operates in this project or any other project like it to make their collections available to patrons who can not physically come into the library. Even a librarian that would ensure that circumvention of DRM was not allowed could be at risk. The Authors Guild has more money than many of the already struggling major metropolitan libraries. There are also publishers and other content companies who see digital media as a means to reestablish control over content.

Authors Guild v. Google has the potential to be another universal Studios v. Sony Corporation let's hope that Google stays in the fight and prevails.

Banning Baldwin and Woolf

2005-09-06T09:37:00.000-05:00

Every year for one week the American Library Association has Banned Book week from late September into October. In conjunction with the posters and essays on the importance of intellectual freedom they publish a list of books that were banned from schools or are frequently challenged. It's probably going to be a longer list than usual this year. All because of a failed political stunt by Alabama State Rep. Gerald Allen.

He came into the national scene in 2004 by supporting a gay marriage ban in Alabama. He tried to follow that up with a bill that I can only believe was intended for buzz it would create. The bill would have prevented public money being used to buy materials that portrayed being gay as an acceptable lifestyle. It was pretty poorly worded and would have had the effect of not only banning books like the The Color Purple (not a bad book to have in a collection by the way) but also The Fire Next Time because James Baldwin was gay.

Alabama leads the country in challenges to books but it is not just the Bible belt or the former Confederate south that wants to dictate what books are appropriate to read. There are plenty of challenges leveled at The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn every year by African Americans in the north who object to the use of the word nigger and the depiction of the escaped slave Jim. Book banning has become organize with the American Family Association and others making local fights national.

There seems to be a new tinge to the idea of book banning and challenges. Outright bans are not asked for as much since that makes the groups look extreme but moving the books behind desks are done in order to have the same effect. Political organizations and publications make lists of books that they consider to be dangerous, such as Human Events List of the 10 Most Harmful Books. I looked through the list and some books you could make a case for being harmful such as Mein Kempf but Sexuality in the Human Male was a survey of what men were doing sexually and Kinsey did not make the logical leaps that Hernstein and Murray made in The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life.

He also did not ignore uncomfortable facts in order to make his argument such as Murray in his latest Human Accomplishment which suggests that most advances were made by White European Christians. This is controdicted by the historical fact that agriculture began in Mesopotamia (Iraq), large ship building, telescopes, gunpowder and advanced metallurgy were invented in China, Muslims created astronomical charts, modern hospitals, sanitation and modern navigation. I could go on in this tangent; but it is odd that Human Events calls this books necessary Fall reading for conservatives when it is filled with inaccuracies but chides Kinsey for a possible interpretation that others have made of his work that children having sex may be beneficial.

I have seen an attmpt by people on the left to come up with their own list of harmful books such as The Bible, The Koran, and The Fountainhead. The case can be made that these books drove on fanatics just like the list that Human Events put out but as Eye Weekly points out they are not in and of themselves harmful. The books on both lists and those that are frequently challenged are merely meme delivery systems. The power of any idea is how it reacts in your own mind when it comes into contact with the other ideas that you have. For some people reading Mein Kempf inspired them to seek out genocide of an entire people, for others in a different time it can be used to raise compassion and try to bring about equality. The same can be said of the Bible or the Koran.

Gay men on loan at the library

2005-08-30T18:41:00.000-05:00

A library in the Netherlands will be loaning people out 45 minutes at a time to further understanding. The loanees in question are gay men, lesbians, gypsies, muslims, asylum seekers and a poor peson on government assitance. I think this is a wondeful idea that should be spread to other places around the world, even here in Philadelphia. It is hard to hate somebody when you see them as a human being.

Some have pointed out that sex is likely the biggest motivator for checking someone out but gay Turkish men can touch lives in many ways. Nobody should be surprised at the possible video date quality of the meetings. It is unlikely a neo-nazi skinhead would sit across from a gay man or a muslim for 45 minutes. No matter how it turns out most of the encounters will likely be preaching to the choir but sonetimes they are the ones who need the most preaching. They do not recognize their own prejudice because they are too busy pointing it out in others.

Despite its potential flaws at least it is an attempt at dialogue unlike Gerald Allen's prescription for Alabama. I say bring on the young Turks.